The Irrational Knot Part 51

Mrs. Fairfax again looked doubtfully at him. "I cannot make you out at all, Mr. Conolly," she said submissively. "I hope I have not offended you."

"Not in the least. I take it that having observed certain circ.u.mstances which seemed to threaten the welfare of one very dear to you (as, I am aware, Marian is), the trouble they caused you found unpremeditated expression in the course of a conversation with me." Conolly beamed at her, as if he thought this rather neatly turned.

"Exactly so. But I do not wish you to think that I have observed anything particular."

"Certainly not. Still, you think there would be no harm in my writing to Marian to say that her behavior has attracted your notice, and----"

"Good heavens, Mr. Conolly, you must not mention _me_ in the matter! You are so innocent--at least so frank, so workmanlike, if I may say so, in your way of dealing with things! I would not have Marian know what I have said--I really did not notice anything--for worlds. You had better not write at all, but just go down as if you went merely to enjoy yourself; and dont on any account let Marian suspect that you have heard anything. Goodness knows what mischief you might make, in your--your ingenuousness!"

"But I should have thought that the opinion of an old and valued friend like yourself would have special weight with her."

"You know nothing about it. Clever engineer as you are, you do not understand the little wheels by which our great machine of society is worked."

"True, Mrs. Leith Fairfax," he rejoined, echoing the cadence of her sentence. "Educated as a mere mechanic, I am still a stranger to the elegancies of life. I usually depend on Marian for direction; but since you think that it would be injudicious to appeal to her in the present instance----"

"Out of the question, Mr. Conolly."

"--I must trust to your guidance in the matter. What do you suggest?"

Mrs. Fairfax was about to reply, when the expression which she habitually wore like a mask in society, wavered and broke. Her lip trembled: her eyes filled with tears: she rose with a sniff that was half a sob. When she spoke, her voice was sincere for the first time, and at the sound of it Conolly's steely, hard manner melted, and his inhuman self-possession vanished.

"You think," she said, "that I came here to make mischief. I did not.

Marian is nothing to me: she does not even like me; but I dont want to see her ruin herself merely because she is too inexperienced to know when she is well off. I have had to fight my way in London: and I know what it is, and what the world is. She is not fit to take charge of herself. Good-bye, Mr. Conolly: you are a great deal too young yourself to know the danger, for all your cleverness. You may tell her that I came here and gossipped against her, if you like. She will never speak to me again; but if it saves her, I dont care. Good-bye."

"My dear Mrs. Fairfax," he said, with entire frankness, "I am now deeply and sincerely obliged to you." And in proof that he was touched, he kissed her hand with the ease and grace of a man who had been carefully taught how to do it. Mrs. Fairfax recovered herself and almost blushed as he went with her to the door, chatting easily about the weather and the Addison Road trains.

She was not the last visitor that evening. She had hardly been fifteen minutes gone when the Rev. George presented himself, and was conducted to the laboratory, where he found Conolly, with his coat off, surrounded by apparatus. The glowing fire, comfortable chairs, and preparations for an evening meal, gladdened him more than the presence of his brother-in-law, with whom he never felt quite at ease.

"You wont mind my fiddling with these machines while I talk," said Conolly.

"Not at all, not at all. I shall witness your operations with great interest. You must not think that the wonders of science are indifferent to me."

"So you are going on to Sark, you say?"

"Yes. May I ask whether you will be persuaded to come?"

"No, for certain. I have other fish to fry here."

"I think it would renovate your health to come for a few days."

"My health is always right as long as I have work. Did you meet Mrs.

Fairfax outside?"

"A--yes. I pa.s.sed her."

"You spoke to her, I suppose?"

"A few words. Yes."

"Do you know what she came here for?"

"No. But stay. I am wrong. She mentioned that she came for a book she lent you."

"She mentioned what was not true. What did she say to you about Marian?"

"Well, she--She was just saying that it is perhaps as well that I should go down to Sark at once, as Marian is quite alone."

The clergyman looked so guilty as he said this that Conolly laughed outright at him. "You mean," he said, "that Marian is _not_ quite alone.

Well, very likely Douglas occupies himself a good deal with her. If so, there may be some busybody or another down there fool enough to tell her that people are talking about her. That would spoil her holiday; so it is lucky that you are going down. No one will take it upon themselves to speak to her when you are there; and if they say anything to you, you can let it in at one ear and out at the other."

"That is, of course, unless I should see her really acting indiscreetly."

"I had better tell you beforehand what you will see if you keep your eyes open. You will see very plainly that Douglas is in love with her.

Also that she knows that he is in love with her. In fact, she told me so. And you will see she rather likes it. Every married woman requires a holiday from her husband occasionally, even when he suits her perfectly."

The Rev. George stared. "If I follow you aright--I am not sure that I do--you impute to Marian the sin of entertaining feelings which it is her duty to repress."

"I impute no sin to her. You might as well tell a beggar that he has no right to be hungry, as a woman that it is her duty to feel this and not to feel that."

