by Grant Allen
“Let us be reasonable, John,” I broke in, plucking the bells one by one from a spray of brown heather. “You are not surprised that most Englishwomen desire to be married in church instead of at a registry-office — now don’t quote Mill at me! — rationally or irrationally, it gives them a greater and securer sense of human and divine sanction. You are still less surprised that they desire to be married rather than to dispense with a ceremony altogether; I fancy you would be shocked if, like Héloise, they felt otherwise. Well, I have been brought up in a particular faith, however foolish, and it gives me just that sense of security and sanction if the priests of my faith bless my union. Without it, I should feel uncomfortable — and you do not wish to make me feel uncomfortable in the most important step of my life, do you?”
“No, certainly not; but still — you have read and discussed with me so many sceptical books — Comte, First Principles, The Origin of Species, Supernatural Religion — that it never even occurred to me you were still a Catholic.” I intrenched myself behind my individuality. “John,” I said firmly, “there is one subject I decline to enter into with anybody, and that is my own inner and personal religious sentiments. I prefer to discuss mundane matters. Questions of fact, questions of science, questions of the historical basis of Christianity, I will talk over with you; but not my feelings. Those I hold sacred. Still, since you seem to think some discrepancy exists between my intellectual attitude and what I now say, I should like to make you understand that what attaches me to the Church is just its catholicity.”
John’s thin lips curled. “Catholicity and Catholicism are very different things,” he answered.
“Very different things,” I admitted. “Some would say opposite. But that only shows the wisdom of the Church — she has room in her bosom for both those extremes. Some love her for her Catholicism; some for her catholicity. I am of the last I love her because she can shelter a St. Thomas Aquinas and a St. Francis of Assisi; because she can give a niche to the narrowest sectary and to the widest humanitarian; because she embraces and allows for all human types; because she finds room even for me, who would fraternise just as easily with a sincere Mohammedan or a sincere Buddhist as with a Dominican or an Anglican.”
I am not, I hope, a bigot. I cannot swallow a religion whole, as if it were a pill. All those whom I have loved and trusted most in life have belonged to the alien faith, and I have never questioned the rightness of their belief. My own attachment to the Church of my fathers is rather a sentiment for the forms and words one learnt in childhood than any real sympathy with the rigid dogmas of the Vatican. I have not fathomed the Infinite, like Miss Westmacott; nor am I even sure that red-robed cardinals have done so. Latin comes more easily to my lips in prayer than English — that is all, perhaps. But John is lacking in emotional subtlety; and his supercilious air of intellectual superiority turned me for the moment into a papal apologist. I defended Rome — because John despised it That is the way of a woman.
John shuffled uncomfortably. “Well, if you wish it,” he said at last, “I will make inquiries about this — this so-called dispensation; though I confess, if you make me go through a ceremony at a Catholic church, I shall feel a trifle ridiculous.”
“Did you think of getting married at an English church or a registry office?” I asked.
“At an English church, I suppose.”
“Then, John, don’t you think your objection just a wee bit sectarian? Does it not lack catholicity?”
The question took him aback. He stared at me in astonishment. The fact is, dear John was in favour of the fullest inquiry everywhere — provided always it led you in the end to the very same point he himself had arrived at “Well, no,” he said, wriggling uneasily on his seat among the heather, and washing his hands in nervous pantomime. “In England, you see, the established church is the established church; it has position and — er — well, official sanction. I am an officer of the Government. For me to be married at St. George’s, Hanover Square, is analogous to the coronation taking place at Westminster Abbey. But to choose for the ceremony a Catholic church — well, it is bowing needlessly in the Temple of Rimmon.”
“I see,” I said, rising. “You will bow in a Temple of Rimmon authorised by your Government, but not in one which is merely chosen by the woman you propose to marry?”
