Books: The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne
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William J. Locke >> The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne
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"Much," said I. "In the first place you must be aware of what
has happened, for I can't help seeing there a letter from
Pasquale."
She glanced swiftly at the desk and back again at me.
"Yes," she replied, "he is in Paris."
I was amazed at her nonchalance.
"Has he told you nothing?"
"Perhaps Sir Marcus Ordeyne would like to see his letter," she
said, ironically.
"You know perfectly well that I would not read it," said I.
Judith laughed again, and rolled her handkerchief into a little
ball between her nervous fingers.
"Forgive me," she said. "I like to see the _grand seigneur_ in
you now and then. It puts me in mind of happier days. But about
Pasquale--the only thing he tells me is that he is not able to
execute a commission for me. He told me on the night he drove me
home that he was going to Paris, and I asked him to get me some
cosmetic. Carmine Badouin, if you want to know. I have got to
rouge now before I am fit to be seen in the street. I am quite
frank about it."
"Then you know nothing of Carlotta?" I cried.
"Carlotta?"
"She eloped with that double-dyed, damned, infernal villain, the
day after I saw you."
Judith looked at me for a moment, then closed her eyes and turned
her head away, resting her hand on the table. My indignation
waxed hot against the scoundrel. How dare he write casual
letters to Judith about Carmine Badouin with his treachery on his
conscience? I know the terms of flippant grace in which the
knave couched this precious epistle. And I could see Carlotta
reading over his shoulder and clapping her hands and cooing: "Oh,
that is so funny!"
When I had told Judith the outlines of the story, pacing up and
down the little room while she remained motionless by the table,
she put out her hand to me, and in a low voice, and with still
averted eyes said that she was sorry, deeply sorry. Her tone
rang so true and loyal that my heart throbbed with quick
appreciation of her high nature, and I wrung her outstretched
hand.
"God bless you, Judith," I cried, fervently. "Bless you for your
sweet sympathy. Be sorry for me only as for a man who has passed
through the horrors of delirium. But for me as I stand before
you now, I ask you not to be sorry. I have come to bring you, if
I can, dear Judith, a measure of gladness, perhaps of happiness."
She wrenched herself free from me, and a terrified cry of
"Marcus!" checked my dithyrambic appeal. She shrank away so that
a great corner of the dining-table separated us, and she stared
at me as though my words hats been the affrighting utterance of a
madman.
"Marcus! What do you mean?" she cried, with an unnatural
shrillness in her voice.
"I mean," said I, "I mean--I mean that 'crushed by three days'
pressure, my three days' love lies slain.' Time has withered him
at the root. I have buried him deep in unconsecrated ground,
like a vampire, with a stake through his heart. And I have come
back to you, Judith, humbly to crave your forgiveness and your
love--to tell you I have changed, dear--to offer you all I have
in the world if you will but take it--to give you my life, my
daily, hourly devotion. My God!" I cried, "don't you believe
me?"
She still stared at me in a frightened way, leaning heavier on
the table. Her lips twitched before they could frame the words
"Yes, I believe you. You have never lied to me."
"Then in the name of love and heaven," I cried, "why do you look
at me like that?"
She trembled, evidently suppressing something with intense
effort, whether bitter laughter, indignation or a passionate
outburst I could not tell.
"You ask why?" she said, unsteadily. "Because you seem like the
angel of the flaming vengeance."
At these astounding words it was my turn to look amazed.
"Vengeance?" I echud. "What wrong have you done me or any living
creature? Come, my dear," and I moved nearer by seating myself
on the corner of the table, close to the type-writer, and leaning
towards her, "let us look at this thing soberly. If ever a man
had need of woman I have need of you. I can live alone no
longer. We must share one home henceforth together. We can snap
our fingers at the world, you and I. If you have anything to say
against the proposal, let us discuss it calmly."
Judith's slender figure vibrated like a cord strung to
breaking-point. Her voice vibrated.
"Yes, let us discuss it calmly. But not here. The sight of you
sitting in the middle of my life, between the sewing-machine and
the type-writer, is getting on my nerves. Let us go into the
drawing-room. There is an atmosphere of calm there--" her voice
quavered in a queer little choke--"of sabbatical calm."
I slid quickly from the table and put my arm round her waist.
"Tell me, Judith, what is amiss with you."
She broke away from me roughly, thrusting me back.
"Nothing. A woman's nothing, if you understand what that means.
Come into the drawing-room."