"But Marian has been educated to feel only in accordance with her duty."

"So have you. How does it work? However," continued Conolly, without waiting for an answer, "I dont deny that Marian shews the effects of her education. They are deplorably evident in all her conscientious actions."

"You surprise and distress me. This is the first intimation I have received of your having any cause to complain of Marian."

"Nonsense! I dont complain of her. But what you call her education, as far as I can make it out, appears to have consisted of stuffing her with lies, and making it a point of honor with her to believe them in spite of sense and reason. The sense of duty that rises on that sort of foundation is more mischievous than downright want of principle. I dont dispute your right, you who const.i.tute polite society, to skin over all the ugly facts of life. But to make your daughters believe that the skin covers healthy flesh is a crime. Poor Marian thinks that a room is clean when all the dust is swept out of sight under the furniture; and if honest people rake it out to bring it under the notice of those whose duty it is to remove it, she is disgusted with them, and ten to one accuses them of having made it themselves. She doesnt know what sort of world she is in, thanks to the misrepresentations of those who should have taught her. She will deceive her children in just the same way, if she ever has any. If she had been taught the truth in her own childhood, she would know how to face it, and would be a strong woman as well as an amiable one. But it is too late now. The truth seems natural to a child; but to a grown woman or man, it is a bitter lesson in the learning, though it may be invigorating when it is well mastered. And you know how seldom a hard task forced on an unwilling pupil _is_ well mastered."

"What is truth?" said the clergyman, sententiously.

"All that we know, Master Pilate," retorted Conolly with a laugh. "And we know a good deal. It may seem small in comparison with what we dont know; but it is more than any one of us can hold, for all that. We know, for instance, that the world was not planned by a sentimental landscape gardener. If Marian ever learns that--which she may, although I am neither able nor willing to teach it to her--she will not thank those who gave her so much falsehood to unlearn. Until then, she will, I am afraid, do little else than lay up a store of regrets for herself."

"This is very strange. We always looked upon Marian as an exceptionally amiable girl."

"So she is, unfortunately. There is no inst.i.tution so villainous but she will defend it; no tyranny so oppressive but she will make a virtue of submitting to it; no social cancer so venomous but she will shrink from cutting it out, and plead that it is a comfortable thing, and much better as it is. She knows that she disobeyed her father, and that he deserved to be disobeyed; yet she condemns other women who are disobedient, and stands out against Nelly McQuinch in defence of the unselfishness of parental love. She knows that the increased freedom of movement allowed to her as a married woman has been healthy for her; yet she looks coldly at other young women who a.s.sert their right to freedom, and are not afraid to walk through the streets without a sheepdog, human or otherwise, at their heels. She knows that marriage is not what she expected it to be, and that it gives me many unfair advantages over her; and she knows also that ours is a happier marriage than most.

Nevertheless she will encourage other girls to marry; she will maintain that the chain which galls her own wrists so often is a string of honeysuckles; and if a woman identifies herself with any public movement for the lightening of that chain, she wont allow that that woman is fit to be admitted into decent society. There is not one of these shams to which she clings that I would not like to take by the throat and shake the life out of; and she knows it. Even in that she has not the consistency to believe me wrong, because it is undutiful and out of keeping with the honeysuckles to lack faith in her husband. In order to blind herself to her inconsistencies, she has to live in a rose-colored fog; and what with me constantly, in spite of myself, blowing this fog away on the one side, and the naked facts of her everyday experience as constantly letting in the daylight on the other, she must spend half the time wondering whether she is mad or sane. Between her desire to do right and her discoveries that it generally leads her to do wrong, she pa.s.ses her life in a wistful melancholy which I cant dispel. I can only pity her. I suppose I could pet her; but I hate treating a woman like a child: it means giving up all hope of her becoming rational. She may turn for relief any day either to love or religion; and for her own sake I hope she will choose the first. Of the two evils, it is the least permanent." And Conolly, having disburdened himself, resumed his work without any pretence of waiting for the clergyman's comments.

"Well," said the Rev. George, cautiously, "I do not think I have quite followed your opinions, which seem to me to be exactly upside down, as if they were projected upon the retina of your mind's eye--to use Shakspear's happy phrase--just as they would be upon your--your real eye, you know. But I can a.s.sure you that your view of Marian is an entirely mistaken one. You seem to think that she does not give in her entire adherence to the doctrines of the Establishment. This is a matter which I venture to say you do not understand."

"Admitted," interposed Conolly, hastily. "Here is my workman's tea. Are you fond of scones?"

"I hardly know. Anything--the simplest fare, will satisfy me."

"So it does me, when I can get nothing better. Help yourself, pray."

Conolly did not sit down to the meal, but worked whilst the clergyman ate. Presently the Rev. George, warmed by the fire and cheered by the repast, returned to the subject of his host's domestic affairs.

"Come," he said, "I am sure that a few judicious words would lead to an explanation between you and Marian."