THE RECTOR'S OPINION, AND WHY IT CARRIED NO WEIGHT. OF THE EFFICACY OF PRAYER, AND WHY CHALLIS DOUBTED IT. YET THE RECTOR TOLERATED HIS IMPIETY

The Rector sat in his usual chair in the library smoking his usual after-dinner pipe, his only concession to tobacco. It served a turn now—harmonized his life with that of his friend, who, of course, sat on the other side of the rug, that both might be conscious of an empty grate. One pays this tribute in the summer, to the comfort the warmth would have been had it been winter. Or is it a survival of some ancestral fire-worship?

It was Challis's second pipe in the day that he was lighting, but his fourth smoke. He looked as though something narcotic were wanting, if he were to sleep in the night ahead of him. His forehead throbbed, the Rector felt convinced. Else why did that restless, nervous hand skim it over, from side to side, then press the closed eyelids below as though to squeeze a pain out?

He had told the whole of his story, ending it up during dinner, and doing poor justice to the efforts of the Rectory cook. Athelstan Taylor had listened nearly in silence, not saying how much he had already heard, or had guessed, of the way things had gone since his attempted intercession with Mrs. Challis. Challis's absences from England, and the chance that their London visits never coincided, had kept them apart until his visit to London three months since. On that occasion they did little more than arrange that Challis should visit the Rectory "as soon as he could get away." And he couldn't—or at least didn't—"get away" till August. But nothing that he had told his friend had occasioned the latter the least surprise.

"Well!—that's all," said he, as he lighted his pipe.

The Rector's face was all strength and pity as he sat looking at his storm-tossed friend. He remained silent awhile over it. Challis could not hurry him to speech. However, there was the whole evening ahead.

At last he spoke. "That's quite all, is it? Very good. Now, I can't and won't recommend any course to you, because, my dear man, you are under an hallucination, and you wouldn't pay the slightest attention to anything I suggested. But I'll tell you, if you like, what I shall say to Judith Arkroyd if she comes to me for advice."

"What?"

"I shall say, 'Don't!'"

"Don't go on with it, that is?"

"Exactly. I shan't mince matters. I shall tell the girl flatly that I think she's doing wrong...."

"But why—but why? Surely if she is, I am. Or more so! Far more so!"

"Do you suppose I regard you as a responsible agent?"

"I don't think you do. But I am one, for all that. What shall you say to Judith?"

"That I do regard her as a responsible agent. I shall entreat her not to consent to such a mad scheme. I shall try to make her see the folly of acting under panic in a matter of such vital importance. I shall tell her plainly, as I told you an hour ago, that I think your wife's action has been justifiable, although it has been violent and exaggerated. I admit that, you know...."

"And I think that it has been violent and exaggerated, but admit that it has not been altogether unjustifiable. Isn't that the difference between us, Rector?"

"Precisely. Well!—I shall say so to Judith. And I shall put it this way to her. 'If before God and your conscience you can disclaim all share in what has come about, if you have never by word or look been guilty of an attempt to make this man's plighted faith to his wife a wavering one, then it may be you may marry him and not live to repent it. But if it is otherwise, you may be sowing by such a marriage the seeds of a remorse that may last you a life-time.'..."

Challis interrupted him. "Judith is absolutely unconscious...." he began.

"Exactly, exactly, exactly!" said the Rector, nodding in a comfortable, we-understand-all-that sort of way. "But, about this sort of thing, sometimes a young lady's standard of unconsciousness is low. You must excuse me if I try—it's a toss-up if I succeed—to make her probe her soul to its lowest depths."

"My dear Yorick!—excuse my boning Miss Fossett's name again; but it does suit you so exactly—My dear Yorick, whatever you do or say will be right—shall be right. That's the rule of the game. All I say is, don't make Judith imagine herself to have been guilty of a treacherous scheme that never entered her mind. She assures me...." He hesitated. "Yes!" from the Rector.

"Well!—she assures me that until that unfortunate—or mind you!—it may prove fortunate—failure in self-restraint ... suppose we call it!..."

"Call it anything you like, as long as you feel properly ashamed of it."

Challis accepted the rule of the game he had just laid down loyally, and continued, "Until that moment she had not the slightest idea that I had ever entertained...." Again a hesitation.

"Precisely!" said the Rector. Both went as near a laugh as the contexts permitted, and then Challis said, knocking the ashes out of his pipe, "Well!—it's no use talking." But his friend meant to say more. "It may be no use," said he. "But I've picked up—in the pulpit, I suppose—the old vice of the sermon-monger, and I like to have my say out...."

"I didn't mean you were to stop," interjected Challis.

