Elizabeth’s pale face had grown red while Clavering was speaking. He was close enough to see it, even by the uncertain light that penetrated the mist.
“You think I’m a brute, eh? No, on the contrary I have a strong hankering after decency in my womenkind.”
“Your daughter Anne—” Elizabeth spoke falteringly.
“Ah, yes, bad luck again. Anne has twice the sense of her sisters, is really more attractive and is perfectly certain to behave herself. But she is on her mother’s side, and if—or when—I do get a divorce, I shall have to fight her, and she is the only one of my children whose opposition would amount to anything. You know what a Miss Nancy Reginald is.”
“But—but—how can you get a divorce if Mrs. Clavering—“
“Doesn’t want it? Well, I never was properly married to her in the first place. She didn’t know it at the time, and I was a youngster and didn’t know it, either; but our marriage wasn’t regular at all. I should have got the license in Kentucky instead of in Ohio, where we crossed the river to get married. So we are not really married and never have been, according to law. When I mention the subject to Mrs. Clavering, I shall offer to get the divorce; if she is contumacious, I shall simply prove that we have never been married at all. That will be hard on the children, and on that account I think there is no doubt she would agree to the divorce, if it were not for Anne. Anne, however, doesn’t know anything about the defect in the marriage, and I rather think she will back down when she finds out just where we stand.”
Elizabeth listened to this with horror. But it was horror of the deed, not of the man. Clavering’s calm and lucid presentation of the case, the absence of hypocrisy, his quiet determination, seemed to lift him out of the class of vulgar criminals and make him almost respectable. And then he went on to give his side of the case, and his voice had in it a strange note of longing.
“I have before me twenty years yet, and although I am reckoned a man who can live on bonds and stocks and lawsuits and fighting other men, still I’ve had my dreams—I have them still. If I could find a woman who would be a wife to me, and yet could be an intellectual companion for me—that would be something that all my money hasn’t brought me. Do you blame a man for longing after it? Don’t you think I am more nearly human for wanting it than if I were satisfied to go on all my life as I have done for the last thirty-five years?”
“Yes.” Elizabeth spoke unwillingly, but the assent was forced out of her. And whether it was his words, his voice,—always singularly captivating,—his compelling glance, or his powerful personality, Elizabeth began to feel a toleration, along with a reprehension, of him. For Clavering, like all men, was made up of things to admire and things to abhor; only he possessed both in a stronger degree than common. He was much older than Elizabeth, but he had not lost the fire and vigor of youth.
Elizabeth’s agitation had subsided somewhat, but she was still unable or unwilling to speak. The gray mist was becoming denser, and they could see the gas-lamps studding the fast-falling darkness like jewels; the sound of wheels and hoofs upon the asphalt was deadened by the fog and grew fainter, the street was quieter, more deserted even than Washington streets usually are. In the little park, with the masses of evergreen shrubbery around them, they were as alone, as little subject to intrusion, as if they had been on a desert island. After a considerable pause Clavering spoke again.