He gave way, grudgingly. “Oh, if it is a matter of conscience,” he said, “however much I may regret that you have not outgrown those early superstitions — as I hoped you had done — of course you shall be married in a church of your own choosing. On questions of etiquette — what dress you shall wear or what priest shall marry you — you will find me always a most tolerant person. Miss Gwendoline Duddleswell is an excellent judge of temperament, and she tells me tolerance is one of my marked characteristics.”
That evening I related the whole conversation to Auntie. She looked at me very gravely. “Rosalba, dear,” she murmured, seizing my hands in hers, “he does not understand you; he will never understand you! I begin to have doubts about—”
“About what, dear?”
“About my own wisdom in ever letting him take you!”
“You need not,” I answered. “It is too late. Spilt milk. An oath! an oath! I have an oath in heaven! And besides, I can see now it was quite inevitable.”
Auntie smoothed my wandering hair with her hand— ‘t is a peculiarity of that anarchic hair of mine that it will never keep in place — and repeated slowly, “I begin to have doubts — grave doubts. Yet I did it for the best, dear.”
I bent my head. “I know you did, darling.” I struggled hard against my tears. “You thought you were giving me such a chance in life. And then, too, I consented.”
“But you were too young to understand — too young to give consent. I ought to have seen he was quite the wrong person for you. A high-spirited girl — a man like John Stodmarsh! But when he spoke to me of it, I thought only of the excellent position it offered. I said to myself, ‘Shall I be justified in keeping her here as my model — this beautiful, clever, aspiring child — when a man like John Stodmarsh would make her his wife?’ The very unselfishness with which I tried to put my own convenience out of the question misled me.”
“Don’t speak of it, dear!” I cried. “If you do, I shall break down. I — I can do it, but I can’t bear to discuss it”
“We must discuss it,” Auntie cried. “We must discuss it before it is too late. I can’t let you marry him if you do not love him. That is the one wicked thing a good woman can do — to marry without love. Rosalba, I will not allow you to do it.”
“It is a geographical question,” I answered, trying not to look too grave. “In England you are expected to marry a man because you love him; in Italy you are expected to love a man because you have married him. John is an excellent catch. His family came over, like the Slys, with Richard the Conqueror.”
“You shall not jest about it, dear. This is far too serious. I never suspected till now how deep it went. But I see it in your eyes. Rosalba — do you hate him?”
“Hate him? Dear Auntie, oh no! I like him; I respect him; I am fond of him in a way; I am very grateful to him — but — respect is a bloodless substitute for love; and I do not love him.”
“Then you must not marry him!”
“I must There is no help for it. I owe him so much that I cannot refuse him. ‘T is a question of common honesty and the open market. I have become a commodity. I promised him; he has paid his sequins down for me; I must keep my promise.”
“No, no; it was not you who promised; it was a little Italian girl, too young to understand. I will not let him marry you.”
I turned the matter over bitterly in my mind. “Auntie,” I said at last, “there is no going back now. The whole thing has been a mistake — my education and all of it. He saw me, and was taken with me: why? because I was a wild, wayward Italian child of the road, full of quips and cranks and strange precocious wistfulnesses. Because I was other than himself. Beca
use I was a romantic little southern ragamuffin, half gipsy, half poetess, flashing out when he touched me. And what did he straightway do with me? Send me to a stiff-and-starched English school, where they taught me geography and the use of the globes, and stuffed me with algebra, and did their level best to drill out of me the very wildnesses and waywardnesses and quips and cranks which made him first take a fancy to me. John and John’s deputies tried to mould me into their own likeness. They tight-laced my soul. I had wings, and they clipped them. I had dreams, and they woke me from them. Miss Westmacott ‘toned me down.’ I did not need toning down; I needed development along my own lines. If I remain in any way like what I was before John Stodmarsh took me in hand, it is because of three things, and three things alone — yourself — the bicycle — and—”
“And what?” For I checked myself.
“It is not what,” I answered, flushing crimson.
Auntie bent forward and clasped her hands. “O Rosalba! — not Arthur Wingham?”