"Then I shall go on, as per contract." He appeared to put semi-levities aside with the finished pipe he laid down, and stood facing Challis as he sat. Standing so, he looked so much the build of a soldier that his cloth, so obnoxious to Challis, almost became regimentals. He resumed, very earnestly, "I shall say this, too, to Judith—no!—don't be afraid I shall be cruel to her. Why!—haven't I known her since she was a little tot, and sat on my knee?... I shall tell her that to me marriage is a sacrament just as solemn as any mutual undertaking where each party is in earnest and believes in the earnestness of the other ... yes!—even as contracts about darling money—and that no antecedent relation of the couple can flaw the pledge once given ... yes!—I am prepared to go any length; but never mind that now.... And I shall tell her this:—that however obstinate and wrong-headed your wife's conduct may have been, just in so far as it has been provoked by any misconduct of yours or hers—just so far are you morally guilty in contemplating any step which will make the position irretrievable."

Challis broke into his momentary pause. "Do you really mean, soberly and seriously, that you think Marianne's dragging the children away—my Chobbles was like your Joan, you know, Yorick!—do you think her catching at a legal pretext to deprive me of them has not given me a free hand? What right has Marianne to condemn me to a loveless and lonely life...?"

"Stop, Challis—stop! Stop on the legal pretext! At what age of the world has man, the strong, scrupled to catch at legal pretexts to secure the betrayal and confusion of woman, the weak? Legal pretexts, mind you, whose iniquity stinks in every legal phrase that relates to her, in every statute that he has framed and she has had no hand in! How many legal pretexts are there in the whole of them that a woman can catch at to her own advantage? One turns up now and again, in a rare conjunction of circumstances, and hey presto!—we are all on the alert to blame the woman who does it."

"You're quite right," said Challis ruefully. "It's melancholy to think how keenly alive one is to other folks' sinfulness when one suffers by it personally; loses one's Chobbles, for instance. I was fond of the young person, you see, Yorick! Besides, there's Mumps. And even Bob she contrives to stint me of. Either that, or the boy drifts away from his sisters."

"You should have thought of all that when you...."

"Made a fool of myself?"

"Quite so. By-the-bye, Challis, have you asked yourself—supposing that you ratify this folly of yours, as I understand you propose to do—what you mean to tell Bob to account for the new order of things?"

"Yes, frequently."

"And have you answered the question?"

"No, I have not."

"Do you see any prospect of answering it?"

"None whatever!"

"Very well, Challis! Now listen. It appears to me that you are going to take a step you are this much ashamed of, that you cannot look your own son in the face about it. And you are doing this confessedly in case the passing of an Act of Parliament should make that step impossible at a future time. You know perfectly well that—Judith apart—you would welcome that Act of Parliament, because it would give you back your children, and at least pave the way to a reconciliation with their mother.... Yes, it would! The 'living in Sin' twaddle would die a natural death before an Act of Parliament; your excellent mother-in-law's teeth would be drawn, and your wife would come to her senses as soon as the two little girls were delivered at Wimbledon by a judicial order. Once you two were face to face—just think of it!—do you suppose old times wouldn't come to the rescue?"

The Rector was hitting hard. He could see it in the compressed lips, the nostril and eyelid and brow that would not be still, in the face that was hard to control at the best of times. Why could he not keep to his artillery? Why send his troops into the enemy's country, bristling with ambuscades? Why bring Judith's image back, when all the strength of his case lay in revival of the days gone by?

But he did, possibly because he could not conceive of a passion for one woman dwelling in the same heart with an affection for another. He could not measure the force of the personal factor in Judith. He had never been under fire.

"And see," he went on injudiciously—"see what it is you look to gain when you have cut yourself finally adrift from almost everything that has been precious to you in the past. What are the chances of happiness for a couple so assorted? Think of your difference of age!... well!—perhaps that's the least important point ... think of the difference in the habits of a life-time, of the sort of life Judith has been accustomed to, of the way her pride may suffer ... and not only hers—yours too—yours too, my dear Challis, in a thousand ways! Consider this too; what right have you to take for granted that she will ever be forgiven by her family? You say they are now at daggers drawn. What claim have you to ask such a sacrifice of her as the surrender of her relations with her parents and all the associations of her childhood? Think of it!"

A moment after he perceived he had pushed his argument too far. Challis said firmly, "I accept Judith's readiness to make this sacrifice as a sure proof of her feelings towards myself. I see in it a guarantee of a happiness far beyond my deserts. It is because she is ready to give up so much for me and risk her whole life in my keeping that I am rushing the position. I cannot have her think hereafter that our union was made impossible by my remissness—by my fainÉantise—at a critical time."

The Rector walked uneasily about the room. "Oh dear," said he, "I wish to Heaven that Bill would get itself brought into the Lords and rejected, tout À l'improviste, before you could arrange this madness. Then you would have a cool twelvemonth to think it over in. And perhaps you would both come to your senses."

