My wife perceived that this was meant for Miss Bentley, though it was spoken to herself; and Miss Bentley seemed to take the same view of the fact. She said: "We needn"t use any circ.u.mlocution with Mrs. March, mother. She knows just how the affair stands. You can say whatever you wish, though I don"t know why you should wish to say anything. You have made your own terms with us, and we are keeping them to the letter. What more can you ask? Do you want me to break with Mr. Glendenning? I will do that too, if you ask it. You have got everything _but_ that, and you can have that at any time. But Arthur and I are perfectly satisfied as it is, and we can wait as long as you wish us to wait."
Her mother said: "I"m not allowed to forget that for a single hour," and Miss Bentley said, "I never remind you of it unless you make me, mother.
You may be thinking of it all the time, but it isn"t because of anything I say."
"Or that you _do_?" asked Mrs. Bentley; and her daughter answered, "I can"t help existing, of course."
My wife broke off from the account she was giving me of her visit: "You can imagine how pleasant all this was for me, Basil, and how anxious I was to prolong my call!"
"Well," I returned, "there were compensations. It was extremely interesting; it was life. You can"t deny that, my dear."
"It was more like death. Several times I was on the point of going, but you know when there"s been a painful scene you feel so sorry for the people who"ve made it that you can"t bear to leave them to themselves. I did get up to go, once, in mere self-defence, but they both urged me to stay, and I couldn"t help staying till they could talk of other things.
But now tell me what you think of it all. Which should your feeling be with the most? That is what I want to get at before I tell you mine."
"Which side was I on when we talked about them last?"
"Oh, when did we talk about them _last_? We are always talking about them! I am getting no good of the summer at all. I shall go home in the fall more jaded and worn out than when I came. To think that we should have this beautiful place, where we could be so happy and comfortable, if it were not for having this abnormal situation under our nose and eyes all the time!"
"Abnormal? I don"t call it abnormal," I began, and I was sensible of my wife"s thoughts leaving her own injuries for my point of view so swiftly that I could almost hear them whir.
"Not abnormal!" she gasped.
"No; only too natural. Isn"t it perfectly natural for an invalid like that to want to keep her daughter with her; and isn"t it perfectly natural for a daughter, with a New England sense of duty, to yield to her wish? You might say that she could get married and live at home, and then she and Glendenning could both devote themselves--"
"No, no," my wife broke in, "that wouldn"t do. Marriage is marriage; and it puts the husband and wife with each other first; when it doesn"t, it"s a miserable mockery."
"Even when there"s a sick mother in the case?"
"A thousand sick mothers wouldn"t alter the case. And that"s what they all three instinctively know, and they"re doing the only thing they can do."
"Then I don"t see what we"re complaining of."
"Complaining of? We"re complaining of its being all wrong and--romantic.
Her mother has asked more than she had any right to ask, and Miss Bentley has tried to do more than she can perform, and that has made them hate each other."
"Should you say _hate_, quite?"
"It must come to that, if Mrs. Bentley lives."
"Then let us hope she--"
"My dear!" cried Mrs. March, warningly.
"Oh, come, now!" I retorted. "Do you mean to say that you haven"t thought how very much it would simplify the situation if--"
"Of course I have! And that is the wicked part of it. It"s that that is wearing me out. It"s perfectly hideous!"
"Well, fortunately we"re not actively concerned in the affair, and we needn"t take any measures in regard to it. We are mere spectators, and as I see it the situation is not only inevitable for Mrs. Bentley, but it has a sort of heroic propriety for Miss Bentley."
"And Glendenning?"
"Oh, Glendenning isn"t provided for in my scheme."
"Then I can tell you that your scheme, Basil, is worse than worthless."
"I didn"t brag of it, my dear," I said, meekly enough. "I"m sorry for him, but I can"t help him. He must provide for himself out of his religion."
IX.
It was, indeed, a trying summer for our emotions, torn as we were between our pity for Mrs. Bentley and our compa.s.sion for her daughter.
We had no repose, except when we centred our sympathies upon Glendenning, whom we could yearn over in tender regret without doing any one else wrong, or even criticising another. He was our great stay in that respect, and though a mere external witness might have thought that he had the easiest part, we who knew his gentle and affectionate nature could not but feel for him. We never concealed from ourselves certain foibles of his; I have hinted at one, and we should have liked it better if he had not been so sensible of the honor, from a worldly point, of being engaged to Miss Bentley. But this was a very innocent vanity, and he would have been willing to suffer for her mother and for herself, if she had let him. I have tried to insinuate how she would not let him, but freed him as much as possible from the stress of the situation, and a.s.sumed for him a mastery, a primacy, which he would never have a.s.sumed for himself. We thought this very pretty of her, and in fact she was capable of pretty things. What was hard and arrogant in her, and she was not without something of the kind at times, was like her mother; but even she, poor soul, had her good points, as I have attempted to suggest. We used to dwell upon them, when our talk with Glendenning grew confidential, as it was apt to do; for it seemed to console him to realize that her daughter and he were making their sacrifice to a not wholly unamiable person.
