“I do. It’s a case that has been very interesting to me. He asks why he should take any notice of it at all—a thing done when he was scarcely of age, thousands of miles away, a mistake—an utter failure—a—ah!”—Dick had been speaking very rapidly against time to get out what he had to say before he was interrupted—“you don’t see it in that point of view.”
“Do you mean to say, sir,” said the old gentleman, “that you contemplate betraying a woman by a fictitious marriage, making her children illegitimate and herself a—I can’t suppose that you have any real intention of that.”
Dick, who had got up in his excitement, here sat down suddenly as if his strength had failed him, with an exclamation of horror and alarm.
“You don’t see that? Why, what else would it be? so long as there is a Mrs.—what do you call her?—living—living and undivorced, the union of that woman’s husband with another woman could be nothing but a fictitious marriage. There is a still uglier word by which it could be called.”
“You forget,” said Dick, “that Mrs. Wyld—neither bears that name nor lays any claim to it. She put it aside long ago when she went upon her own course. It was nothing to her. She is not of the kind that try to keep up appearances or—anything of that sort. I’ll do her that justice, she never meant to give the—the—unfortunate fellow any trouble. She didn’t even want to stand in his way. She told him he should neither hear of her nor see her again. She is honest, though she is—She has been to him as if she did not exist for years.”
“Why does that matter,” cried the old gentleman, “so long as she does exist? There are women who are mad and never can be otherwise—but that does not give their husbands a right to marry again. Divorce her, since you are sure you can do so, and be thankful you have that remedy. I suppose this woman is—not a lady.”
“No.” Dick spoke in a very low voice. He was quite cowed and subdued, looking at his old friend with furtive looks of trouble. Though he spoke carefully as if the case were not his own, yet he did not attempt to correct the elder man who at once assumed it to be so. He was so blanched and tremulous, nothing but the red of his lips showing out of his colourless face, and all the lines drawn with inward suffering, that he too might have been an old man. He added in the same low tones: “A man who is divorced would be a sort of monster to them. They would never permit—she would never listen.”
“You mean—the other? well, that is possible. There is a prejudice, and a just prejudice. So you think on the whole that to do a young lady—for I suppose the second is in your own class—a real, an unspeakable injury would be better than to shock her prejudices? If that is how you of the new generation confuse what’s right and wrong—”
Dick made no reply. He was not capable of self-defence, or even of understanding the indignation he had called forth. He continued as if only half conscious. “It need never be known. There is not a creature who knows of it. She sent me her marriage lines. She has nothing to prove that there ever was anything—and she would not want to prove anything. She is as if she were dead.”
“Come, sir,” said the lawyer, “rouse yourself, Dick; she is not dead, and for every honourable man that must be enough. Don’t bewilder yourself with sophistries. Why should you want to marry—again? You have had enough of it, I should think; or else divorce her, since you can. You may be able to do that secretly as well as the marriage. Why not?”
Dick said nothing, but shook his head. He was so completely cast down that he had not a word to say for himself. How he could have supposed that a dispassionate man could have taken his side and seen with his eyes in such a matter, it is hard to say. He had thought of it so much that all the lines had got blurred to him, and right and wrong had come to seem relative terms. “What harm would it do?” he said to himself, scarcely aware he was speaking aloud. “No one would be wronged, and they would never know. How could they know? it would be impossible. Whereas, on the other side, there must be a great scandal and raking up of everything, and betrayal—to everyone.” He shuddered as he spoke.
“Whereas, on the other side,” said the old lawyer, “there would be a betrayal—very much more serious. Suppose you were to die, and that then it were to be found out (in the long run everything is found out) that your wife was not your wife, and her children—Come, Dick, you never can have contemplated a blackguard act like that to an unsuspecting girl!”
“Sir!” cried Dick, starting to his feet. But he could not maintain that resentful attitude. He sank down in the chair again, and said with a groan, “What am I to do?”
“There is only one thing for you to do: but it is very clear. Either explain the real circumstances to the young lady or her friends—or without any explanation give up seeing her. In any case it is evident that the connection must be cut at once. Of course if she knows the true state of the case, and that you are a married man, she will do that. And if you shrink from explanations, you must do it without an hour’s delay.”
Dick made no reply. He sat for a time with his head in his hands: and then rose up with a dazed look, as
