Of course, if Marianne had not been a bit of a Choctaw, the position need never have become so exasperated. But it isn't fair to make her the scapegoat on that account. What a many items of the total imbroglio could have cancelled it, by simply attending to their own non-existence! If, for instance, Judith Arkroyd had kept her eyes to herself, or had never left Challis's hand to do the letting-go—who can say, then, what the exact force of that moonlight adventure in Tophet would have been? Or if that theatrical nonsense had not let witchcraft loose on an easy victim; easy because unsuspicious? Or if Marianne's writing-paper had been the thin sort that goes abroad, eight pages for twopence-halfpenny, instead of that sort the envelope cuts your tongue when you lick it to—Harmood's phraseology, we believe—would not Challis have read the postscript? Think of the difference that would have made!
No!—there is no sense in trying to fix blame; certainly not on either of the principal actors. Blame Judith if you like! But even then, bear in mind that until Challis broke out in that foolish way, Judith had observed all the rules of the game, and was playing fair. Do her justice! Can you gibbet Judith, without affirming that a woman has no right to be beautiful, and very little to take for granted that a man with a still young wife and two children will not credit her with a readiness to assume as a matter of course that he will never imagine that she will suppose he has fallen in love with her?... We hope this is intelligible. More might be added to the same effect, but let it stand.
Judith's father never saw any fault to be found with his daughter's conduct; so why should the story? However, it is true that Sibyl always said that papa was a bat; and her ladyship suggested that, socially speaking, conflagrations might break out all round, and Sir Murgatroyd never notice them until she called his attention to them. When the Duchess said what the story has already reported about Challis and Judith, it only presented itself to him as a sheer joke; his Arcadian mind could not receive the idea of Judith—our Judith!—nourishing a tendresse for ... a married author! It was not the authorship, but the marriage, or marriages rather; for if we considered Marianne null and void, what should we call her residuum? A widower at large, with a doubtful record?
The fact is, the old boy had a fine chivalrous heart behind his occasional absurdities, and any advantage taken of a legal technicality to shuffle out of a deliberate contract would have been branded by him as it deserved. And, although it was quite untrue that he was the maker of the fuss her ladyship disclaimed any hand in, it is certain that he inaugurated a fuss of his own invention after that outbreak of the Duchess, when he heard—to deglutition point—the full story of Marianne's revolt. It had been placed before him some time since in an imperfect form, but he had swallowed barely a mouthful. Now that his wife satisfied the curiosity her Grace's escapade had excited, and gave him full details, he became keen to justify Mrs. Challis, and was for a while secretly intolerant of her husband. He would know all about it; and in spite of his informant's appeal to him to be most careful on no account to say anything to Judith, he seized an early opportunity to get at that young lady's version of the subject.
"Oh dear!—that tiresome woman!" was her spoken response. But the kiss she bestowed on her parent's shaving-area was commiserating, tolerant of the inquiry, not absolutely unamused at the Arcadian simplicity of the kiss. Dear old man, leaving his manures and eleventh centuries and things, to meddle with Us and the World! A kiss that said, "What a shame of mamma to disturb such pastoral tranquillity!" But Judith would keep nothing back, not she! She dropped into the visitor's chair of the Bart.'s sanctum, to tell the tale, throwing her hands in her lap, to lie there till wanted; a sort of despairing submission to lip-boredom to come. "I need not drum through the whole story; it's too silly!" She looked appealingly at her father, who immediately weakened his position of catechist.
"Oh no!—your mother has told me the main facts," said he. And then, perhaps feeling ground lost, added: "At least, I infer so."
"Did she tell you I was supposed to be the heroine of the romance?" Eyes closed for a second on an amused face, reopened to look for the answer. Self-possession perfect!
"Well—yes! She said something of the sort."
"Did she say I was in love with Challis?"
"Certainly not!" Emphatically.