"And perhaps—d'autant plus À l'improviste—that Bill would pass the Lords and become law. How should I seem then to the girl who is ready to throw all away for me now? Do you conceive that I should be able to console myself for the wrong I had done by dragging back to my home a wife whose jealousy ... I must call it so—poor Polly Anne!..."

"What else can you call it?"

"There's no other word in the dictionary. What was I saying? ... oh, a wife whose jealousy would by that time have every justification. Where would the happiness be in all that, and for whom?"

"In no case can you hope for an immediate reconstitution of your old home life. You, Challis—excuse me—have stirred up too much mud for the pool to become clear in a moment. But remember Disraeli's phrase—the 'magic of patience.'"

"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!..."

"Oughtn't it to be read 'weeks,' perhaps? Criticism is very accommodating about the seven days of Creation. Make it weeks." The conversation became irrelevant.

But after a good deal more talk of the same sort, an hour later, Challis said, "You're not a consistent Rector, do you know! You said when we began that you couldn't and wouldn't advise me. And you have substantially advised me to tell Judith to-morrow that we must leave the forelock of opportunity alone, and just take our chance of a permanent veto on matrimony, if that Bill goes through the Lords."

"Well!—yes! At least, it comes to the same thing. It has leaked out in conversation what I should have said to you if I had thought you would take my advice...."

"Which would have been...?"

"Which would have been, 'On no account take an irrevocable step under pressure.' Believe me, Challis, if you do this thing, and this Bill never becomes law at all, and then you live to repent of the knot you have tied indissolubly, the thought hereafter that you gave way to a needless panic will make remorse tenfold more bitter."

"Are not you, when you say that, allowing a disbelief in the Bill's passing to influence you?"

"I may be, a little. But not nearly so much as I am by a belief I must try to explain to you ... well!—it's none so easy. But I thought I had succeeded in explaining it to myself too." He paused a few seconds, then got clearer. "It's something like this. I can't conceive that any retrospective clause of the Act could declare valid a marriage the illegitimacy of which the parties themselves had acknowledged during the period of its legal invalidity. Do you see?... You would very likely word it more clearly than I can."

"No—that's as clear as daylight. But I am not prepared to acknowledge the illegitimacy of my marriage with Marianne."

"How can you act upon it, to the extent of marrying another woman, without acknowledging it?"

"If I were not under compulsion to acknowledge it, should I ever have thought of marrying the other woman? I plead coercion. Marianne dissolved our marriage. I had no hand in it." "Coercion or no," said the Rector, "it comes to the same thing. No retrospective clause could declare valid a marriage that had been voided by one of the parties yielding to a coercion quite within the rights of the other to impose. Not that I'm sure there isn't a sort of general legal usage, that no one can claim legal advantage from the illegality of his own action."

"I see," said Challis. "Heads, deceased sister's husband wins. Tails, deceased wife's sister loses! But how would such an interpretation of retrospective action affect me and Judith?"

"Why, clearly! If the Bill passed ever so, your marriage with Marianne would remain void. It would class with any other contract, illegal at the time, whose illegality had been subsequently acknowledged and acted on. I heard once of a curious case in point. Two young people had got married, knowing nothing of a consanguinity between them, owing to an old family quarrel. The girl was really a very much junior aunt of the young man; their respective mothers, daughters of the same father, having been born forty years apart. Of course, the children of this atrocious marriage were illegitimate."

"Did they part when they found it out?"

"Oh dear no! They brazened it out—said the meaning of the term 'aunt' was clear. Aunts had fronts, and so forth. The gentleman calls his wife aunty to this day, I believe. Perhaps you've seen the people? They've a large property in the South Riding of Yorkshire."

But Challis hadn't, and didn't know their name when mentioned. He seemed more interested in his own affairs. "If I understand you," said he, "your advice is—not to marry, in view of the possibility of this new enactment not acting retrospectively in cases of couples disunited by mutual consent, at a time when law held that no union existed. Let's pretend my consent was given, this time, for argument's sake."

"You have stated the case admirably. That is my advice. Wait!"

"You have a beautiful confidence, Yorick, in Acts of Parliament—before they are made! Would it be reinforced or weakened, I wonder, by a perusal of the Statutes at Large? Doesn't an element of hopefulness come in?"

"Hm—well—perhaps! That's my advice, anyhow. And that's the advice I shall give to Judith Arkroyd, if she comes to consult me. I shan't volunteer anything."

"I wish I could think as you do—about the effect of the Act. I mean." Challis's manner was to the last degree fitful and uneasy. "I mean I wish I could be sure it would leave the question open."

