Chapter XXII: A Definition of a Wife

Valentine returned to London on this same wet day.

It was raining hard as he started, and the summer wind blew a storm of raindrops against the window as he journeyed up from Dynechester.

Something in the sound of the wind and rain recalled the sea, and brought with it that curious longing that the sea can stir in some natures.

Valentine wondered in a dreamy way where Polly might be at this moment.

“I suppose she is with some relations,” he said to himself.

He wished vaguely he could know where she was, he had a distinct dislike to feeling that she had passed out of his radius, as it were. And then he wished vaguely that he could forget all about her.

But a heart’s love knows little of wisdom!

Arrived in London, Valentine had a mass of work to do, and in the course of getting through it fate brought him sharply up against the very man about whom he had been thinking so much, and not very gently.

He shook hands with Hubert Kestridge cordially enough all the same, and when Winnie’s husband asked him to luncheon he agreed, and the two men repaired to a restaurant close at hand.

Valentine had time to examine Kestridge during the meal, and gradually his hard feelings melted away and pity instead of anger came into his heart for his companion.

“Where do you hail from, Kestridge?” he asked. “You don’t look any great shakes. I verily believe you have grown thinner.”

“We crossed from Ireland last night. Am I changed? You have not seen me for a long time. I fancy I am about the same bulk, anyhow.”

They spoke of desultory things for a time, and then all at once Kestridge changed the subject.

“Ambleton,” he said, “I am awfully glad I met you to-day. I wanted one friend to wish me good luck before leaving England, and of all my friends, I would sooner have had you say this than any other man.”

“Leaving England? What do you mean, Kestridge? You sound as if something were wrong.”

“Something is wrong,” Hubert Kestridge said, unsteadily. “Not something, but everything. Ambleton, I am a miserable man. I have made such a mistake—oh, God! what a mistake; and yet even now, looking back, I hardly know how this came about.”

“Are you speaking of your marriage?” Valentine asked, in a low voice.

The other inclined his head to mean assent.

“I am not sure that I follow you,” Valentine said, curbing a certain inclination to agitation. “I was given to understand you were very happy.”

“I hardly know who could have given you that statement,” Kestridge said slowly. “I have never been happy with my wife, never. I never cared for Winnie. She was the one of the family I never cared about.”

“And yet you married her!” Valentine said, very coldly, and with a great deal of reproach. He resented this kind of confidence.

“And yet I married her, as you say,” Hubert Kestridge repeated, and then he looked up, “or rather, she married me. Ambleton, let me speak out to you! I know you to be the soul of honor. I want you to judge, and tell me if I am doing right or wrong.”

“The duty is too solemn,” Valentine began, but the other went rushing into speech.

“We married—put the blame on whom you will—we married; yes, but my heart was never given in marriage. I had given it long before. Have you ever seen Polly?” he queried, suddenly. “It is Polly I love—Polly I have loved from the first!”

“Take care, man!” Valentine said, in a stifled sort of way. By what chance did this thing come to him now?

“Oh! I do no harm by saying this to you,” Hubert said, half recklessly. “You are the sort of friend one trusts to death. Yes, it is Polly I have loved, and yet I married Winnie. How did it come about? Oh! it was easy enough for my wife to twist and turn and maneuver things so that she made me believe I was hateful to Polly and dear to herself. I have her own word for this. We have quarreled many times, but never as we quarreled last night. Things were put clearly enough between us then. Winnie has a keen tongue and uses it well. She left me little that was pleasant to remember, I can tell you, for no man cares to acknowledge himself a fool, and this is what she proved me to be. After all, Ambleton, we are fools in a clever woman’s hands! Winnie twisted me just as she willed. It was the hour of their poverty. She hates poverty. I was available as a means of escape from her home life. What was easier than to throw dust in my eyes? Polly, strange, lovely little creature as she is, was hard and cold to me. She refused me mere friendship. She slighted me on every occasion. She lent strong color to all Winnie told me, and yet sure I ought to have understood her,” the man said here, bitterly enough. “She is made of different stuff to either of her sisters. The very thing that drew Winnie to me kept Polly away. Had she grown rich instead of poor, I might—who can tell?—have stood in a very different position to what I am now.”

There was silence a moment, between them, and then Valentine spoke.

“Do you do yourself any good by saying all this, Kestridge?” he asked, gently enough, though in truth, he was not utterly in sympathy with Hubert.

The other shrugged his shoulders.

“It can do no harm. Whatever comes or goes, Winnie has cut me away from all chance of happiness.”

“She is your wife,” Valentine reminded him.

