“Damn the eyes of the Church! Mary is perfectly free to re-marry if she likes, innocent or guilty. If the Church won’t marry her, she can go to the registrar’s. You think nothing can be done without a clergyman, but I tell you any wretched little civil servant can do your job.”
“You all talk as if I wanted to marry again—” Mary’s voice shot up with a certain shrill despair in it. “I tell you it’s the last thing in the world I’d ever do—whatever you make me do I would never do that. Once is enough.”
“It would certainly look better if Mary didn’t re-marry,” said Doris, “then perhaps people would think she’d never cared for Commander Smith, and there was nothing in it.”
“But why did you go about with him, dear?” asked Lady Alard—“if you weren’t really fond of him?”
“I never said I wasn’t fond of him. I am fond of him—that’s one reason why I don’t want to marry him. He’s been a good friend to me—and I was alone ... and I thought I was free.... I saw other women going about with men, and nobody criticising. I didn’t know Julian was having me watched. I didn’t know I wasn’t free—and that now, thanks to you, I’ll never be free.”
She began to cry—not quietly and tragically, as one would have expected of her—but loudly, noisily, brokenly. She was broken.
§ 5
The next morning Sir John drove up to London to consult his solicitors. The next day he was there again, taking Mary with him. After that came endless arguments, letters and consultations. The solicitors’ advice was to persuade Julian Pembroke to withdraw his petition, but this proved impossible, for Julian, it now appeared, was anxious to marry again. He had fallen in love with a young girl of nineteen, whose parents were willing to accept him if Mary could be decorously got rid of.
This made Sir John all the more resolute that Mary should not be decorously got rid of—if mud was slung there was always a chance of some of it sticking to Julian and spoiling his appearance for the sweet young thing who had won the doubtful prize of his affections. He would have sacrificed a great deal to bring a counter-petition, but very slight investigations proved that there was no ground for this. Julian knew what he was doing, and had been discreet, whereas Mary had put herself in the wrong all through. Sir John would have to content himself with vindicating his daughter’s name and making it impossible for Julian to marry his new choice.
Mary’s resistance had entirely broken down—the family had crushed her, and she was merely limp and listless in their hands. Nothing seemed to matter—her chance of a quiet retreat into freedom and obscurity was over, and now seemed scarcely worth fighting for. What did it matter if her life’s humiliation was exposed and gaped at?—if she had to stand up and answer dirty questions to prove her cleanness?... She ought to have been stronger, she knew—but it was difficult to be strong when one stood alone, without weapon or counsellor.