"You cannot help loving her, whatever happens," answered her brother significantly.
Mrs. Wilson acknowledged the force of this comment by a piteous stare. She forsook the personal for the philosophic attitude. "But if this loose view of the marriage tie is to obtain, where is it to end? How long will it be before we imitate the degeneracy of Rome? We are imitating it already."
"I made a similar remark to Lucille. I reminded her that the ease and frequency of divorce were among the causes of the decline of Rome. Her reply was that we are Americans, not Romans. Of course, there is something in what she says. Our point of view is very different from theirs." Mr. Howard felt of his strong chin meditatively.
"But where is it to end?" repeated Mrs. Wilson in a tragic tone.
He shook his head. "It is an abuse, I admit; especially as administered in some of our States. Presently, when we get time, we Americans will take the question up and go into it thoroughly."
The hopeless incongruity of this reply from Mrs. Wilson's point of view put the finishing touch to their conversation. It was obvious to her that she could not expect true sympathy or comprehension from her brother. It was clear that he was satisfied with opportunist methods, and that the precise truth had no immediate charms for him.
Rebuffed in respect to the support of both her champions, Mrs. Wilson felt strangely powerless; almost limp. She made no further appeal to her daughter; the discussion was not resumed, but when the baby arrived, she reminded Lucille of the proposal that she keep possession of her grandchild during its mother's sojourn in South Dakota, and accepted it. This was some comfort, and Mrs. Wilson remained in a trance, as it were, seeking neither sympathy nor outside suggestion until after the evil day of Mrs. Waldo's departure.
Not until then did she send for Mr. Prentiss. That the rector could do nothing to thwart the programme outlined by Lucille was clear, and she had dreaded the possibility of his advising an attitude on her part which would induce complete estrangement from her daughter. When he came she was relieved that he made no such suggestion. He seemed, like herself, overwhelmed with dismay, and, after he had heard her story, equally conscious of helplessness in the premises. Indeed it resulted that Mr. Prentiss, having realized that he could be of no avail in the particular emergency, turned from the shocking present to the future. Lucille was beyond the pale of influence (though he declared his intention of writing to her), but this painful example would be a fresh spur to the church to take strong ground against the deadly peril to Christian civilization involved in playing fast and loose with the marriage tie. Mr. Prentiss glowed with the thought of what he could and would put into a sermon. Consciousness of the abuse had for some time been smouldering in his mind, and he reflected that it was time for him to imitate the example of other leaders of his sect by undertaking a crusade against indiscriminate divorce. Appalled as he was by the behavior of his friend's daughter, he reverted—but not aloud—to his previous opinion that it had been a godless marriage. Hence there was less occasion for surprise, and the instance in question lost some of its pathos as a consequence. But it provided him with a terrible incentive for saving others from the pitfall which had engulfed this self-sufficient and worldly minded young woman. His zeal communicated itself to Mrs. Wilson—for he did not fail in due manifestation of personal sympathy—and when he left her at the end of a visit of two hours her favorite impulse toward social reform was already acting as a palliative to her anguish and disappointment as a mother.
A few days later her brother informed her that Paul's wife had refused to wait the three years necessary to entitle the one or other of them to institute dignified divorce proceedings, on the ground of desertion, in the State where her husband had his domicile, and that she had gone to Nebraska to pursue her own remedy. Mr. Howard, though obviously disgusted, finally dismissed the matter with a sweep of his hand, and the utterance, "I guess, on the whole, the sooner he is rid of her the better." But this apothegm, which for a second time did him service, only increased his sister's dejection. The disgrace of the family seemed to stare her in the face more potently than ever. Following within a few weeks of this information came the disclosures in the newspapers of the double divorce with their sensational innuendoes as to what had occurred at Newport. For three days she kept the house, too sick at heart to attempt to simulate in public the veneer of an unruffled countenance. Then she visited Gordon Perry's office, and consulted him as to the feasibility of putting some legal obstacle in the way of her daughter's procedure; but learned from him, as she had feared, that she was powerless. When she resumed her ordinary avocations she feared lest the shame she felt should mantle her cheek and impair the varnish of well-bred serenity. It was while she was in this frame of mind that she was accosted by Loretta, and the effect of the bald remarks was as though someone had invaded her bosom with a rude cold hand. They froze her to the marrow, and while, on second thought, she ascribed the liberty to ignorance, she felt disappointed at the evolution of her ward. Such lack of delicacy, such inability to appreciate the vested rights of the soul argued ill for Loretta's progress in refinement. There was no second invasion of Mrs. Wilson's privacy. It seemed to her, as the days passed, that she had been through a crushing illness, and she felt the mental lassitude of slow convalescence. The receipt of Mrs. Stuart's brief letter informing her that she had been injured and was in need of counsel was a sudden reminder that she had allowed her personal sorrow to render her selfishly heedless of all else. It served as the needed tonic to her system. She swept away the cobwebs of depression from her brain, and with a firm purpose to resume her place in the world despatched forthwith a sympathetic note and two bunches of choice grapes to the invalid, and on the following morning gave orders to her coachman to drive her to Lincoln Chambers.