“You have said it,” I answered, dropping my eyelids. Then we were both silent When we spoke again, Auntie held my hand hard. “I might have guessed it!” she cried. “I might have guessed it! With your romantic nature, how could I ever have let John Stodmarsh have his way? I ought to have known that so proud and so sensitive a girl — . But I thought it such a good match — and everybody said, what splendid luck for you!”
“Sir Hugh is rich,” I replied obliquely. “Sir Hugh is the head of an old county family. Sir Hugh is a Member of Parliament and a very great gentleman. And yet — there are women whom he longs to ask, and who could not dream of marrying him.”
“Rosalba, don’t turn the barb in the flesh. I am suffering for it already. It is my fault — mine. I led you into it.”
I kissed her hand. “No, no; it had to come, and it came.”
“Why, my child, that is fatalism!”
“Yes, dearie; and I am a fatalist. But I know that Fate’s other name is Circumstance. She creeps upon you unawares. An accident here, a coincidence there, and — pa-ta-ta — before you know, her meshes are about you; she holds you bound hand and foot in her toils for life.”
“But, my darling, if you love Arthur Wingham, that settles the question. I cannot allow you to marry one man when you love another. It is the unforgivable sin. I — I will speak to John about it.”
“Auntie,” I cried, rising and fronting her, “if you do, I will deny it to your face! I mean to marry John. I must marry John. John is a proud man — he thinks more of himself than of anyone or anything else on earth — his dignity and his importance. It would be a shock to his amour propre to learn that the girl he had deigned to select for himself and to educate as a lady in spite of her origin, the girl he designed for the singular honour of being His Wife, preferred, positively preferred, an obscure artist. John has been very kind to me. I will not put this open slight upon him. It would be black ingratitude. His money is nothing to me. Not for the wealth of the Incas would I sell myself to any man. But obligation, honour, my plighted word! Whatever comes, I will keep my compact. That is plain justice.”
“Rosalba, Rosalba, don’t say you will marry him!”
“Yes, Auntie, I will marry him. Whatever you say or do, I am resolved to marry him.”
Next morning, as I sat at my little creeper-covered window in Auntie’s cottage (drying my hair, which with me is a long operation), I overheard Sir Hugh Tachbrook and Auntie, on the verandah below, discussing me. I hate being discussed; but I could not help hearing them.
“So she is going to marry that man Stodmarsh, at last, after all?” Sir Hugh blurted out in his stentorian voice (Sir Hugh has no idea of talking private matters over quietly). “Well, well, I’m sorry for it.”
“Why so?” Auntie asked in a much lower tone.
“Because she’ll do just what you’d expect from one of her kind — marry Stodmarsh — and then, — within six months, bolt with that painter-fellow.”
At the time, his words flushed me with indignation and injured pride. Yet which of us knows, till temptation comes, whither our passionate hearts may hurry us?
CHAPTER XXI
MORE THUNDERBOLTS
JOHN objected to banns; we were to be married by licence.
He was always charming about money-matters. When it came to my trousseau, he handed me a blank cheque. “Ask Linda and your sister to fill it up mentally for whatever sum they think suitable to a lady in your position — the position of my future wife — and then add one-third to the figure they decide between them,” he said. I crumpled it in my pocket, with a burning sense of shame. But I had not the heart to put John to the open disgrace of refusing him. And if I took him at all, I must take him with all the consequences.
Mariana was in her element choosing my trousseau. A rampant daughter of success, she loved shopping even vicariously; she knew the shops, and the shops knew her. Introduced by her, I went everywhere. As she flitted from counter to counter with her frills and gorgets, she reminded me of a hummingbird. She darted into piles of embroidered under-linen, and flung herself on the details of my going-away dress with a frivolous fervour which I confess even the woman within me failed to make me emulate. Would you have lawn or soft wool? is cambric being worn? how would that dainty Honiton lace suit with these sweet little nighty-gowns? It made my heart sink. I realised the slavery into which I was selling myself.
