THE FLEXIBLE MIND OF A PLEASED HUSBAND

As they entered the little reception-room from the hall, the doors of the next room were pushed apart and they saw Allan bowing out Mrs. Talwin Covil, a meek, suppressed, neutral-tinted woman, the inevitable feminine corollary of such a man as Cyrus Browett, whose only sister she was.

The eyes of Nancy, glad with a knowing gladness, were quick for Allan’s face, resting fondly there during the seconds in which he was changing from the dead astonishment to live recognition at sight of Bernal.  During the shouts, the graspings, pokings, nudgings, the pumping of each other’s arms that followed, Nancy turned to greet Mrs. Covil, who had paused before her.

“Do sit down a moment and tell me things,” she urged, “while those boys go back there to have it out!”

Thus encouraged, Mrs. Covil dropped into a chair, seeming not loath to tell those things she had, while Nancy leaned back and listened duteously for a perfunctory ten minutes.  Her thoughts ran ahead to Allan ­and to Bernal ­as children will run little journeys ahead of a slow-moving elder.

Then suddenly something that the troubled little woman was saying fixed her attention, pulling up her wandering thoughts with a jerk.

“ ­and the Doctor asked me, my dear, to treat it quite confidentially, except to bother Cyrus.  But, I’m sure he would wish you to know.  Of course it is a delicate matter ­I can readily understand, as he says, how the public would misconstrue the Doctor’s words and apply them generally ­forgetting that each case requires a different point of view.  But with Harold it is really a perfectly flagrant and dreadful case of mismating ­due entirely to the poor boy’s thoughtless chivalry ­barely twenty-eight, mind you ­as if a man nowadays knows his mind at all well before thirty-five.  Of course, divorce is an evil that, broadly speaking, threatens the sanctity of our home life ­no one understands that better than your husband ­and re-marriage after divorce is usually an outrageous scandal ­one, indeed, altogether too common ­sometimes I wonder what we’re coming to, it seems to be done so thoughtlessly ­but individual instances are different ­’exceptions prove the rule,’ you know, as the old saying goes.  Now Harold is ready to settle down, and the girl is of excellent family and all that ­quite the social and moral brace he needs, in fact.”

Nancy was attentive, yet a little puzzled.

“But ­you speak of your son, Harold ­is he not already married?”

“That’s it, my dear.  You know what a funny, bright, mischievous boy Harold is ­even a little deliciously wild at times ­doubtless you read of his marriage when it occurred ­how these newspapers do relish anything of the sort ­she was a theatrical young woman ­what they call a ‘show girl,’ I believe.  Humph! ­with reason, I must say!  Of all the egregious and inveterate showiness!  My dear, she is positively a creature!  Oh, if they’d only invent a monocle that would let a young man pierce the glamour of the footlights.  I pledge you my word, she’s ­but never mind that!  Harold was a thoughtless, restless boy ­not bad, you know, but heedless.  Why, he was quite the same about business.  He began to speculate, and of course, being brother Cyrus’s nephew, his advantage was considerable.  But he suddenly declared he wouldn’t be a broker any more ­and you’d never guess his absurd reason:  simply because some stock he held or didn’t hold went up or down or something on a rumour in the street that Mr. Russell Sage was extremely ill!  He said that this brought him to his senses.  He says to me, ’Mater, I’ve not met Mr. Sage, you know, but from what I hear of him it would be irrational to place myself in a position where I should have to experience emotion of any sort at news of the old gentleman’s taking-off.  An event so agreeable to the natural order of God’s providence, so plausible, so seemly, should not be endowed with any arbitrary and artificial significance, especially of a monetary character ­one must be able to view it absolutely without emotion of any sort, either of regret or rejoicing ­one must remain conscientiously indifferent as to when this excellent old gentleman passes on to the Golden Shore’ ­but you know the breezy way in which Harold will sometimes talk.  Only now he seems really sobered by this new attachment ­”

“But if he is already married ­”

“Yes, yes ­if you can call it married ­a ceremony performed by one of those common magistrates ­quite without the sanction of the Church ­but all that is past, and he is now ready to marry one who can be a wife to him ­only my conscience did hurt me a little, and brother Cyrus said to me, ’You see Linford and tell him I sent you.  Linford is a man of remarkable breadth, of rare flexibility.’”

“Yes, and of course Allan was emphatically discouraging.”  Again she was recalling the fervour with which he had declared himself on this point on that last day when he actually made her believe in him.

“Oh, the Doctor is broad!  He is what I should call adaptable.  He said by all means to extricate Harold from this wretched predicament, not only on account of the property interests involved, but on account of his moral and spiritual welfare; that, while in spirit he holds deathlessly to the indissolubility of the marriage tie, still it is unreasonable to suppose that God ever joined Harold to a person so much his inferior, and that we may look forward to the real marriage ­that on which the sanctity of the home is truly based ­when the law has freed him from this boyish entanglement.  Oh, my dear, I feel so relieved to know that my boy can have a wife from his own class ­and still have it right up there ­with Him, you know!” she concluded with an upward glance, as Nancy watched her with eyes grown strangely quiet, almost steely ­watched her as one might watch an ant.  She had the look of one whose will had been made suddenly to stand aside by some great inner tumult.

When her caller had gone she dropped back into the chair, absently pulling a glove through the fingers of one hand ­her bag and parasol on the floor at her feet.  One might have thought her on the point of leaving instead of having just come.  The shadows were deepening in the corners of the room and about her half-shut eyes.