I opened the door; she passed out and I followed her along the
passage. She preceded me into the drawing-room, and I stayed for
a moment to close the door, fumbling with the handle which has
been loose for some months. When I turned and had made a couple
of steps forward, I halted involuntarily under the shock of a
considerable surprise.
We were not alone. Standing on the hearth-rug, his hands behind
his back, his brows bent on me benevolently was a man in clerical
attire. He looked ostentatiously, exaggeratedly clerical. His
clerical frock-coat was of inordinate length; his boots were
aggravatingly clump-soled; by a very large white tie, masking the
edges of a turned-down collar, he proclaimed himself Evangelical.
An otherwise clean-shaven florid face was adorned with brown
side-whiskers growing rather long. A bald, shiny head topped a
fringe of brown hair.
I stared at this unexpected gentleman for a second or two, and
then, recovering my self-possession, looked enquiringly at
Judith.
"Sir Marcus," she said, "let me introduce my husband, Mr. Rupert
Mainwaring."
Her husband! This benevolent Evangelical parson her husband!
But the brilliant gallant who had dazzled her eyes? The
dissolute scoundrel that had wrecked her life? Where was he?
Dumfounded, I managed to bow politely enough, but my stupefaction
was covered by Judith rushing across the room and uttering a
strange sound which resolved itself into a shrill, hysterical
laugh as she reached the door which she opened and slammed behind
her. I heard her scream hysterically in the passage; then the
slam of another door; and the silence told me that she had shut
herself in her bedroom. Disregarding the new husband's presence,
I rang the bell, and the servant who had left her kitchen on
hearing the scream entered immediately.
"Go to your mistress. She is ill," said I.
The maid hurriedly departed. The parson and I looked at one
another.
"I am afraid," said I, "that my presence is unhappily an
intrusion. I hope to make your better acquaintance on another
occasion."
"Oh, please don't go," said he, "my wife is only a little upset
and will soon recover. I beg that you will excuse her. Besides,
I should like to have a talk with you."
He offered me a chair, my own chair, the comfortable, broad-
seated Empire chair I had given Judith as a birthday present
years ago, the chair in which I had invariably sat. He did it
with the manner of the master of the house, a most courteous
gentleman. The situation was fantastic. Some ingenious devil
must have conceived it by way of pandering to the after-dinner
humour of the high gods. As I sat down I rubbed my eyes. Was
this brown-whiskered, bald-headed clerical gentleman real? The
rubbing of my eyes dispelled no hallucination. He was flesh and
blood and still regarded me urbanely. It was horrible. The
desertion of the scoundrelly husband, who I thought was lost
somewhere in the cesspool of Europe, was the basis, the sanction
of the relations between Judith and myself; and here was this
reverend, respectable man apologising for his wife and begging me
to be seated in my own chair. The remark of Judith's that I
should find sabbatical calm in the drawing-room occurred to me,
and I had to grip the arms of the chair to prevent myself from
joining Judith in her hysterics.
The appearance of the husband in his legendary colours of
rascality would have been a shock. The sudden scattering of
my plans for Judith's happiness I should have viewed with
consternation. But it would have been normal. For him, however,
to appear in the guise of an Evangelical clergyman, the very last
kind of individual to be associated with Judith, was, I repeat,
horribly fantastic.
"I believe, Sir Marcus," said he, deliberately parting the tails
of his exaggerated frock-coat and sitting down near me, " that
you are a very great friend of my wife."
I murmured that I had known Mrs. Mainwaring for some years.
"You are doubtless acquainted with her unhappy history."
"I have heard her speak of it," said I.
"You must then share her surprise in seeing me here to-day. I
should like to assure you, as representing her friends and
society and that sort of thing, as I have assured her, that I
have not taken this step without earnest prayer and seeking the
counsel of Almighty God."
I am by no means a bigoted pietist, but to hear a person talk
lightly about seeking the counsel of Almighty God jars upon my
sense of taste. I stiffened at the sanctimonious tone in which
the words were uttered.
"You have without doubt very good reasons for coming back into
the circle of her life," said I.
"The best of all reasons," he replied, caressing a brown whisker,
"namely, that I am a Christian."
I liked him less and less.
"Is that the reason, may I ask, why you remained away from her
all these years?"
"I deserve the scoff," said he: "Those were days of sin. I
deserve every humiliation that can be put upon me. But I have
since found the grace of God. I found it at three o'clock in the
afternoon on the eighth of January, eighteen hundred and--"
"Never mind the year," I interrupted.
My gorge rose. The man was a sanctimonious Chadband. He had
come with nefarious designs on Judith's slender capital. I saw
knavery in the whites of his upturned eyes.
