“It is the same now as it was then. And if you agreed from love of me then, you must love me less now, since you refuse.”
“This is too absurd, Marion. For some cause or other, or for no cause at all rather, you are jealous of Madame Desmoines. If I were to yield to you in this, it would be as much as to say that your jealousy had some foundation. It has none, and I won’t do it. You have no right to say that I don’t love you. If you were generous, you would not say it.”
“I don’t say that you care more for Madame Desmoines than you do for me, Philip; if I thought that, I would never trouble you again, in any way. But I know that she cares for you, and you might know it, too, if you would. I saw her face while she was talking with you at the party to-night. I could tell what was in her mind. Men never seem to see those things: though they get the benefit of them!”
“ ’Tis no use talking with you till you get your senses back, Marion: and this is not what we set out to discuss, either.”
Marion had something more to say about Madame Desmoines, but she managed to keep it back. She knew that if her temper got the mastery of her, there would be an end, not only of this discussion, but of many other things also; of her love and, practically, of her life. She feared lest she might hate her husband; and she feared still more lest she might despise him. She resumed in a voice low and shaken by the struggle of emotions in her heart.
“Let all the rest go; and why should you take this money, Philip? Do we need it more than we did yesterday? But for this strange chance, you would never have thought of it again. We have more than enough already for two years to come, if we live with any sort of economy. Thousands of people marry every day on less money than you have at this moment, and without your means of making more, and they succeed and are happy. There is nothing that makes a husband and wife love each other more than to fight their way through the world together—triumphing together, and suffering together if need be; but to feel that we are in the least dependent will drive us more and more apart. Oh, I am sure this money will only be a misfortune and a misery to us! Good cannot come of it. And what if we are poor? I have been poor all my life, and yet you married me!”
Philip listened to all this with a secret feeling of relief. Marion had now taken the ground where he was strong and she was weak. In depth of passion and fire of temper, he was less than her equal; and had she carried on her attack with those weapons, she might have come out victorious; for he was not prepared to go such lengths as she would have gone, had she given herself rein. But women like Marion are seldom aware of their own most formidable powers, and hence are so often worsted by those who are really less strong, but more ingenious and adaptable than they.
Moreover, there was on Philip’s side both human nature (as moral frailty is called in such connection) and a good deal of reason. In allowing Marion her will on the previous occasion, he had stretched abnegation to pretty nearly its limit in his case; and had so much the less at his disposal for the present emergency. If he had permitted himself to grumble his fill in the first instance, he would not have had so much stored discontent on hand for the second; and when he found Marion in the position of standing upon what she had gained and demanding as much again, he defined his objections as follows:
“There ought to be no question about our love for each other, Marion; we settled that once for all, before we were married. And your pride and prejudices are not involved, since it is to me and not to you that the legacy is now offered. I gave you leave to manage your own affairs as you judged best, and ’tis only fair you should give the same liberty to me. Now, it is quite plain that Grantley meant one or other of us to have this money; and if the wording of the codicil was made to apply also to Perdita, it was only lest the money, in the last resort, might not have to be thrown into the gutter. If I were to take the stand you wish me to, I should only be putting both you and myself in a childish and sentimental light. Everybody would laugh at us. Besides, there is the practical point of view. What right have we, in face of all the accidents and vicissitudes of life, to reject such a windfall? I might fall ill to-morrow, or my next poem might be a failure: we shall probably have children, and they must be provided for as well as ourselves. And ’tis a great thing, Marion, for a man who aspires to be a poet, to be put a little above the necessity of working for daily bread, and living from hand to mouth. Then again, ’tis my right as well as to my advantage to take a position in society suitable to the name I bear. A fortune, my dear, is something real and enduring; but sentimental scruples and prejudices pass away.”
Philip’s mind, during this harangue, was less comfortable than his language. Whatever reason might say, he felt that he was taking a lower level than Marion. He was too much of a poet not to be conscious of the unloveliness of the cause he was called on to defend. And now, at this last moment, there was the germ of a wish in his heart that Marion might somehow have her desire, and this load of pelf tumble away from both of them, and be forgotten.