A long time she listened to the animated voices of the brothers.  At last the doors were pushed apart and they came out, Allan with his hand on Bernal’s shoulder.

“There’s your bag ­now hurry upstairs ­the maid will show you where.”

As Bernal went out, Nancy looked up at her husband with a manner curiously quiet.

“Well, Nance ­” He stepped to the door to see if Bernal was out of hearing ­“Bernal pleases me in the way he talks about the old gentleman’s estate.  Either he is most reasonable, or I have never known my true power over men.”

Her face was inscrutable.  Indeed, she only half heard.

“Mrs. Covil has been telling me some of your broader views on divorce.”

The words shot from her lips with the crispness of an arrow, going straight to the bull’s-eye.

He glanced quickly at her, the hint of a frown drawing about his eyes.

“Mrs. Covil should have been more discreet.  The authority of a priest in these matters is a thing of delicate adjustment ­the law for one may not be the law for all.  These are not matters to gossip of.”

“So it seems.  I was thinking of your opposite counsel to Mrs. Eversley.”

“There ­really, you know I read minds, at times ­somehow I knew that would be the next thing you’d speak of.”

“Yes?”

“The circumstances are entirely different ­I may add that ­that any intimation of inconsistency will be very unpleasing to me ­very!”

“I can see that the circumstances are different ­the Eversleys are not what you would call ‘important factors’ in the Church ­and besides ­that is a case of a wife leaving her husband.”

“Nance ­I’m afraid you’re not pleasing me ­if I catch your drift.  Must I point out the difference ­the spiritual difference?  That misguided woman wanted to desert her husband merely because he had hurt her pride ­her vanity ­by certain alleged attentions to other women, concerning the measure of which I had no knowledge.  That was a case where the cross must be borne for the true refining of that dross of vanity from her soul.  Her husband is of her class, and her life with him will chasten her.  While here ­what have we here?”

He began to pace the floor as he was wont to do when he prepared a sermon.

“Here we have a flagrant example of what is nothing less than spiritual miscegenation ­that’s it! ­why didn’t I think of that phrase before ­spiritual miscegenation.  A rattle-brained boy, with the connivance of a common magistrate, effects a certain kind of alliance with a person inferior to him in every point of view ­birth, breeding, station, culture, wealth ­a person, moreover, who will doubtless be glad to relinquish her so-called rights for a sum of money.  Can that, I ask you, be called a marriage? Can we suppose an all-wise God to have joined two natures so ill-adapted, so mutually exclusive, so repellent to each other after that first glamour is past.  Really, such a supposition is not only puerile but irreverent.  It is the conventional supposition, I grant, and theoretically, the unvarying supposition of the Church; but God has given us reasoning powers to use fearlessly ­not to be kept superstitiously in the shackles of any tradition whatsoever.  Why, the very Church itself from its founding is an example of the wisdom of violating tradition when it shall seem meet ­it has always had to do this.”

“I see, Allan ­every case must be judged by itself; every marriage requires a special ruling ­”

“Well ­er ­exactly ­only don’t get to fancying that you could solve these problems.  It’s difficult enough for a priest.”

“Oh, I’m positive a mere woman couldn’t grapple with them ­she hasn’t the mind to!  All she is capable of is to choose who shall think for her.”

“And of course it would hardly do to announce that I had counselled a certain procedure of divorce and re-marriage ­no matter how flagrant the abuse, nor how obvious the spiritual equity of the step.  People at large are so little analytical.”

“‘Flexible,’ Mr. Browett told his sister you were.  He was right ­you are flexible, Allan ­more so than I ever suspected.”

“Nance ­you please me ­you are a good girl.  Now I’m going up to Bernal.  Bernal certainly pleases me.  Of course I shall do the handsome thing by him if he acts along the lines our talk has indicated.”

She still sat in the falling dusk, in the chair she had taken two hours before, when Aunt Bell came in, dressed for dinner.

“Mercy, child!  Do you know how late it is?”

“What did you say, Aunt Bell?”

“I say do you know how late it is?”

“Oh ­not too late!”

“Not too late ­for what?”

There was a pause, then she said:  “Aunt Bell, when a woman comes to make her very last effort at self-deception, why does she fling herself into it with such abandon ­such pretentious flourishes of remorse ­and things?  Is it because some under layer of her soul knows it will be the last and will have it a thorough test?  I wonder how much of an arrant fraud a woman may really be to herself, even in her surest, happiest moments.”

“There you are again, wondering, wondering ­instead of accepting things and dressing for dinner.  Have you seen Allan?”

“Oh, yes ­I’ve been seeing him for three days ­through a glass, darkly.”

Aunt Bell flounced on into the library, trailing something perilously near a sniff.

Bernal came down the stairs and stood in the door.

“Well, Nance!” He went to stand before her and she looked up to him.  There was still light enough to see his eyes ­enough to see, also, that he was embarrassed.

“Well ­I’ve had quite a talk with Allan.”  He laughed a little constrained, uneasy laugh, looking quickly at her to see if she might be observing him.  “He’s the same fine old chap, isn’t he?” Quickly his eyes again sought her face.  “Yes, indeed, he’s the same old boy ­a great old Allan ­only he makes me feel that I have changed, Nance.”

She arose from her chair, feeling cramped and restless from sitting so long.

“I’m sure you haven’t changed, Bernal.”

“Oh, I must have!”

He was looking at her very closely through the dusk.

“Yes, we had an interesting talk,” he said again.

He reached out to take one of her hands, which he held an instant in both his own.  “He’s a rare old Allan, Nance!”