The awesomeness of marriage chilled my soul; its terrifying irrevocability! To spend a lifetime with John — what a foolhardy experiment!
One morning in those days, towards the end of the trousseau ordeal, I called round at Mariana’s early. She had promised to go out with me to attend to the boot-and-shoe department. “Chaussure is so important, you know! — with the possible — just possible — exception of coiffure, nothing more important!” But when I reached her rooms, I found her suffering from an obvious fit of annoyance. “That is the worst of being known, Rosalba!” she moaned to me softly, with a chilly little shiver of her shoulders in their delicate, fluffy morning wrapper — for Mariana is frileuse. “Fancy that, now; a telegram addressed simply ‘Signorina Lupari, Londres,’ and it is delivered to me straight! Handed in at Saint-André, 10.20 A.M.; sent out from Curzon Street at 11.30. Comes direct to my door. I call it abominable.”
“What is it about?” I ventured to ask, perceiving no special cause for Mariana’s annoyance.
“Oh, her, of course!” Mariana answered, shuddering again. “She dogs us through life. But it won’t be long now. If you like you can read it.”
I took it up and read: “Am dying. Come out at once to see me. MOTHER.”
My face burned hot. “O Mariana!” I cried, “are you going to her?”
“Going to her? What an idea! Che scioc-chezza! Is it likely I should go to her? Have I not spent all these years in trying to avoid her? have I not sedulously kept my address quiet from her? have I not paid her well never to come near Paris or London?”
“Paid her, Mariana?”
“Why, certainly — paid her. Don’t hang your jaw like that, stupid! It was well worth it, was it not?”
“But — John was paying her too, for the very same thing. She has taken money from both of you!”
She shrugged her shapely shoulders with an impatient air. “Very likely. I should have guessed it. La Mamma was quite capable of it.”
“And Saint-André. It said on the placards as I came along, ‘Explosion at Saint-André, in Burgundy.’ Could that have anything to do with it?” And I seized the morning paper.
“No doubt,” Mariana answered with a moody-listless air. “Last time I heard of her, she was hand and glove with an Italian anarchist.”
“Here it is!” I cried, running my eyes down the column of latest telegrams. ‘Explosion at Saint-André! Attempt to blow up the French President!’ Why, Mariana — it mentions her. ‘Among the injured is an old woman of the name of Lupari, said to be an accomplice; she asserts that she is the mother of the well-known opera-singer
. She is, how ever, apparently an Irishwoman. Her condition is despaired of.’”
“I shall deny it flatly!” Mariana cried, starting up and growing very red. “To drag Me into this matter! Infamous! Infamous! I shall declare that the woman has nothing at all to do with me.”
“Then you will not go to her?”
“My dear Rosalba! even for you, what a question! No, I will not go to her. To go would be simply to ruin everything. It would be to admit the relationship, and wash our soiled linen — our too painfully soiled linen — before the eyes of Europe. Let us confine our skeleton to its appropriate cupboard. I am not quixotic. I will pay to have her buried — one can do that quietly. But go to see her — no, no. ‘T would be absolute suicide.”
“I shall go,” I said simply. “I see no way out of it.” I shrank from it inexpressibly; but I could not shirk it.
Mariana tapped her pretty little foot once or twice on the carpet. “If you go, Rosalba,” she said after a minute’s pause, “I shall never speak to you again.” She clearly regarded that as a most tremendous threat; for dear Mariana has always had an excellent opinion of her own importance. “Why should you wish to ruin My prospects — and your own — for the sake of that — that wretched creature?”
“I shall go,” I answered, “even at the risk of incurring your perpetual silence, Mariana.” A wave of remorse swept through me. “I let my dear father die,” I went on, “without being by his side to kiss him farewell. I was a child then, and I did not realise. But it has haunted me ever since — haunted, haunted, haunted me, in the dead of night, when I lie awake, and the clock strikes hour after hour, and the rain beats on the roof, and I think of father. I cannot make the same mistake again. I must go to my mother.”
