Hence, when Lotty reappeared hurriedly, and was surprised at his departure, having something she must say to him before he went, Challis got very little speech of the lady. All her limited time allowed her to say was that she had had a long talk with dear Marianne, and she was quite sure "it" would be all right now. Only she was convinced it would be so much better to say nothing to her—just to take no notice of "it" and let "it" drop. However, rush she must, or she would never catch John! And rush she did. And Challis grunted, but retired to his own room, and was soon absorbed in the Ostrogoths.
A stand-up fight between Titus and his wife at this period might have saved the situation. It would not have mattered one straw whether it had turned on Grosvenor Square or on the unsolved mystery of the photograph. Anything that led to fiery out-speech would have been a precursor of reconciliation.
It is difficult to tell anything with certainty about any love-affairs. Nobody ever knows anything at all about them; even the two constituents, if called on to explain and analyze themselves, make but a poor show. We know pretty well what the Poet is good for at a pinch. And as for the Man of the World and the Man in the Street—well!—all we can say is, give us the Woman of the World or the Woman in the Street; preferably the latter. But the duty of the story, in reference to the psychology of Challis's two marriages, is to tell what has come to light, or seems most probable—what it thinks or believes, not knows, about the depths of an unfathomable ocean.
Challis, then, being a young man irreligiously brought up—that is to say, made to understand that he was responsible for his behaviour, and that no attempt to shift his sins off on other shoulders would be held fair play—found himself at five-and-twenty in a position that would have been a sore trial to the strongest fortitude. He was, if not actually left in charge of a friend's recently married wife, at any rate in her close confidence; and, after her return to a home and friends from whom her marriage was a secret, the sole depository of that secret. He might never have fallen in love with Kate had they met on fair ground. But a youth unfamiliar with girl-kind that is not of his own belongings—sisters, to wit, and cousins earmarked as sisters—is always in danger if even a moderately pretty or attractive outsider takes him into her confidence. Challis's danger was all the greater owing to his terror of being treacherous to his friend. Perhaps, if the avowal of his passion had been legitimately possible, he might never have suspected himself of any passion to avow. But when you believe your conscience will brand you as a traitor to all eternity if you pursue a particular course, you naturally want to pursue it.
So it was a great relief to him when a letter, shown to him alone by the terrified girl, disclosed the atrocious deception that had been practised on her, and the miserable position in which she was placed. No wonder the avowal came. Our own belief is that it would have come, exactly the same, to a girl of almost any personality. Nothing could have averted it, short of a hare-lip, an isolated projecting tusk, or—suppose we say—onions. And this girl had pretty lips, and the interview occurred after tea.
Information is scanty about what followed. But no serious inquiry can have been made into the truth of Mr. Home's accusation against himself. The exact nature of it—the particular illegality he appealed to in support of his case—does not come to light. There really was no one to inquire, except Challis, unless the whole story had come out. It did not. A twelvemonth later Kate exchanged the name of Verrall—whether rightly or wrongly borne—for that of Challis, and two years later Master Bob was born, and his poor little mother had died of him. He showed no compunction, but kicked and made a horrible noise.
His father was only reasonably overwhelmed by his loss. It may be that, like many another inexperienced youth, he had not reckoned with the difficulties this world's Bobs and their like are apt to inflict on their family before they are formally enrolled in it, especially when the mothers they select have nervous temperaments. Challis felt, when he was left alone with the baby, that he had had a fierce tussle with Fate, and had come out of it severely punished. Probably, if his wife had survived, and Bob had lived to be a year old, without alarms about another brother or sister, his father would have been much less easily reconciled to his widowerhood. He would then have had a short draught of the nectar of life at its best; that is, if—as we suppose—a tempestuous excitability, which appeared two or three months after marriage, was entirely due to Master Bob. Mental unsoundness seems to have been denied; but, then, surely someone must have affirmed it?
As it was, Bob did a good deal—the best he could—to make up for the mischief he had done. He was a satisfaction to his father; and, being taken in hand by his Aunt Marianne, then a girl of eighteen, and in a sense adopted by her, became a strong connecting link between the two, and was really the agency that brought about Challis's second marriage four or five years later. It would have happened sooner, no doubt, but for the anomalous and grotesque condition of English Law, which, till a year or so since, made certain marriages diversely legal in different portions of the British Empire. The Angels might weep, but if they cried their eyes out it would still remain impossible for a man to wed with his deceased wife's sister on certain square yards of it. He had to be domiciled in a special portion of the Empire on which the sun never sets to do that, and yet live ungrundied. Marianne was slow to give in on the point. She had, in common with many of her countrywomen, a religious conviction—a belief in the plenary inspiration of any book in a religious binding—you know the sort. She may have had others, but the qualifications of her intelligence were not such as to enable bystanders to discover their exact nature. Alfred Challis certainly never did so. And this religious conviction did not give way until her brother-in-law deliberately wrote formal proposals to a Miss Bax, with elbows, whom she hated; to a fascinating young Jewish widow, who had lawlessly said she would just as soon marry a Gentile as a Jew; and to the daughter of a Unitarian minister. He took the three letters to her, and said, "Now, Polly Anne, which is it to be? You may burn two of these; the other one I post." Polly Anne promptly destroyed the two last; her brother-in-law was blasphemous and impious enough already without that, she said. But Emma Bax!—no, when she came to think of it, it was impossible! However, Challis directed the letter and, as it were, invested a postage-stamp in intimidation; so there was nothing for it but to throw her arms around his neck and surrender at discretion. Anything rather than Emma Bax! He kissed her tears away and said: "You know, Polly Anne, after all, you're only poor Kate's half-sister, when all's said and done!" This she found very consolatory.
It was a pity, at this juncture, that the girl's mother was a fool. Had she been a reasonably good guardian for her daughter, she would at least have insisted on the nuptials being celebrated in a land where the marriage would have been held lawful. But she contented herself with condemning the union in the abstract, and flinging Holy Writ—also in the abstract—at its perpetrators. The Bench of Bishops would have done the same, no doubt; but that Bench would have forbidden the banns, to a certainty. As she remained silent, and no outsider could be expected to screw himself up to prohibition-point in the case of a half-sister, the pair were wedded by a priest who knew nothing of them beyond their bare names, and never really became man and wife, as they would have done if they had been married sixty-odd years before; unless, indeed, some busybody had obtained a decree annulling the marriage—as the Law, with a keen sense of fun, directed in the days of our great-grandfathers.