The New Abelard (Vol. 1-3). Robert Williams Buchanan
in those days; though she knew the world well, and the worst side of it, she seemed to know it very little. His boy’s heart went out to her beauty, and he became entangled in an amour which he thought a seduction; she played her part prettily, with no lack of tears, so that, although he already knew that his first wild fancy was not love, he married her.
Afterwards his eyes were opened. The tender looking, mild-spoken, black-eyed little beauty showed that she had been only acting a part. As their marriage was a secret one, and they could not live together, she resided in the town, and was left a good deal to herself. Once or twice whispers came to his ears that he did not like, and he remonstrated with her; she answered violently, in such terms as opened his eyes still wider to her character. She was exorbitant in her demands for money, and she dressed gorgeously, in execrable taste. When his supplies fell short, as was inevitable, she was still well provided; and he accepted her statement that the supplementary sums came from her father. Once, coming upon her one evening unexpectedly, he found her hysterical and much the worse for liquor: empty champagne bottles and glasses were lying on the table, and the room was full of the scent of tobacco smoke. He discovered that two men of his own college had been calling upon her. A scene ensued, which was only one of many. I have no intention, however, of going into all the wretched details of what is a very common story; but it is sufficient to say that Bradley discovered himself tied miserably to a creature without honour, without education, without virtue, sometimes without decency. Nevertheless he did not cast her out or expose her, but during the Vacation took her with him to London, trying hard to reclaim her. It was while they were stopping there that she relieved him of all further suspense by walking off one day with all his ready cash, and joining an officer whose acquaintance she had made by accident in the open street. Bradley searched for her everywhere without success. It was not for many weeks afterwards that he received a line from her, addressed from Gibraltar, telling him that she was en route for India, and that she had no wish either to see him or to hear from him again.
So she disappeared from his life, and when the report of her death reached him he was touched, but secretly relieved. Few even of his own personal friends knew much of this chapter of his experience: he had been wise enough to keep his actual marriage to the woman as dark as possible. So he entered the Church a free man, and purer than most men in having only one unfortunate record, throughout which he had acted honourably, on his conscience.
And now, after all those years, she had arisen from the grave! At the very moment when he was most threatened with other perils, of body and of soul, and when his place in the world of work and duty was most insecure, she had appeared, to drive him to despair! He had been so certain that she had passed away, with all her sins, that she had become in time almost a sad sweet memory, of one more sinned against than sinning. And all the time she had been roaming up and down the earth, painted and dissolute, cruel and predatory—no longer a reckless girl, but a cold, calculating woman, with all the audacity of her experience.
But she was worse, he thought; she, in her splendour of wealth and mature beauty, was infinitely fouler. How calmly she wore her infamy! how lightly she trafficked with him for his silence, for his complicity! Unconscious of her own monstrosity, she dared to bargain with him—her husband—a priest of Christ!
Let those who sympathise with Bradley in his despair beware of sharing his revengeful thoughts. In simple fact, the woman was rising, not falling; her life, bad as it was from certain points of view, was still a certain advance upon what it once had been—was certainly a purer and an honester life than that of many men; than that, for example, of the honoured member of the aristocracy who paid her bills. She was faithful to this man, and her one dream was to secure comfort and security for her child. She had never loved Bradley, and had never pretended to love him. She did not wish to bring him any unhappiness. She had, as she expressed it, divorced herself, and, according to her conceptions of morality, she owed him no obligation.
But the more he thought of her and of the fatality of her resurrection, the more his whole soul arose in hate against her.
Of course there was one way which led to liberty, the one which she had implored him not to take. The law could doubtless at once grant him a formal divorce from the woman; but this could not be done without publicity, from which his soul shrank in horror. He pictured to himself how his adversaries would exult on seeing his name dragged through the mud! No; come what might, he would never think of that!
I cannot follow either his spiritual or his bodily wanderings any further at present. He walked the night away, not returning to his hotel until early dawn, when, pale, dishevelled, and wild, like a man after a night’s dissipation (as, indeed, he seemed to the waiter, whose experience of clergymen on town visits was not small), he called for his hand-bag, had a hasty wash, and crept away to take the morning train.
CHAPTER VI.—ALMA.
Blue-buskin’d, with the softest turquoise blue,
Faint, as the speedwell’s azure dim with dew;
As far away in hue
As heaven the dainty shade is,
From the dark ultra-blue
Of literary ladies.—The Mask
On the morning that the Rev. Ambrose Bradley, Vicar of Fensea, had his memorable interview with the Bishop of Darkdale and Dells, Miss Alma Craik, of the Larches, walked on the home farm in the immediate neighbourhood of her dwelling, accompanied by her dear friend and companion Agatha Combe, and attended by half a dozen dogs of all sizes, from a melancholy old St. Bernard to a frivolous Dandie Dinmont.
The two ladies, strolling along side by side, presented a curious contrast, which was heightened not a little by their peculiarities of costume. Miss Craik, bright as Eos, and tall and graceful as a willow-wand, was clad in a pink morning dress, with pink plush hat to match, and carried a parasol of the same colour. She walked lightly, with a carriage which her detractors called proud, but which her admirers thought infinitely easy and charming; conveying to the most casual observer that she was a young lady with a will of her own, perfectly mistress of herself, and at home among her possessions. Miss Combe, on the other hand, was very short, scant of breath, and dressed in a costume which looked like widow’s weeds, but which was nothing of the sort, for at five-and-fifty she was still a virgin. Her face was round and sunny, her eyes were bright and cheerful, and few could have recognised, in so homely and kindly looking a person, the champion of Woman’s Rights, the leader-writer of the ‘Morning News,’ and the champion Agnostic of the controversial reviews.
Yet Miss Combe, though mild enough as a woman, was terribly fierce as a writer. She had inherited her style and opinions from her father, a friend and playfellow (if such an expression may be applied to persons who never played) of John Mill. She had been crammed very early with Greek, Latin, moral science, and philosophy; and she would certainly have developed into a female of the genus Griffin, had it not been for a pious aunt who invited her once a year into the country, and there managed to fill her lungs with fresh air and her mind with a certain kind of natural religion. When Agnosticism was first invented she clutched at the word, and enrolled herself as an amazon militant under the banner of the creed. She hated two things about equally—Materialism and dogmatic Christianity. She was, in fact, a busy little woman, with a kind heart, and a brain not quite big enough to grasp all the issues she was so fond of discussing.
Miss Craik had met her in London, and had taken to her immediately—chiefly, if the truth must be told, on account of her opinions; for though Miss Craik herself was nominally a Christian, she was already a sufficiently lax one to enjoy all forms of heterodoxy. They had come together first on one great quoestio revata, that of vivisection, for they both adored dogs, and Miss Combe was their most uncompromising champion against the users of the scalpel. So it happened in the course of time that they spent a part of the year together. The Larches was Miss Combe’s house whenever she chose to come to it, which was very often, and she became, in a certain sense, the companion of her rich young friend.
Their