A Reconstructed Marriage

Chapter 13

During the following three weeks, Robert lived in an earthly paradise. His brother drew him with cords of strong wisdom and affection always into the ways of pleasantness and peace. Theodora grew every day more lovely and more familiar; her little coolnesses vanished in the warmth of Robert's smiles, her shy pride was conquered by his persistent and passionate wooing; and the days went by in a glory of innocent amusements. Theodora and little David were clever and fearless riders, and they soon made the accomplishment easy to Robert, who was delighted with its joyful mastery, and greatly disappointed if bad weather, or any other event, prevented their morning gallop.

Very frequently he accompanied his brother into San Francisco, met many of her great financiers and merchants, and was their guest at such elaborate lunches and dinners as he had never dreamed possible. Or, he went with Mr. Newton to his vineyard and watched the process of raisin-making. And Theodora had a dance for him, and the lovely young girls present taught him the American steps, and made him wonder over their beauty, their brightness, their perfect ease of manner, and their manifest superiority and authority over male adorers, who appeared to be perfectly delighted with their own subjugation. A full course at the greatest university in the world would not have given him such a civilizing social education as the pretty girls of San Francisco did in a month.

But all things come to an end, and one day Robert received two letters which compelled a pause in this pleasant life. They were from his mother and his head manager. His mother wrote: "You be to come home, Robert Campbell; everything is going to the mischief wanting you! I am hearing that the men are on strike at the works, and that the fires have been banked, and the gates locked. Jamie Rathey is drinking too much wine and neglecting his business, and Christina is whimpering and scolding, for she knows well he will not behave himself until he gets the word from you. As for myself, I am barely holding up against the great strain, for there's none to help me, Christina having trouble enough in her own shoes, and My Lady Wynton having almost forgotten the way to her own home, since she was promoted to a residence in Wynton Castle. So, Robert, my lad, come back as quick as you can, for your mother is sorely needing you."

He showed this letter to his brother, and David only smiled. "Let me see your manager's letter, Robert," he asked, and when he had read it, he smiled still more significantly.

"I do not think your letters need give you any anxiety, Robert," he said. "The letter from Andrew Starkie, your manager, is dated two days later than mother's, and he does not even name a strike among your workers. He seems troubled only because the orders are so large he is afraid that the cash left at his command will not be sufficient to carry them out. We can send more money to-day. I see no necessity for you to hurry. I want you to take a sail up to Vancouver, and another sail down to the Isthmus. You have given me no time yet. And what about your position with Theodora?"

"I must find that out immediately. The day after I came, I gave her a ring she valued highly-a ring that her pupils presented to her. It had been stolen, and I recovered it, and she was delighted when I put it on her finger. But when I offered her the wedding ring she returned it to me, she shook her head, closed her eyes, and would not look at it."

"Try her again. She has changed since then. I am sure she loves you now."

"I am just going to her," and he turned away with such a mournful look that his brother called him back.

"Look here, Robert," he said, "faint heart never won fair lady, or anything else for that matter. Your face is enough to frighten any woman. Women do not fancy despairers."

"David, you don't know what a hopeless task it is to court your wife. She knows all your weak points, and just how most cruelly to snub you."

"That is not Theodora's way! Speak to her kindly, but bravely. Be straight in all you say, for I declare to you she feels a lie."

"Great heavens! I should think I know that, David. I was often forced to break my promises to her, or in the stress of business I forgot them; and at last, she never noticed any promise I made. It used to make me angry."

"What made you angry?"

"O, the change in her face, when I said I would do anything. She never contradicted me in words, but I knew she was mentally throwing my promise over her shoulder. It was not pleasant."

"Very unpleasant-to her."

"I meant to myself."

"Well, Robert, when you are going to ask a woman to do you a miraculous favor, do not think of yourself, think of her. Forget yourself, this morning."

"O, I think constantly of Theodora."

David looked queerly at his brother, and seemed on the point of asking him a question, but he likely thought it useless. Robert went off trying to look hopeful and brave, but inwardly in a muddle of anxious uncertainty, because of his mother's letter. He found Theodora in a shady corner of the piazza; she was reclining in a Morris chair, and thinking of him. Her loving smile, her happy leisure, her morning freshness and beauty, her outstretched hand, made an entrancing picture. He placed a chair at her side, and sat down, and Theodora after a glance into his face asked:

"O, knight of the rueful countenance, what troubles you this beautiful morning?"

"I have had letters from home," he answered; "not pleasant letters."

"From your mother, then?"

"One of them is from mother."

"She could not write a pleasant letter, and if she could, she would not."

"Will you read it?"

"I would not cast my eyes upon anything her eyes have looked on."

"She says enough to make it necessary for me to go home."

"Home?"

"It is the only home I have. You--"

"Do not include me, in any remark about your home."

"Once you made my home your home."

"Never! There was no such thing as home, in Traquair House."

"But, my darling Dora-my darling wife--"

"I am not your wife. When I sent you the wedding ring back-that you said was yours, not mine-I divorced myself from all a wife's duties, pains, and penalties."

"You are my wife, and nothing but my death can make you free."

"Oh, but you are mistaken! You made a solemn contract with me, and you broke every condition of that contract."

"Suppose I did, that--"

"Your faithlessness made the contract null and void--"

"The law of England--"

"I care nothing about the law of England. I am now an American citizen."

"But, Dora, my dear, dear love, you will surely go back to Glasgow with me?"

"Not for all creation! I would rather die."

"Am I to go back alone? That is too cruel."

"Why do you wish to go back?"

"Have you considered my business, