“This is going too far, Minnie; understand, once for all, that what Eustace Thynne says is not of the least importance to me, and that I think his comments most inappropriate. Poor Dick is going off to California tomorrow. He is going to get his divorce.”
Minnie gave a scream which made the thinly built London house ring, and clasped her hands. “A divorce!” she cried; “it only wanted this. Eustace said that was what it would come to. And you would let your daughter marry a man who has been divorced!”
Minnie spoke in such a tone of injured majesty that Mrs. Warrender was almost cowed, for it cannot be denied that this speech struck an echo in her own heart. The word was a word of shame. She did not know how to answer; that her Chatty, her child who had come so much more close to her of late, should be placed in any position which was not of good report, that the shadow of any stain should be upon her simple head, was grievous beyond all description to her mother. And she was far from being an emancipated woman. She had all the prejudices, all the diffidences of her age and position. Her own heart cried out against this expedient with a horror which she had done her best to overcome. For the first time she faltered and hesitated as she replied—
“There can be no hard-and-fast rule; our Lord did not do it, and how can we? It is odious to me as much as to anyone. But what would you have him do? He cannot take that wretched creature, that poor unhappy girl.”
“You mean that shameless, horrible thing, that abandoned—”
“There must be some good in her,” said Mrs. Warrender, with a shudder. “She had tried to do what she could to set him free. It was not her fault if it proved more than useless. I can’t prolong this discussion, Minnie. Eustace and you can please yourselves by making out your fellow-creatures to be as bad as possible. To me it is almost more terrible to see the good in them that might, if things had gone differently—But that is enough. I am going to take Chatty away.”
“Away! where are you going to take her? For goodness’ sake don’t: they will think you are going after him—they will say—”
“I am glad you have the grace to stop. I am going to take her abroad. If she can be amused a little and delivered from herself—At all events,” said Mrs. Warrender, “we shall be free from the stare of the world, which we never did anything to attract.”
“Going away?” Minnie repeated. “Oh, I think, and I am sure Eustace would say, that you ought not to go away. You should live it down. Of course people will blame you, they must, I did myself: but after all that is far better than to be at a place abroad where everybody would say, Oh, do you know who that is? that is Mrs. Warrender, whose eldest daughter married one of the Thynnes, whose youngest was the heroine of that story, you know about the marriage. Oh, mamma, this is exactly what Eustace said he was afraid you would do. For goodness’ sake don’t! stay at home and live it down. We shall all stand by you,” said Minnie. “I am sure Frances will do her very best, and though Eustace is a clergyman and ought always to show an example, yet in the case of such near relations—we—”
Mrs. Warrender only turned her back upon these generous promises, walking away without any answer or remark. She was too angry to say anything: and to think that there was a germ of reality in it all, a need of someone to stand by them, a possibility that Chatty might be a subject for evil tongues, made Chatty’s mother half beside herself. It seemed more than she could bear. But Chatty took it all very quietly. She was absorbed in the story, more entertaining than any romance, which was her own story. No thought of what divorce was, or of anything connected with it, disturbed her mind. What Dick had to do seemed to her natural: perhaps anything he had done in the present extraordinary crisis would have seemed to her natural. He was going to put things right. She did not think much for the moment what the means of doing so were, nor what in the meantime her own position was. She had no desire to make any mystery of it, to conceal herself, or what had happened. There was no shame in it so far as Chatty knew. There was a dreadful, miserable mistake. She was “very sorry for us both,” but for herself less than for Dick, who had suffered, she said to herself, far more than she, for though he had done no wrong, he had to bear all the penalties of having done wrong, whereas in her own case there was no question of blame. Chatty was so much absorbed in Dick that she did not seem to have time to realise her own position. She did not think of herself as the chief sufferer. She fell back into the calm of the ordinary life without a murmur, saying little about it. With her own hands she packed up all the new dresses, the wealth of the pretty trousseau. She was a little pale, and yet she smiled. “I wonder if I shall ever have any need for these,” she said, smoothing down the silken folds of the dresses with a tender touch.
“I hope so, my dear, when poor Dick comes back.”
Then Chatty’s smile gave way to a sigh. “They say human life is so uncertain, mamma, but I never realised it till now. You cannot tell what a day may bring