He confided equally in my wife and myself, but there were times when I think he rather preferred the counsel of a man friend. Once when we had gone a walk into the country, which around Gormanville is of the pathetic Mid-Ma.s.sachusetts loveliness and poverty, we sat down in a hillside orchard to rest, and he began abruptly to talk of his affair.
Sometimes, he said, he felt that it was all an error, and he could not rid himself of the fear that an error persisted in was a wrong, and therefore a species of sin.
"That is very interesting," I said. "I wonder if there is anything in it? At first blush it looks so logical; but is it? Or are you simply getting morbid? What is the error? What is your error?"
"You know," he said, with a gentle refusal of my willingness to make light of his trouble. "It is surely an error to allow a woman to give her word when she can promise nothing more, and to let her hold herself to it."
I could have told him that I did not think the error in this case was altogether or mainly his, or the persistence in it; for it had seemed to me from the beginning that the love between him and Miss Bentley was fully as much her affair as his, and that quite within the bounds of maidenly modesty she showed herself as pa.s.sionately true to their plighted troth. But of course this would not do, and I had to be content with the ironical suggestion that he might try offering to release Miss Bentley.
"Don"t laugh at me," he implored, and I confess his tone would have taken from me any heart to do so.
"My dear fellow," I said, "I see your point. But don"t you think you are quite needlessly adding to your affliction by pressing it? You two are in the position which isn"t at all uncommon with engaged people, of having to wait upon exterior circ.u.mstances before you get married.
Suppose you were prevented by poverty, as often happens? It would be a hardship as it is now; but in that case would your engagement be any less an error than it is now? I don"t think it would, and I don"t believe you think so either."
"In that case we should not be opposing our wills to the will of some one else, who has a better claim to her daughter"s allegiance than I have. It seems to me that our error was in letting her mother consent to our engagement if she would not or could not consent to our marriage.
When it came to that we ought both to have had the strength to say that then there should be no engagement. It was my place to do that. I could have prevented the error which I can"t undo."
"I don"t see how it could have been easier to prevent than to undo your error. I don"t admit it"s an error, but I call it so because you do.
After all, an engagement is nothing but an open confession between two people that they are in love with each other and wish to marry. There need be no sort of pledge or promise to make the engagement binding, if there is love. It"s the love that binds."
"Yes."
"It bound you from your first acknowledgment of it, and unless you could deny your love now, or hereafter, it must always bind you. If you own that you still love each other, you are still engaged, no matter how much you release each other. Could you think of loving her and marrying some one else? Could she love you and marry another? There isn"t any error, unless you"ve mistaken your feeling for each other. If you have, I should decidedly say you couldn"t break your engagement too soon. In fact, there wouldn"t be any real engagement to break."
"Of course you are right," said Glendenning, but not so strenuously as he might.
I had a feeling that he had not put forward the main cause of his unhappiness, though he had given a true cause; that he had made some lesser sense of wrong stand for a greater, as people often do in confessing themselves; and I was not surprised when he presently added: "It is not merely the fact that she is bound in that way, and that her young life is pa.s.sing in this sort of hopeless patience, but that--that--I don"t know how to put the ugly and wicked thing into words, but I a.s.sure you that sometimes when I think--when I"m aware that I know--Ah, I can"t say it!"
"I fancy I understand what you mean, my dear boy," I said, and in the right of my ten years" seniority I put my hand caressingly on his shoulder, "and you are no more guilty than I am in knowing that if Mrs.
Bentley were not in the way there would be no obstacle to your happiness."
"But such a cognition is of h.e.l.l," he cried, and he let his face fall into his hands and sobbed heartrendingly.
"Yes," I said, "such a cognition is of h.e.l.l; you are quite right. So are all evil concepts and knowledges; but so long as they are merely things of our intelligence, they are no part of us, and we are not guilty of them."
"No; I trust not, I trust not," he returned, and I let him sob his trouble out before I spoke again; and then I began with a laugh of unfeigned gayety. Something that my wife had hinted in one of our talks about the lovers freakishly presented itself to my mind, and I said, "There is a way, and a very practical way, to put an end to the anomaly you feel in an engagement which doesn"t imply a marriage."