Dust: A Novel

by Julian Hawthorne

“Yes, yes,” murmured Marion, who had already begun hurriedly to complete her toilet: “I will be ready in a few minutes. Yes, that will be best.... Oh, I thank God! I could not have gone on living: but now, even if he doesn’t forgive me, I am happy.”

“I shall contrive so as to see him before you do,” said her ladyship; “and after I’ve done with him, the only person he won’t be ready to forgive will be me! Oh, ’tis just as well you both should have somebody to abuse, and I shall answer the purpose as well as anybody else. ’Tis about all an old hag like me is good for. Well, if you are going, I shall go with you, and deliver you safe into your mother’s hands: and probably there’ll have to be some lying done, when she asks where Philip is; and I’m a better hand at that than you are. You’ve no idea what experience I have had!”

Here the old lady chuckled rather cynically, and wrapping her caftan around her, stalked out of the room. Marion, left to herself, quickly went about her preparations, singing to herself at intervals, and moving with a lighter step and heart than she had known for many days. The old house at Hammersmith! It seemed like going home for the first time since the honeymoon. It was there that her first happiness had come to her; and if Heaven ever permitted her to be happy again, it ought to happen there. All this fever of wealth and fashionable society was as a dream that is past: freshness and sanity had returned with the morning.

Lady Flanders, with the promptness of an old campaigner, who knows how to concentrate hours into minutes when there is need for it, was ready almost as soon as Marion, and the two immediately set forth for the Lancasters’ house in her ladyship’s big carriage, with the coachman in front and the footman behind in pigtails and silk stockings. They arrived just as Mrs. Lockhart was about to depart. She greeted them with her usual gentle serenity.

“My dear daughter,” she said, embracing Marion, “your trip to the country has done you good. She has a fine color, has she not, Lady Flanders? though I think she is a little thin. This city life is very trying: I used to find it so before I married your dear father. But no doubt ’tis different when you have your husband to go into society with you. A happy marriage is the best health preserver in the world. Has Philip come back too? Will he come out with us?”

“Your son-in-law, madam,” said Lady Flanders, before Marion could command her voice or open her mouth, “is detained, I believe, but very probably he may join you before you return. Madam, that gown suits you admirably; and I can scarce believe, when I look at you, that so many years have passed since you were the toast of Bath.”

Hereupon the lovely Fanny Pell of the last century flushed with innocent pleasure, and the color showed through the cheeks of the gentle widow of Major Lockhart: and the difficulty about Philip was evaded for the present. After a little more conversation, Mrs. Lockhart proposed that, as the day was fine, Lady Flanders should accompany them as far as Hammersmith, and perhaps lunch with them there; and in the afternoon she might drive back in time to keep her engagement to dine at Lord Croftus’. Marion added her entreaty to those of her mother: and her ladyship, doubtless perceiving that her presence would be a protection for Marion against the guileless inquisition of Mrs. Lockhart, who was as likely to prattle about Philip and the delights of a happy marriage as about anything else, consented; and the whole party got into the carriage, and rolled away on gently-swaying springs. The brief winter sunshine shone along the streets, throwing the shadow of the tall vehicle behind them; and the pedestrians on the sidewalks stepped out briskly, for the air was crisp and bright. Christmas was not far off, and its jovial influence was already felt. The long year, with all its happiness and its misery, its failure and its success, was drawing to a close; and for the bulk of mankind, the cheerfuller side of life seemed, on the whole, to have come uppermost. Marion, as she gazed out of the window of the carriage (while her mother and Lady Flanders chatted about the London of forty years ago), meditated over all which this year had brought her of good and evil: and tried to determine with herself whether, taking the good and the evil together, she would have wished this year omitted from her life. At first, with the remembrance of recent pain and suffering still fresh within her, and the future still so uncertain and clouded, she thought that it would have been better for her if she had died that day that she saw Philip and Mr. Grant enter the gate of the old house in Hammersmith, and knock at the door. But when she began to recall more in detail all the events that had happened, she thought that, for so much happiness, all the pain was not too dear a price to pay. There was the picture in her memory of Philip telling them how he had cared for Major Lockhart, on the field of Waterloo: his voice had been tremulous as he told it, and his eyes had met hers with a sympathy so manly and so honest that her heart went out to meet it. Then had ensued that period when she withdrew herself from him, as it were, and was harsh and cold, from the untamed maidenhood that had divined its danger, and blindly sought to preserve itself at any cost. But oh! how sweet it had been to feel, day by day, that the struggle was in vain! What fear, what joy, what self-distrust, what hope, what secret tears! And then, that summer ride to Richmond, with Philip at her side; the banter, the laughter, the betraying tones and looks, the swelling tenderness that drowned resistance; and at last, the touch of hands, and the few words that meant so much! Surely, to have lived through such a day might compensate for many a day of pain.