The Rector, returning to his friend's side after one of his walks about the room, laid his strong hand on his shoulder, and the sense of its strength was welcome. "Challis, Challis!" said he, earnestly, "can you not read in your own words how well you know that you are acting under panic? Ask your heart—ask your conscience—if a wish for an extension of time would be possible in a mind really made up—a mind really believing such a step as you propose to take a right and honourable one! Confess that the reason you would be glad of a respite is that you are none so sure, after all, that what you do is the wisest course for either yourself or your wife; or, for that matter, for Judith."

Challis seemed for a moment puzzled about his meaning. Then he said, "Do you mean that you doubt the reality of my—of my love for Judith?" He seemed half ashamed of it, too!

"I mean that I think you are besotted about her—bewitched by her woman's beauty—the slave of an inclination you may live to repent one day in sackcloth and ashes. Well!—one can understand it all, down to the ground. You are not the first...."

Challis flushed a little angrily, and began, "Do you mean that Judith is...." He hesitated.

The Rector caught his meaning, and interrupted him. "A flirt?" said he. "No—I didn't mean that; though, mind you, I can't give the young lady complete absolution on that score. What I meant was that mighty few men in the world get through life without knowing all about this sort of thing from experience. Perhaps your catching the fever so late in life, after two marriages, makes the case exceptional. However, as I told you, I don't regard you as a rational being at present; so I won't preach."

He had not removed his hand from Challis's shoulder, and the action of the latter as he turned away and, crossing to the window, looked out at the starlit night, had its shade of protest in it, though it could not be said that he had exactly shaken the hand off.

Athelstan Taylor waited a moment, looking half sorry, half amused, but not the least disposed to weaken his words. Then he followed his friend to where he stood looking out, and said as he replaced his hand—only that this time he laid his arm fully across the shoulder—"Remember the compact, my good man, remember the compact! I'm to say what I like."

"You are to say what you like, dear Yorick, and soften nothing. You think me a fool, and I am one. But the fact that my folly is carried nem. con. won't get me out of the difficulty it has got me into. Blame it as you will—but your blame won't answer the question I ask myself every hour of the day: what sort of value will Judith set on the love of a man who hung fire about carrying out his pledges till it was too late, on the miserable plea that it was ten chances to one another twelvemonth of vacillation might be possible? What right has any man to put expediencies, calculations of chance, the unforeseen outcomes of this or that, against the well-being of the woman he is all the while coolly asking to give herself away to him? No, Yorick, I haven't got it in me to go and say to Judith, 'I love you; it is true. But if I wed you now, while we know we are free to wed, and then some time repentance comes, it will be a bitter thought to me that—had I waited' ... et cetera—don't you see?"

"My dear Challis, I am no match for the eloquence of a gifted author who is pleading the cause of his own inclinations...."

"Even when he ends up with 'et cetera'?"

"Even then. But remember this—that what I am saying to you now is scarcely meant as urging definite action upon yourself. It may have seemed so in form, but my actual meaning has been to show the sort of advice I shall give Judith if I have the good fortune to speak with her in time; if, that is, she gives me the right to speak by speaking first herself. I shall do the same with the Bart. and her ladyship. If they don't take me into their confidence, I shall presume they don't want me to share it."

"Talk to Judith by all means. But Judith won't counsel delay—I feel sure of it—if she supposes that I shall think she has done so for my sake. She knows perfectly well that the readier she is to sacrifice herself for me, the keener I shall be to confiscate the knife. If she were to plead against this hasty action that she herself felt insecure in it—would rather run the risks, on the chances—that would be quite another matter. But she won't do that."

"If it comes to cross-fires of reciprocal misgivings and misunderstandings—or understandings, if you like—between you and Judith Arkroyd, I give up, and there's an end on't!" The Rector's laugh made the atmosphere happier. "But I'm afraid my general conclusion is that man is never at a loss for good reasons for doing anything he wants to do, especially when it involves a lady."

"You may be right. But it's a horrible perplexity."

Athelstan Taylor was lighting candles for bed. For it was past midnight. As he took Challis's hand to say good-night, he said to him: "We superstitious, old-world, out-of-date folk, priests and the like, are in the habit of praying to be guided right in horrible perplexities. Is it any use...?"

"Well!—plenty of use as far as my good-will to feel with you is concerned? But to my inner vision, none! To my thought, Omnipotence is already doing everything—everything everywhere—and I don't see how I could put up a prayer to the Top Bloke ... pardon my using an expression you object to...."

"Not at all. Go on."

"... A prayer to guide me right without appearing to suggest either that He was already guiding me wrong, or that the Bottom Bloke—no one can possibly object to that—had usurped his functions."

Strange to say, the Rector seemed not the least shocked. On the contrary, he laughed. "All right, old chap," said he. "You leave yourself in the hands of the Top Bloke. He'll see to it all right. Good-night!" But he looked back as he opened his bedroom door to say, "Keep the gas on till you have the electric light."