It Never Can Happen Again

by William De Morgan

But a day passed, and another, and many postmen's knocks, each with its exasperation of hope frustrated; and many cabs, that might have ended in the voices of the children shouting to the cabman, by permission, which gate to stop at. And a loneliness indescribable, so unlike the happy empty days one gets for work now and again when one's housemates troop away to some assured haven elsewhere, and write every day, if it's only a postcard. How Challis envied the splendid self-absorption of our old friend the cat! How he envied the sound of a happy freedom in the chronic controversy of the kitchen; always the same controversy, but possibly on various subjects! How happy the tradesmen's boys seemed!—how callous to the smallness of the orders!

Every day he wrote a line to Marianne, ignoring all that had passed. She would give way in time. If he persevered, one day she would be unable to resist the temptation to reply; it would be a sort of hypnotic suggestion, mechanically brought about. It was on the day after his last visit to Tulse Hill that he made up his mind to try whether a letter to Judith would not procure one from her that would do some good. It could not make matters worse.

Oh, this strangely compounded clay, Man!—that any story should have to tell it! But it is true, too. This Alfred Challis, who, face to face with such grim reality of wreck at home, had as good as escaped from subjection to the witchcraft that had brought it about, had no sooner taken up his pen to write to its author, than he was again subject to the experience that has been spoken of as the soul-brush. All his consciousness—which was intense—of his own folly could not prevent him attaching a special force to the first words of his letter. Surely "Dear Miss Arkroyd" might have been a pure formality, just as much as "Dear Grandmamma" would have been if he had brought himself to write to that veteran practitioner in discord-brewing. It was no such thing. A magic hung about the three words, with a suggestion in it of a phrase of music, or a whiff of burnt incense. The image of Judith crept back promptly into his mind at permission given, suggesting disloyalties to his hope that Marianne would quarrel with her mamma, and take a reasonable view of the position—come back and reinstate life.

Why, in heaven's name—he half asked himself—if it was to be like this, if Marianne was going to persist in her unreasonable jealousy, should not he take advantage of the freedom she forced upon him, of the legal pretext of an irregular marriage that assumed the right of Law and Usage to cancel a promise given and taken mutually, believed by each giver to come from the heart of the other? He would have flung from him angrily any suggestion of an advantage to come to himself from capping to a dirty Orthodoxy—the words are his, not the story's—from any joining in the World's dance; any acquiescence in the mops and mows of the Performing Classes; any obeisance to a great organization which—when it suited him—he chose to consider a mere mechanism for keeping the funds up and the fun going, and the distribution among the sanctioned of unlimited stars and garters and loaves and fishes. But if it were forced upon him in the face of his persistent repudiation of it, if the other contracting party flaunted it in his face, might not he avail himself of this pretext?—use a disgraceful shuffle in the service of truth? Was he not almost in honour bound to do so, to that lady from whom his evasive declaration of passion had elicited what was at least a strong disclaimer of indifference to himself?

But Challis only half asked himself these questions, because he knew the answer. He knew that he knew the difference between Right and Wrong, and he knew that his wife had Right on her side—not much, but some—and he suspected that he had Wrong on his—not some, but much. So he finished his letter to Judith and posted it.

Judith wrote in answer to Challis's letter, and he forwarded an enclosure it contained, addressed to his wife. It was returned to him, torn in three or four pieces, by the next post. He joined it up and read it, and thought it the most sweet, conciliatory, angelic human document he had ever read. But, then, he was a man!

He went more than once to Tulse Hill after this, without succeeding in seeing Marianne. The third time he found the house empty, placed in the hands of an agent, who said in reply to all inquiries that his instructions were limited to dealing with the house. He was, he said, a House-Agent. But he would undertake that letters should be forwarded. He evidently enjoyed being civil, so satiated was he with the offensiveness of his position.

Mrs. Eldridge called on him as a peacemaker, having in tow her husband, who winked at him over her shoulder, uninterpretably. He said to her, subduing his anger well: "I would not have seen you, Charlotte Eldridge, if there had not been something I have been wishing to say to you. I cannot prove it, but I am as certain of it as that I stand here that it is you that have poisoned my wife's mind against me, and have filled it with every sort of nasty misinterpretation of a perfectly innocent friendship. You have known absolutely nothing of the lady whom you have thought fit to malign as a means of maligning me.... No, I know I have no means of knowing that you have ever said a single word against her. But my object in seeing you is to tell you that I am convinced that you have. I am convinced that Marianne has shown you my correspondence without any warranty—and for that she may be to blame—and that you have read into it meanings she never would have dreamed of ascribing to it, left to herself. I am, in short, sure that it is you—you—you at the bottom of all this mischief, and I tell you honestly that after you have left this door I shall not be sorry if I never see you or hear of you again. Good-bye!"

Mrs. Eldridge had thrown in denials; and when her husband, moved to eloquence, had interposed with "Come, I say now, Master Titus, ain't 'nasty misinterpretation' coming it rather strong?" had briefly directed him to be quiet till he was spoken to. She had then placed herself on oath, offering an extemporized solemnity if called on. "I am ready to go down on my knees here and now, Alfred Challis, and to call on God, who will one day be your judge and mine, to bear witness that this is a cruel falsehood! He knows"—here she threw in upper-case type freely—"that all my wish, all my effort, has been towards conciliation and peace...."

At this point Challis interrupted her, saying curtly: "Then your efforts have not been very successful. I do not see that we shall gain anything by talking any more about it. Good-bye again!" This occurred before the exodus from Glenvairloch, or Challis might have been less unconciliatory, with an eye to keeping open a possible channel of communication with his wife, even though it would involve communication with a woman whom he now thoroughly detested.