“What is your definition of a wife?” Kestridge asked, recklessly. “A woman who tells you frankly to your face that you are abhorrent to her, that she only consented to be your wife because of such material advantages as might come to her through you; a woman who confesses to have worked mischief between you and the one creature you love; a woman who refuses flatly to live in your home, and who sends you to Jericho or the devil, it matters not which?” He changed his tone. “By what she said last night, Winnie has made it practically impossible for us to go on with this farce of marriage. I have made my plans to go abroad, to leave her mistress of my money and of the situation. I fancy she’ll get along pretty well without me. I don’t know what you think.”

Valentine remained silent, but the expression of his face was as eloquent as words.

“I believe you consider me wrong to do what I mean doing,” the other said, a trifle sullenly, breaking the long pause, and Valentine looked up and replied frankly:

“I make no difference between you and any other man,” he said, coldly. “To me a husband’s duties can never be set aside lightly. Whether for weal or woe, you are married to this woman; your place is, therefore, with her, unless, indeed, she gives you far stronger reasons than these you have spoken of, to leave her.”

Hubert Kestridge colored hotly, and it was his turn to be silent now.

“I know you are fully in the right, although you hit it out so hardly,” he said, at last. “Perhaps, if you were situated as I am, you would not be so hard.”

“I don’t mean to be hard, Kestridge,” Valentine said, instantly, “but I have a trick of plain speaking, and, remember, you sought my advice. You must not think, however, that I am too cut-and-dried to deny you sympathy. Of all sad mistakes, a mistaken marriage is surely the hardest to suffer. You have been the victim, if you will let me say this, of your own weakness. After all, a man cannot be urged to such lengths utterly against his will, and if you were sure of the other girl’s love——”

Valentine paused.

He found it far from easy to say as much as he had said already.

Hubert Kestridge answered him quietly.

“Ah! but I was not sure, Ambleton. Nor am I sure now. It is my wife who tells me that Polly cared for me. I have never dared to think this for myself! She says it now to make the hurt deeper, the breach between us wider. Something seems to assure me it is only her malice that suggests this. She knows I loved her sister; it is easy, therefore, to invent now a story of how this sister loved me.”

The two men remained silent a long time.

Valentine felt an oppression like a pain upon his heart.

He was truly sorry for this man before him, and yet it was but natural that he should shrink from Kestridge a little, for circumstances, one and all, pointed to the fact that what Winnie had said to her husband out of malice was the full truth.

In his single-minded honesty Valentine never dreamed of accusing Christina of any motive in telling him what she had told him, although at the same time he had strongly objected to having done so, but as he was utterly blind to the schemes Christina was forming for the future, it was not likely he should imagine she had introduced this story of the girl’s attachment to Kestridge only to sever all possibility of his approaching her with his own story. And it was, therefore, all clear to Valentine now, that Polly did care for this other man, and that it was because of this love she had torn herself from her mother’s side and gone away, he knew not where, rather than risk a meeting with Kestridge.

Consequently, he would have rather seen any other creature in the world at this moment than the moody, unhappy man opposite to him; and it was impossible for him to resist a sigh of relief when Hubert, after a few, conventional words, rose and they separated.

To attempt to minister to Kestridge’s trouble was a task beyond Valentine; nevertheless, he felt sorry when they were apart that he had not tried to do something.

Hubert’s face haunted him all the day, and it gave him, therefore, great satisfaction to receive, a few hours later, at his chambers in the city, a penciled note from the young man, saying that he had resolved to change his plans.

“I shall go abroad for a little while, for I think this is necessary; but I shall return and take up my duties, as you suggested. I am awfully sorry, old fellow, to have bored you with a recital of my worries, but I feel better altogether since I have seen you. Your plain speaking has done good, you see.”

Valentine was touched by the note, but his interview with Hubert had put the finishing touch to the restlessness that had lived with him all day.

He felt suddenly that he in his turn needed to go away.

He had almost a fear to go back to Grace, and laugh, and talk, and eat, as though life was just as usual.

“Twenty-four hours alone somewhere out of the beaten track will do me good,” he said to himself, and he determined to send a telegram to Grace, announcing he should not be at home that night.

He said no more than that, for in truth at the moment he did not know where he should go; but as he finished his business, and walked out into the streets, an idea came rushing to his brain, an idea born of that vague longing that had come to him earlier in the day as he had sat in the train and had watched the raindrops patter on the window.

“I will go and see the sea,” he said to himself. “I will go to Beachcroft. Blainey will, no doubt, find room for me; and if not, I can always sleep at the inn.”