"I should be glad," I continued quickly, "if you would come to
the point of the conversation you desire to have with me. I
presume it concerns Mrs. Mainwaring. She has reconciled herself
to circumstances and has found means to regulate her life with a
certain measure of contentment and comfort until now, when you
suddenly introduce a disturbing factor. You appear to wish to
tell me your reasons for doing so--and I can't see what the grace
of God has to do with it."
He sprang to his feet and shot out both hands in the awkward
gesture of an inspired English prophet.
"But it has everything to do with it! It is the beginning and
end, core and kernel, root and branch of the matter. It is the
grace of God that checked me in the full career of my wickedness.
It is the grace of God that has lighted my path ever since to
holier things. It is the grace of God that has changed me from
what I was to what I am. It is the grace of God that has brought
me here to ask pardon on my knees of the woman I have wronged.
The grace of God and of his son our Lord Jesus Christ, which came
upon me in a great light on that January afternoon even as it did
upon Saul of Tarsus. The grace of God has everything to do with
it."
"Mr. Mainwaring," said I, "such talk is either blasphemous or--"
He did not allow me to state the alternative, but caught up the
word in a great cry.
"Blasphemous! Why, man alive! for what are you taking me? Do
you think this is some unholy jest? Can't you see that I am in
deadly earnest? Come and see me where I live--" he caught me by
the arm, as if he would drag me away then and there, "among the
poor in Hoxton. You scarcely know where Hoxton is--I didn't when
I was a man of ease like yourself--that wilderness of grey
despair where the sun of the world scarcely shines, let alone the
Light of God. Come and see for yourself, man, whether I am
lying!"
Then it dawned upon me that the man had been talking from
innermost depths, that he was almost terrifyingly sincere.
"I must ask you to pardon me," said I, "for appearing to doubt
your good faith. You must attribute it to my entire
unfamiliarity with the terms of Evangelical piety."
He looked at me queerly for a moment, and then, in the quiet
tones of a man of the world, said, smiling pleasantly:
"Very many years ago I had the pleasure of knowing your
grandfather, the late baronet. May I say that you remind me of
him?"
I have never heard an apology more gracefully and tactfully
accepted. For an unregenerate second he had become the gallant
Rupert Mainwaring again, and showed me wherein might lie his
attraction.
"Pray be seated," said he, more gravely, "and allow me to
explain."
He unfolded his story. It was well, said he, that an outsider (I
an outsider in that familiar room!) should hear it. I was at
liberty to make it public. Indeed, publicity was what he
earnestly craved. As far as my memory serves me, for my wits
were whirling as I listened, the following is an epitome of his
narrative:
He had been a man of sin--not only in the vague ecclesiastical
sense, but in downright, practical earnest. He had committed
every imaginable crime, save the odd few that lead to penal
servitude and the gallows. He drank, he betrayed women, he
cheated at cards, he had an evil reputation on the turf. His
companions were chosen from the harlotry and knavery of the
civilised world. He had lured Judith from her first husband,
thus breaking his heart, poor man, so that he died soon after.
He had married Judith, and had deserted her for a barmaid whom in
her turn he had abandoned. He wallowed, to use his own
expression, in the trough of iniquity. He was, as I had always
understood, about as choice a blackguard as it would be possible
to meet outside a gaol. One day a pretty girl, whom he had been
following in the street, unwittingly enticed him into a
revivalist meeting. He described that meeting so vividly that
had my stupefied mind been capable of fresh emotions, I too might
have been converted at second hand by the revivalist preacher.
He repeated parts of the sermon, rose to his feet, waved his
arms, thundered out the commonplaces of Salvation Army
Christianity, as if he had made an amazing theological discovery.
It was pathetic. It was ludicrous. It was also inconceivably
painful. At last he mopped his forehead and shiny head.
"Before that meeting was over I was on my knees praying beside
the girl whom I had designed to ruin. I went into the streets a
converted man, filled with the grace of God. I resolved to
devote my life to saving souls for Christ. My old habits of sin
fell away from me like a garment. I studied for the ministry. I
am now in deacon's orders, and I am the incumbent of a little tin
mission church in Hoxton. God moves in a mysterious way, Sir
Marcus."
"He is generally credited with doing so," said I, stupidly.
"You are doubtless wondering, Sir Marcus," he went on, "why I
placed such a long interval between my awakening and my
communicating with my wife. I set myself a period of probation.
I desired to be assured of God's will. It was essential that I
should test my strength of purpose, and my power of making a
life's atonement, as far as the things of this world are
concerned, for the wrongs I have inflicted on her. I have come
now to offer her a Christian home."
