‘’Tis natural. They’re no longer one.’
Oh, the warm revulsion, the wild joy in that queer reply. I read in it the peasant’s definition of divorce. It sprang light and flame through me, and heated senses benumbed a moment ago. It gave definiteness to rash hope, and melted away all doubt and apprehension. Brases free was to be wooed. Heaven knows conceit was never more eliminated from self-judgment than then, but I felt the urgent claim of the rare passion so instantaneously born. All my worth lay in the quality of that love, and it was not such that any woman could reject without a pang.
‘Then she is free,’ I said, and heard the thrill in my own voice.
‘Free!’ exclaimed the peasant, frowning. ‘That’s as may be. Them Protestants believe such-like things, but we don’t, sir. However things happen, we hold folk once married can only be freed by death. I take it, sir, you come from foreign parts, though ’tis a wonder to me how you have learnt the English tongue so well. May be, beyond in your land, they’re like the Protestants, and play fast and loose with the marriage tie.’
He laid the dish of salmon on the table, and disappeared outside. My state of mixed emotions, of exasperated nerves, of pulses throbbing against my consciousness like a discordant instrument, anger with that prejudiced peasant predominating, reduced me to the level of savage and child. The fellow in his implied abhorrence of divorce was so aggravatingly phlegmatic, so heartlessly unconscious of all it might mean for me. I did not knock him down or force him to eat his obnoxious words, but sat still and endeavoured not to observe the rest of his rational preparations for the evening meal. I was on fire for further facts of the tale, but dared not question, in my uncontrollable temper. When the peasant at length seated himself opposite me, with a dish of salmon, smoking potatoes, and a bottle of potheen between us, I was able to make a fair pretence of hunger. I had no difficulty in praising the salmon and the big flowery potatoes, the best of the world, and novelty supplied the needful sauce. The potheen was simply barbarous, a suitable drink for Caliban or the Indian brave, and no amount of water could soothe it to my French palate. But between lively grimaces over it, I was enabled to ask, without self-betrayal—
‘Then, I suppose, Lady Fitzowen’s husband does not live at the manor?’
He looked at me gravely over his glass, and nodded.
‘They are divorced?’
‘Not quite as I should say. Separated, they call it.’
Here was a toppling down of the airiest edifice built of gossamer. I could have cried out at the stab like any thwarted child. And yet the barrier of a living husband, like an unclean skeleton, between us, made that vision in the early twilight no less pure and spiritual than when not seen across the tragic story, married widowhood. A widow, still had sanctity lain upon my suit, where now reproach would lie as a pall. Suppose my love drew hers, how should I live through terror of waking some poisonous snake to her mortal injury, of the nameless dread of slander to breathe its dark flame against her sinless brow? A shadow upon such devotion as mine was an unacceptable desecration. Torture itself prompted me to further questioning.