Besides, the season of outward coldness and suspended confidence that had followed this, had been founded on nothing real, and had vanished at the first touch of reality. On that black night when she and Philip groped their way through midnight ways to avert, if it might be, the peril so mysteriously foreshadowed. Their spirits touched and recognized each other, and the terror of the crisis had only made the recognition more deep and firm. On that tragic night, love had avouched himself greater than all tragedy and sorrow; more true than they, and, unlike them, eternal. The flower of this love had she and Philip plucked, and had breathed its immortal fragrance. So much the year had brought her.

But then Marion fell to thinking about the months that had since elapsed, and the significance of their story. And the more she meditated, the more clearly did it appear to her that she, and not Philip, had been to blame. For why had she refused the legacy? From jealousy of Philip. But was her jealousy just? It had been a fancy merely, a vague suspicion, founded upon hints half understood and whimsically exaggerated. A woman who is loved has no right to say, “Because another woman is more beautiful or brilliant than I, therefore my husband will care more for her than he does for me.” For love is the divine Philosopher’s Stone, which transfigures that which it touches; and, for the lover, there is a beauty in his mistress before which the splendor of Helen of Troy or the Egyptian Cleopatra seem but as dust. And let her beware lest she so far vulgarize the dignity of love as to make it one with her own estimate of herself. As justly might the Song that Solomon sang rate its worth at that of the material forms and substances whereby it was conveyed from his mind to ours. As regarded Philip, moreover, how could he, being innocent of that which she suspected, have done otherwise than he did? For him to have yielded, would have been to acknowledge himself vulnerable. And again, what justification could she plead for the dissipated and reckless life she had led since the difference of opinion between Philip and herself? None, none! It had been the ungenerous revenge which, to requite open defeat, goes about to rob the victor of the comfort of his victory. Still less defensible was this last act of hers, to which the present disastrous state of things was immediately due. To gain an end which she had ostensibly given up, she had put herself in a predicament fairly open to the worst interpretation; and then, when her husband had demanded the explanation which was his right, she had defiantly refused to give it. When a woman like Marion begins to be repentant and forgiving, she allows herself no limits; and by the time the carriage had reached Hammersmith, Marion was disposed to consider herself the most reckless and culpable of wives, and Philip the most injured and long-suffering of husbands. But where, alas! was Philip, that she might tell him so?

They turned down the well-remembered little side street, and in another minute the carriage had drawn up before the iron gate, to which, so long ago and yet so recently, Marion had fastened the card with “To Let” written on it, which had been the means of bringing her and Philip together. The footman jumped down, opened the carriage door, and let down the steps; he assisted Mrs. Lockhart to alight, and gave her his arm up the walk. Marion followed with Lady Flanders. The old house looked forlorn, though a care-taker had been left in charge of it; the windows were dull and bare; the cedar of Lebanon had scattered its dry needles over the path and grass-plot: the knocker was tarnished, the foot-scraper red with dust. The footman lifted the knocker to rap; but before the stroke sounded, the door was opened from within.