Vanderlyn does not slight the chance of increasing his influence. He has been jealous of these children living, he has feared their memories may even now crowd him from the mother’s heart, but he sees the need of some one to appear at least to share her grief. She does not scruple to tell him how cold and unfeeling her husband is at this time; and thus she furnishes him with one more weapon in the contest he is waging against her better nature. He plays now the part of tender, devoted friend, rather than that of lover. He sees that just now no lover’s image can obtrude before the angel faces always present to her thoughts; he has the tact and patience to wait and turn the present digression ultimately to his favor. It may be that, after all, if these children had lived, she never could turn entirely from her duty. But this delicate attention to her now in her grief, contrasting so unhappily with Thorndyke’s unfeeling, stupid impatience with her, is the most dangerous temptation of all, because it wins her confidence in his being a real friend as well as lover.
When the first acute feelings have worn off after the children’s death, and her life has gradually become more cheerful, she turns from her husband with a bitterness and contempt which produce in him a still worse frame of mind. Now he taunts her for her assumed superiority to him, and scoffingly pictures how happy she might have been with some rich man—Vanderlyn, for instance. And so matters go on from bad to worse, until he consents to her applying for a divorce, seeming as willing as she to part for ever.
Of what use lingering over the details? The divorce is granted, as such things are, in open defiance of Heaven’s decree and the apparent law of the land. When a New York daily paper has frequently a list of divorces longer than its list of marriages, can we wonder over the fact? In this case, it has been necessary to change their residence for a time, because the laws of one state are more favorable to this object than another. But Christ’s law is the same everywhere. Can a couple be considered married to each other in one part of our country, and divorced in another? Are the children of a second union legitimate in one state, and illegitimate in another? It would really seem so.
But Agnes Thorndyke, or rather, Agnes Rodney, as she is now called—taking back her maiden name, without her maiden heart—is deprived of one comfort on which she had surely counted. Her one child is left to its father. Thorndyke has schemed for this with deliberate malice. It is not that he loves the boy overmuch, but it is his revenge upon her. He would rather burden himself with the care of this little child than forego the pleasure it gives him to punish her. And so, while the father of her child lives, she lays her head on another man’s breast, and calls him husband. Vanderlyn is spared either the keeping or the breaking of his promise to care for her children—two in the graves where he wished them, and one in a strange woman’s care. He has all he wished for—John Thorndyke’s pretty wife at last.
Thorndyke takes to his forsaken home a housekeeper at first, as if he were a widower. This woman is a widow who makes him so comfortable that he speedily marries her, without considering law or Gospel as they may bear on his case. No compunctions trouble her easy conscience, and she accepts the lot offered to her as the best thing in a business point of view likely to fall to her. Being disinclined for reading poetry, having no refined yearnings, having little intellect to cultivate, she never reads Maud Muller, nor thinks of herself as out of her place in any sense. Being good-natured and not oversensitive, she gets along with John Thorndyke remarkably well, and no thought of Agnes ever makes a ripple of disturbance between them. She might be forgotten, except for the boy, with her eyes and features, left in her old home. He calls the woman in her place “mother,” and does get quite motherly treatment. He loves the brothers and sisters who in time spring up around him, and seems as happy in his boyish plays as if his own mother were guarding and guiding him. Who can say how much his future life might be changed if that mother had been left to him? To be sure, her death might have brought as great a change to him, and we will now only follow her fate.
Is she happy in her new relations? Is joy her duty, and love her law, now? Can that ever be, after broken vows and outraged honor? “It is not in the bond.” For a time she thinks herself happier in all her more refined associations; with leisure, books, servants, all at her command, and with Martin Vanderlyn devoted to her. He does not introduce her into society, but lives remote from all his acquaintances and former friends. This never troubles her. Two people like these, who have closed or tried to tear out a chapter in their life-history, naturally shrink from having it recalled. They prefer to think themselves sufficient for each other, looking always to the future—never to the past, if they can avoid it.
But before a year is passed, Agnes begins to see that Vanderlyn is not so entirely devoted to her as she would wish and he has at first seemed. It is the first shadow of a misgiving, not really harbored, but resting upon her heart in spite of herself. She does not wish to see any difference in him, and she tries to think it is business which keeps him so often away from her. He says it is, and why not think so? why not believe him? Alas! small clouds of doubt already dot the sky of her belief in him. Whence they have arisen she can scarcely tell; but there they are, and threatening to increase. However, she has risked too much for him, braved too much, to foster anything now which may wreck her life-venture. If this man fail her, where can she turn? But after a while a little child is born—a boy to help divert her thoughts from that other boy bearing another father’s name. The mother does blush when she thinks of these boys, each hers, having each a different father living now. She had named her first-born after her own father, and some idea of trying to fill his place leads her to call this one by the same name—George Rodney. Vanderlyn, however, playfully calls him Martin after himself, and, as the child grows, he learns to answer to that, and calls himself “Martie” quite as often as by the name which his mother has given him, and which she will never relinquish.
So truly does the pure instinct of motherhood show her the falsity of her present position that she often feels that two fathers should not be living at the same time for the two boys for whom she is mother. Of that other boy she often thinks still with yearning love, and of his sisters in their little grave; more now than at first, when Vanderlyn was with her so much, for his absences grow longer and more frequent. He takes no father’s pride in this child of his, but rather seems bored by the care and trouble it has brought. A baby is a tyrant in a household, especially if it is loved as Agnes loves this one, giving it almost all her time and care. Now, indeed, Vanderlyn might say, if he remembers the poet he quoted before in his jealousy of her love for her children:
“Nay, but nature brings thee solace; for a tender voice will cry:
‘Tis a purer life than thine—a lip to drain thy trouble dry:
... My latest rival brings thee rest.”
But it does not bring her rest. She often now remembers that Thorndyke was a fonder and better father than his successor; that his children seemed at their birth and during their lives to form a tie between his wife and himself; that he always faithfully brought his hard-earned money to her, to spend or save for them as well as for himself. She gives him this credit now, because Vanderlyn, with his more abundant means, shows in many ways a carelessness of her comfort and pecuniary wants. True, she has not really suffered, but small misgivings have oppressed her that she may yet come to that. She has found that Vanderlyn is not the substantial business man she was at first led to believe. She had thought him a lawyer, and so he is by education; but, in reality, he is an adventurer and a speculator, and, although often commanding money easily, he has no real fortune, and has only a very fluctuating income. This it is that worries him and takes him often away from home long at a time. He has not the honesty to deny himself any accustomed luxury for the sake of those dependent upon him. It chafes him to be obliged to meet his household expenses, and not always have the means to do so conveniently. He knows that Agnes will not insist upon unnecessary expenditure, but he has not the courage to tell her frankly of his affairs. There is a respect for her in his heart in spite of all, and he knows that there is an uprightness about her which would lead her to insist on plainer living and fewer servants. She is not weakly self-indulgent as he is. He is so unprincipled at heart that no tie, no obligation, can bind him when it once becomes irksome. He is a greater moral coward than the woman he has perverted. And so at last, when her boy is about five years old, Agnes finds herself deserted. Martin Vanderlyn has gone to California, and left her with her household effects, and about one hundred dollars in money—that is all.