Whereupon her Grace had attacked the Bart. before the Bishop, to the discomfiture of both; the Bart. because he was really unconscious of any active share in the ostracism of Challis, and only supposed that he was meeting her ladyship half-way; the Bishop because Thyringia seized the opportunity of flouting his lordship on the Deceased Wife's Sister question—trampling on his most cherished episcopal conviction as nothing but a coronet would have dared to do. She chose to ascribe the attitude of Royd towards Challis entirely to his irregular marriage, and "pointed out" that if the legalizing Bill passed next year—"and it would, yes!"—the Bart. would look like a fool. "What a parcel of geese you are," said her Grace before a whole roomful of people, "to suppose the man wants to marry Judith!... Well! he'll have to look sharp about it, anyhow!" The Bishop turned purple; but there!—a Duchess can say exactly whatever she likes.
No doubt the confidence her Grace expressed that the "legalizing Bill" would pass—backed as her opinion was by that of many others—had its fair share of weight. For both Judith's parents, with a probably well-grounded faith that their daughter, if only from self-interest, would do nothing irregular, could not hide from themselves that they would welcome any change that would define the position, and keep the suspected couple permanently apart.
This feeling may well have increased and taken a more heart-felt form when Challis, possibly with the written sanction of Judith—but nothing came out to that effect—made his appearance at Mentone. Lady Felixthorpe and her husband joined the party later. It must have been during their short stay that the little scene occurred so graphically described by the butler to Mrs. Protheroe. This little scene, the news of which reached England a few days before its actors, prepares the story for a change in its conditions. It has to adapt itself to a new state of things—a state three words of Mr. Elphinstone's narrative suffice to show. Judith is speaking of Challis as Titus.
Had the lonely and reserved young widow with the two little girls, who lived with her mother at Broadstairs, and was called by the few who had occasion to call her anything "Young Mrs. Craik"—had she been told that that other woman, whom she hated as a Choctaw hates a Cherokee—to scalping-point—was actually speaking and thinking of the husband she had renounced by the name the pride of her heart in his first great success in authorship had chosen and kept for him and, although less frequent in speech than of old, it was the name her own mind still gave him—would it have added anything to her resentment? Would she have been one scrap more miserable than she was, for knowing it? The story has to report otherwise.
As a matter of fact, Marianne would in a sense have welcomed the knowledge. She had made up her mind to kill her love for the father of her children, and it may be she found it died harder than she expected. Did you, who read this, ever have to kill anything larger than an insect you could flatten out in a trice to a mere blot? You may perhaps have caught some bird, maimed by a sportsman—or sportsbooby—past all hope of rising in the wind—just a scrabbled wreck, good for nothing but for a sportscat to get a little joy from—and may have seen that it would be merciful in you, not a sportsperson at all, but a sentimentalist, to make a quick end of it; and then you may have tried, and found it still had heart in it for a fight for life. Did your sentimentalism make you feel sick, till the last last kick left it collapsed and cooling? Then, were you not glad?
Marianne would have been glad to know that her love for Titus was dead, and the killing of it come to an end. But would it die? There was always the painful doubt. Your little dicky-bird ended on a tiny jerk, and hung limp and chill. Would a love those two young folks brought back memories of, hour by hour, do the like?
More than once, Choctaw as she was, her mind had wavered towards relenting. Once she had actually begun a letter to her husband—not imploring forgiveness for her overstrained anger and jealousy; she was too proud for that sort of thing—but the other sort of thing, the sort that is ready with Christian Forgiveness, the sort that makes the consumption of a good large humble pie a sine qua non, the sort that indulges in a truculent sort of joy over the sinner that repenteth. She was too proud to admit that she had been at all in fault, but just—only just—not too proud to indulge a secret hope that Titus would be magnanimous enough to shut his eyes to her omission. All she wanted was contrition galore and absolution absolute. On those terms she would come back and marshal Mrs. Steptoe and the crew of a new domestic Argo. Only, bygones were to be bygones! She had a dim sense that this expression was to be held to mean that Charlotte Eldridge was to be assoilzied. It was a dim one, because she had no idea of admitting that she had been influenced by Charlotte.
Her mother dissuaded her from sending this letter, if you call it dissuasion to "point out" that Hell-fire awaits those who run counter to your voice of warning. What Challis would have called the "religious hoots" of the worthy old lady took the form of warning her daughter against returning to what Holy Writ denounced plainly as a Life of Sin. She omitted to mention the chapter and verse; but, then, her style, as Bob called it, was one that lent itself to fervour—not to say bluster—rather than verification of references. It was a style that Bob, backed by his father—and Tillotson's, for that matter—could easily sneer at. But it was harder for Marianne to ignore the force of the words-without-meaning that had been thundered at her from her cradle. The well-worn phrases had force in them still for her, and when she burned that letter she had a kind of sacred feeling, like the Northern Farmer when he came away from Church.
It is right to mention, lest any reader should condemn Marianne for too great submission to her mother, that the thunderbolts of hereditary superstition were not the only malign influences she had to bear up against. She never lost touch with Charlotte Eldridge. In fact, Charlotte paid her more than one short visit at Broadstairs, and made the best use of her time in each. Nothing could have exceeded the earnestness of her supplications to her friend to allow her to act as intercessor and mediator, to be the bearer of the olive-branch of peace, except it were the warmth of her exhortations to forgiveness, or the subtle dexterity with which the suggestion of offence still untold weakened the effect of both. It is impossible to enlarge on the merit of overlooking the wrong that has been inflicted on us, without by implication enlarging the area of the wrong itself. Meekness needs something to work with; a buffalo cannot find sustenance from a flower-pot. Charlotte never asked pardon for the offender without contriving to suggest a new offence.