He answered calmly. “My daughter, it is a great misfortune, it will probably be a lifelong trial, but it is not necessarily dishonour.”
“You never can make a scandal less by trying to hide it,” said Richard, backing up his father. “It is all pretty awkward, but I daresay we shall get some amusement out of it in the end.”
“Richard,” said his mother through her tears, “you are flippant and unkind!”
“Indeed, mother,” was his reply, “I never was more serious in my life. When I spoke of amusement, I meant comedy merely, not fun—the thing that looks like tragedy and has a happy ending. That is what I mean, mother, nothing more.”
“You are always so very deep, Richard,” remarked Marion ironically, “and care so very little how the rest of us feel about things. You have no family pride. If you had married a squaw, we shouldn’t have been surprised. You could have camped in the grounds with your wild woman, and never have been missed—by the world,” she hastened to add, for she saw a sudden pain in his face.
He turned from them all a little wearily, and limped over to the window. He stood looking out into the limes where he and Frank had played when boys. He put his finger up, his unhandsome finger, and caught away some moisture from his eyes. He did not dare to let them see his face, nor yet to speak. Marion had cut deeper than she knew, and he would carry the wound for many a day before it healed.
But his sister felt instantly how cruel she had been, as she saw him limp away, and caught sight of the bowed shoulders and the prematurely grey hair. Her heart smote her. She ran over, and impulsively put her hands on his shoulder. “Oh, Dick,” she said, “forgive me, Dick! I didn’t mean it. I was angry and foolish and hateful.”
He took one of her hands as it rested on his shoulder, she standing partly behind him, and raised it to his lips, but he did not turn to her; he could not.
“It is all right—all right,” he said; “it doesn’t make any difference. Let us think of Frank and what we have got to do. Let us stand together, Marion; that is best.”
But her tears were dropping on his shoulder, as her forehead rested on her hand. He knew now that, whatever Frank’s wife was, she would not have an absolute enemy here; for when Marion cried her heart was soft. She was clay in the hands of the potter whom we call Mercy—more often a stranger to the hearts of women than of men. At the other side of the room also the father and mother, tearless now, watched these two; and the mother saw her duty better and with less rebelliousness. She had felt it from the first, but she could not bring her mind to do it. They held each other’s hands in silence. Presently General Armour said: “Richard, your mother and I will go to Liverpool to meet Frank’s wife.”