"A good phrase, a very good phrase! I am game for any amount of Hope, dear Yorick—hypothetical Hope, of a state of things that will never come about! If it did, I might get some sort of consolation out of it. What would Judith?"
The Rector was handicapped by his disbelief in Judith, whom he did not credit with overmuch heart; certainly not with one that would break on slight provocation. He could not say anything of this to this passionate fool of a man, over head and ears in love. Or he might have replied, "Don't you fret about Judith. She'll be all right enough." As it was, he could only keep closed lips, and pace about the room. Challis continued:
"And, after all, we are leaving the most probable possibility of the lot quite out in the cold. Suppose the mad scheme—Judith's marriage with me—does not come off, and the Bill passes. Suppose that I am inconsequent enough to jump at the new-fledged legal powers of depriving Marianne of her children, after damning her uphill and down for doing the very same thing herself; suppose me with my family back on the hearth—crying and frightened probably—and never a mother to see to them! Suppose, in fact, that Marianne stands to her guns! How then?"
"Other men have been in the same position before now." Perhaps the speaker was thinking of himself.
"Can you name a case in which no substitute for the mother existed, and the father was not at liberty to provide one? Please exclude salaried employees from the answer."
"Oh, I wasn't going to go that length. Heaven forbid!"
"You must observe," Challis continued, "that divorce a vinculo is only available if my wife arranges about the co-respondent. I can't!" He added in a voice that showed how strangely racked his feelings were, "Poor Polly Anne!—she wouldn't the least know how to set about it."
"I'm horribly sorry for you, Challis," said the Rector. "I am indeed! I would go the length of wishing that bigamy could be sanctioned, in certain cases, only that you are quite the wrong man for it. You wouldn't enjoy it."
"Have I not a foretaste of its horrors?" said Challis. "You see, Yorick dear, when Love comes in at the door, Patriarchal ideas fly out at the window. Jacob was a cucumber. I'm not!"
"Well!—Jacob must have loved Rachel, after a fashion. Seven years!... consider!..."