“I thank you for your welcome. I may not be undeserving of it, but it is nevertheless kind and just to give it,” said Bellamy in a sonorous voice, as he followed her. “For you have not been blind to the truth.”
“I hope truth is always apparent to me. It makes such a good vantage ground for surveying everything from the right angle,” said Mrs. Christy, who suspected she had a remarkable brain, and found that her spontaneous conversation proved it beyond her hopes. “You and Camilla find my parlour constricted, but ‘stone walls do not a prison make’ to minds whose innocence takes them for an hermitage. I had almost taken refuge in some oft-quoted lines.”
“It was as well you were prevented,” said her daughter, looking up from her seat by the fire, a tall, fair woman of thirty, with the family resemblance to her mother, that may lie on the surface or very deep. “Those lines don’t happen to serve as a refuge at the moment.”
“Well, Camilla,” said Bellamy, his eyes steady on his wife’s face.
“I fear that lines rise to my mind at every juncture,” said Mrs. Christy, moving her hand. “I must plead guilty to an ingrained habit.”
“A harsh but just description,” said Camilla.
“Well, quotation, description, analysis, anything is grist to my mill,” said her mother, “provided it can take on literary clothing. That is my only stipulation.”
“She is qualified to listen to you, then, Ernest,” said Camilla, glancing at her husband’s posture as at a time-worn torment. “You need someone with a catholic spirit. Tell her you are going to put it all on to me, if you are not ashamed of it in plain English. That is good enough literary clothing, and she can understand it, though she cannot speak it.”
“Indeed it is good enough literary clothing!” said Mrs. Christy. “My English is of the plainest. A few good words, a few expressions sanctified by long usage, welded easily into a cultivated whole!” She bethought herself to make a disclaiming gesture. “That should be the common standard in speech.”
“Mrs. Christy, let us look at things,” said Bellamy. “We have turned our eyes from them long enough, too long.”
“Yes, well, people always find me such a help in setting matters on to their right basis. I put myself entirely into the place of the individual, and yet shed the light of my own view-point on the assembled facts, which is such an illuminating thing to do.”
“Mother, do keep your hands still. You remind me of Miss Dabis. Ernest feels he has enough light in himself. It is his profession to let it shine before men.”
“Camilla understands me. I am going to act according to that light. I am not a man to judge sternly a fellow-creature fallen by weakness, to learn no compassion from my own lack of strength. But on that very ground, neither am I a man who does not need support. God knows how I have craved for sympathy and been denied, how slow I have been in giving up faith and hope.”
“Ernest, no one is asking you to hope for my sympathy,” said Camilla, as though her impatience just allowed her to speak. “You know quite well that I am not able to give sympathy to you, that you don’t command my sympathy. I am not imploring you to settle down with me again. The thought of it would be the end of us both. It is for that very reason that there is only one part for a man to play.”
“You are asking me to give up my future and my hopes, when you have given me nothing. I am to consider you because you are a woman, to this extent. My feeling for women forbids me to sully the name I have a right to offer to another woman, unsullied.”
“He is as polygamous as I am, Mother, except that ‘to the pure all things are pure’. Well, Antony finds it all the same, and we can’t expect a man to have a case trumped up against himself, who has spent his life preaching at other people. Poor Ernest!” Camilla threw herself against her husband. “I ought to have taught you that preaching is a game that two can play at. It is my fault that I have to be divorced and disgraced, and bring my mother’s grey hairs with sorrow to the grave.”
Bellamy stood aloof and silent, proof against the challenge he had taken so many times.
“Well, Mother, shall we break up the meeting? That must be Antony ringing the bell, another son coming to pay his respects to you! You will soon have quite a sizeable family if this goes on. You had better stay, Ernest, and clasp the hand of your successor. It might be soothing to exchange a word of sympathy.”
“Why, what is the matter with you both?” said Dufferin, addressing the women and not perceiving Bellamy.
“Mother is weeping about my being divorced. I am the one who ought to weep, but I am showing a criminal’s courage.”
“Why, what is there to weep about? It is my responsibility.”
“You know it is not. You know you have done it all for Camilla’s sake,” said Mrs. Christy, weeping. “To think that this public dishonour is the end of my only child!”
“The public part won’t take long,” said Camilla. “The case against me will be too plain for that. And it is not the end, my poor mother; you let your hopes run wild.”
“I don’t dare to think what your father would have said.”
“I don’t know why, as he can’t say it.”
“Being actually divorced yourself!” said Mrs. Christy, brought to the final word.
“Well, she need never be that again,” said Dufferin. “I have learnt the art, and if there is any more need of it, I will fall back on my acquirement.”
“I don’t know what people will say about her, or about you, or about any of it.”
“I do. But it won’t hurt any of us.”
“You are not right. It will hurt you,” said Mrs. Christy. “It is not true at all that that sort of thing does no harm to people.”
“No. I have found that it does harm,” said Dufferin. “Even Bellamy won’t escape. It takes two to make a quarrel, when of course it does not. And a man should take everything upon himself, when there isn’t anything for Bellamy to take.”
“There is always enough for a man to take,” said Camilla. “You know you have already taken it once. I shall soon be living with a man. I am all the woman that is necessary.”
“A good definition,” said Dufferin. “But doing a thing may make a man see the point of view of another who won’t do it. Why shouldn’t this one appear simply as he is? That is all he asks to do.”
Bellamy stepped impressively into sight.
“Well, pretty good for a listener,” said Camilla.
“I repudiate that word,” said Bellamy.
“Yes, yes, you have every right to,” said Dufferin. “She only meant that you overheard, and you don’t deny you did that. Why that face of tragedy? We are doing all you want for you.”
“I cannot forget my eleven years of spoiled life.”
“Well, try to forget them, and don’t spoil another minute. And I have nothing to do with ten and a half of those years. I have only known Camilla for seven months. I have done no harm to you.”
“You could not know that,” said Bellamy.
“Of course I knew it. Camilla was as clear about things as you were. It wasn’t a case of the one in heaven and the other somewhere else. It can’t be very often.”
“Well, this isn’t leading us anywhere,” said Camilla. “Mother, I had better get home before my partners for life have quarrelled about me too bitterly to bear me company for an hour. There are still some things to arrange in my present consort’s house. And if I walk in the dusk alone, there may be further trouble; and the impression seems to be that I am giving enough. Which of your sons-in-law will you spare me as a protector? I leave the choice to you, as you seem to have an equal regard for them. I may be prejudiced in my judgment.”
“I have to go home,” said Bellamy. “We need not set the scandal on foot before the moment comes for it.”