“No, my darling, it is very rare: but oh, what a blessing, Chatty, that it was found out at once, before you had gone away!”
“Yes, I suppose it was a blessing; perhaps it would have been wrong, but I should never have left him, mamma, had we gone away.”
“Oh, do not let us think of that; you were mercifully saved, Chatty.”
“On my wedding day! I never heard that such a thing ever happened to a girl before. The real blessing is that Dick had done nothing wrong. That comforts me most of all.”
“I don’t know, Chatty. He ought perhaps to have taken better care: at all events he ought to have let people know that he was a—that he was not an unmarried man.”
Chatty trembled a little at these words. She did not like him to be blamed, but so far as this was concerned she could not deny that he was in the wrong. It was the foundation of all. Had it been known that he was or had been married, she would not have given him her love. But at this Chatty flushed deep, and felt that it was a cruel suggestion. To find that she was not married was an endless pain to her, which still she could scarcely understand. But not to have loved him! Poor Dick! To have done him that wrong over and above all the rest, he who had been so much wronged and injured! No, no, neither for him nor for herself could it be anything but profane to wish that. Not to have loved him! Chatty’s life seemed all to sink into gray at the thought.
“At all events,” she said, returning to those easier outsides of things in which the greatest events have a humble covering, and looking again at her pretty gowns, “they can wait, poor things, to see what will happen. If it should so be, as that it never comes right—”
“Oh, Chatty, my poor dear.”
“Life seems so uncertain,” said Chatty, in her newborn wisdom. “It is so impossible to tell what may happen, or what a day may bring forth. I think I never can be very sure of anything now. And if it never should come right, they shall just stay in the boxes, mother. I could not have the heart to wear them.” She put her hand over them caressingly, and patted and pressed them down into the corners. “It seems a little sad to see them there, doesn’t it, mamma, and I in my old gray frock?” The tears were in her eyes, but she looked up at Mrs. Warrender with a little soft laugh at herself, and at the little tragedy, or at least the suspended drama, laid up with something that was half pathetic, half ludicrous, in the wedding clothes.
Chatty suffered herself to be taken abroad without any very strong opinion of her own. She would have been content to adopt Minnie’s way, to go back to Highcombe and “live it down,” though indeed she was unconscious of scandal, or of the necessity of living down anything. There were some aspects of the case in which she would have preferred that—to live on quietly day by day, looking for news of him, expecting what was to come. But there was much to be said on the other hand for her mother’s plan, and Chatty now, as at all times, was glad to do what pleased her mother. They went off accordingly when the early November gales were blowing, not on any very original plan, to places where a great many people go, to the Riviera, where the roses were still blowing with a sort of soft patience which was like Chatty. And thus strangely out of nature, without any habitual cold, or frost, or rain, or anything like what they were used to, that winter which had begun with such very different intentions glided quietly away. Of course they met people now and then who knew their story, but there were also many who did not know: ladies from the country, such as abound on the Riviera, who fortunately did not think a knowledge of London gossip essential to salvation, and who thought Miss Warrender must be delicate, her colour changed so from white to red. But as it is a sort of duty to be delicate on the Riviera and robust persons are looked down upon, they did very well, and the days, so monotonous, so bright, with so little in them, glided harmlessly away. Dick wrote not very often, but yet now and then, which was a thing Minnie had protested against, but then, mamma, Mrs. Eustace Thynne said, had always “her own ways of thinking,” and if she permitted it, what could anyone say?
XLVI
Mrs. Warrender and her daughter came home in the early summer, having lingered longer than they intended in the South. They had lingered for one thing, because a long and strange interruption had occurred in the letters from America. Dick had made them aware of his arrival there, and of the beginning of his necessary business, into the details of which naturally he did not enter. He had told them of his long journey, which was not then so rapid as now, but meant long travelling in primitive ways by wagons and on horseback, and also that he had found greater delays and more trouble than he expected. In the spring he was still lingering, investigating matters which he did not explain, but which he said might very likely facilitate what he had to do and make the conclusion more fortunate than he had anticipated. And then there came a pause. They waited, expecting the usual communication, but it did not come; they waited longer, thinking it might have been delayed by accident, and finally returned home with hearts heavier than
