CHAPTER XXVII.
Two years passed, outwardly uneventful, yet momentous in the development of inner life. Her marriage sometimes appeared to Clytie as a far-away episode, a kind of dream state in which she had been invested with a strange, unrealisable personality. Yet influences had remained, impulses had been awakened, that could not again lie dormant; knowledge had come to her that could not lapse into oblivion, leaving no trace behind. In her daily intercourse with Kent her nature expanded. It lost imperceptibly that vein of hardness which her struggle for self-development had fostered, and the disillusions and repugnances of her marriage had gradually been strengthening. Except in a brief interval of intoxication she had never known the woman's sweetness of surrender. The great triumph of surrender had never even then been hers. And this was gradually making itself felt in her heart during the two years that passed from the time of leaving her husband's roof.
They contained hours of sweet bitterness, it is true. Although Thornton had gone out of her life like an evil phantom, yet the legal tie between them remained unbroken. Mrs. Farquharson, who seldom did things by halves, after seeing her idol broken trampled it underfoot into a thousand pieces, and vehemently tried to persuade Clytie to seek after a divorce. She even insisted upon her taking counsel's opinion on the matter. But there was no definite evidence obtainable to support an action at law, and Clytie, sick at heart, was glad to dismiss the question from her mind forever. Yet in the eyes of the world she was Hammerdyke's wife, and so she would have to remain until death parted them. Perhaps when enlightenment sheds a fuller ray upon our civilisation we shall make radical changes in our marriage laws, for they are based upon the sad old fallacy that human conduct and human emotion are indifferently susceptible of regulation. As yet we can universalise only on material things: security of property, full stomachs, and warm backs for the poor. The facts of broken lives and torn hearts we can recognise only in particular instances, as they come within each man's individual sphere. The universality of spiritual, moral, and emotional suffering is as yet far from being a national conception. When this is attained we may hope for social conditions happier than those under which we struggle at present.
Thornton had taken the most effectual steps to become an undisturbing element in Clytie's life. The constituency for which he had intrigued and striven to be nominated did not return him at the bye-election, which took place soon after Clytie's departure, but chose instead a radical lawyer with an insignificant presence and a shakiness as to aspirates. Thornton was disgusted and humiliated at his defeat. Politics lost their charm. An offer from the Belgian government to reform the administration in a wide tract of country whose borders were infested with Arabs came to him at this juncture, and found him in a mood for acceptance. He bade Mrs. Clavering a sardonic farewell and replunged into the wilds out of English ken.
Winifred only remained in the King's Road for a few months. Early in the new year she married Treherne, and Clytie was left alone. The studio seemed very forlorn for some time afterwards, robbed, as it were, of an inherent tender grace, a softening, refining influence that had always been dear to Clytie, even in her days of greatest wilfulness. Yet it gladdened her to know that Winifred was happy—married to a man of fine fibre who could value the exquisite gift that the high gods had given him.
“You are a lucky girl, dear,” she said to the young bride one day when visiting her in her new home.
“Of course I am,” replied Winifred enthusiastically. “A man like Victor——”
“Oh, yes,” replied Clytie drily. “I know. He is all perfection. But the man doesn't live who is fit to black your boots, my child. I did not mean that; I meant that you were a lucky girl in having eluded your obvious destiny.”
Winifred looked at her open-eyed.