I looked at him open-mouthed.
"Do you expect Judith to go and live with you as your wife, in
Hoxton?" I asked, bluntly.
"Why not? She is my wife."
I rose and walked about the room in agitation. Somehow such a
contingency had not entered my bewildered head.
"Why not, Sir Marcus?" he repeated.
"Because Judith isn't that kind of woman at all," I said,
desperately. "She doesn't like Hoxton, and would be as much out
of place in a tin-mission church as I should be in a cavalry
charge."
"God will see to her fitness," said he, gravely. "To him all
things are easy."
"But she has considerable philosophic doubt as to his personal
existence," I cried.
He smiled prophetically and waved away her doubt with a gesture.
"I have no fears on that score," he observed.
"But it is preposterous," I objected once more, changing my
ground; "Judith craves the arrears of gaiety and laughter which
your conduct caused life to leave owing to her. She loves bright
dresses, cigarettes, and wine and the things that are anathema in
an Evangelical household."
"My wife will find the gaiety and laughter of holiness," replied
the fanatic. "She will not be stinted of money to dress herself
with becoming modesty; and as for alcohol and tobacco, no one
knows better than myself how easy it is to give them up."
"You seem as merciless in your virtues as you were in your
vices," said I.
"I have to bring souls to Christ," he answered.
"That doesn't appear to be the way," I retorted, "to bring them."
"Pray remember, Sir Marcus," said he, bending his brows upon me,
"that I did not ask you for suggestions as to the conduct of my
ministry."
"The general methods you adopt in the case of your congregation,"
said I, "are matters of perfect indifference to me. But I cannot
see Judith imprisoned for life in a tin church without a protest.
Your proposal reminds me of the Siennese who owed a victorious
general more than they could possibly repay. The legend goes that
they hanged him, in order to make him a saint after his death by
way of reward. I object to this sort of canonisation of Judith.
And she will object, too. You seem to leave her out of account
altogether. She is mistress of her own actions. She has a will
of her own. She is not going to give up her comfortable flat off
the Tottenham Court Road in order to dwell in Hoxton. She won't
go back to you under your conditions."
He smiled indulgently and held out his hand to signify that the
interview was over.
"She will, Sir Marcus."
Was there ever such a Torquemada of a creature? I respect
religion. I respect this man's intense conviction of the reality
of his conversion. I can respect even the long frock coat and
the long brown whiskers, which in the case of so dashing a
worldling as Rupert Mainwaring were a deliberate and daily
mortification of the flesh. But I hold in shuddering detestation
"the thumb-screw and the rack for the glory of the Lord," which
he cheerfully contemplated applying to Judith.
"Why on earth can't you let the poor woman alone?" I asked,
ignoring his hand.
"I am doing my duty to God and to her," said he.
"With the result that you have driven her into hysterics."
"She'll get over them," said he.
"I wish you good-day," said I. "We might talk together for a
thousand years without understanding each other."
"Pardon me," he retorted, with the utmost urbanity. "I
understand you perfectly."
He accompanied me to the dining-room where I had left my hat and
umbrella, and to the flat door which he politely opened. When it
shut behind me I felt inclined to batter it open again and to
take Judith by main force from under his nose. But I suppose I
am pusillanimous. I found myself in the street brandishing my
umbrella like a flaming sword and vowing to perform all sorts of
Paladin exploits, which I knew in my heart were futile.
I hailed an omnibus in the Tottenham Court Road, and clambered to
the top, though a slight drizzle was falling. Why I did it I
have not the remotest idea, for I abhor those locomotive engines
of exquisite discomfort. I had no preconceived notion of
destination. It was a moving thing that would carry me away from
the Tottenham Court Road, away from the Rev. Rupert Mainwaring,
away from myself. I was the solitary occupant of the omnibus
roof. The rain fell, softly, persistently, soakingly. I laughed
aloud.
I recognised the predestined irony of things that at every corner
checks the course of the ineffectual man.
CBAPTER XX
November 11th.
I wrote Judith a long letter last night, urging her to disregard
the forfeited claims of her husband and to join her life
definitely with mine. I was cynical enough to feel that if such
a proceeding annoyed the Rev. Rupert Mainwaring it would serve
him right. The fact of a man's finding religion and abjuring
sack does not in itself exculpate him from wrongs which he has
inflicted on his fellow-creatures in unregenerate days.
Mainwaring deserved some punishment of which he seemed to have
had remarkably little; for, mind you, his sack-cloth and ashes at
Hoxton, although sincerely worn, are not much of a punishment to
a man in his exalted mood. Now, on the contrary, Judith deserved
compensation, such as I alone was prepared to offer her in spite
of conventional morality and the feelings of the Rev. Rupert
Mainwaring. Indeed, it seemed to be the only way of saving
Judith from being worried out of her life by frantic appeals to
embrace both himself and Primitive Christianity. Her position
was that of Andromeda. Mine that of an unheroic Perseus,
destined to deliver her from the monster--the monster whose lair
is a little tin mission church in Hoxton.
I wrote the letter in one of those periods of semi-vitality when
the pulses of emotion throb weakly, and sensitiveness is dulled.
To-day I have felt differently. My nerves have been restrung.
Something ironically vulgar, sordidly tragic has seemed to creep
into my relations with Judith.
To my great surprise Judith brought her answer in person this
evening. It is the first time she has entered my house; and her
first words, as she looked all around her with a wistful smile
referred to the fact.
"It is almost just as I have pictured it--and I have pictured it-
-do you know how often?"
She was calmer, if not happier. The haggard expression had given
place to one of resignation. I wheeled an arm-chair close to the
fire, for she was cold, and she sank into it with a sigh of
weariness. I knelt beside her. She drew off her gloves and put
one hand on my head in the old way. The touch brought me great
comfort. I thought that we had reached the quiet haven at last.
"So you have come to me, Judith," I whispered.
"I have come, dear," she said, "to tell you that I can't come."
My heart sank.
"Why?" I asked.
We fenced a little. She gave half reasons, womanlike, of which I
proved the inadequacy. I recapitulated the arguments I had used
in my letter. She met them with hints and vague allusions. At
last she cut the knot.
"I am going back to my husband."
I rose to my feet and echud the words. She repeated them in a
tone so mournfully distinct, that they had the finality of a
death-knell. I had nothing to say.
"Before we part I must make my peace with you, Marcus," she said.
"I have suddenly developed a conscience. I always had the germs
of it."
"You were always the best and dearest woman in the world," I
cried.
"And I betrayed you, dear. That letter from Pasquale told me
about his flight with Carlotta. I lied to you--but I was in a
state bordering on madness."
I rested my elbow on the mantel-piece and looked down on her.
She appeared so sweet and fragile, like a piece of Dresden china,
incapable of base actions. As I did not speak she went on:
"I did not mean to play into Pasquale's hands, Marcus. Heaven
knows I didn't--but I did play into them. Do you remember that
awful night and our talk the next morning? I asked you not to
see her all day--to mourn our dead love. I knew you would keep
your promise. You are a man of sensitive honour. If all men
were like you, the world would be a beautiful place."
"It would go to smash in a few weeks through universal
incompetence," I murmured, with some bitterness.
"There would be no meanness and treachery and despicable
underhand doings. Marcus, you must forgive me--I was a desperate
woman fighting for my life's happiness. I thought I would try
one forlorn hope. I kept you out of the way and came up here to
see Carlotta. Don't interrupt me, Marcus; let me finish. I
happened to meet her a hundred yards down the road, and we went
into the Regent's Park. We sat down and I told her about
ourselves, and my love for you, and asked her to give you up. I
don't believe she understood, Marcus. She laughed and threw
stones at a little dog. I recovered my senses and left her there
and went home sick with shame and humiliation. I knew Pasquale
was in love with her, for he had told me so the night before, and
asked me how the marriage could be stopped. He didn't believe in
your announcement to Hamdi Effendi. But I never mentioned
Pasquale to Carlotta, or hinted there might be another than you.
I was loyal so far, Marcus. And two or three days afterwards
came Pasquale's letter. And I waited for you, in a fearful joy.
I knew you would come to me--and I was mad enough to think that
time would heal--that you would forget--that we could have the
dear past again--and I would teach you to love me. But then,
suddenly, without a word of warning--it has always been his way
--appeared my husband. After that, you came with your offer of
shelter and comfort--and you seemed like the angel of the flaming
vengeance. For I had wronged you, dear--robbed you of your
happiness. If I hadn't prepared her mind for leaving you, she
would never have run away. If I had not done this, or if on the
other hand you loved me, Marcus, I should perhaps have looked at
things differently. I am beginning to believe in God and to see
his hand in it all. I couldn't come and live with you as your
wife, Marcus. Things stronger even than my love for you forbid
it. Our life together would not be the sweet and gracious thing
it has always been to me. We have come to the parting of the
ways. I must follow my husband."
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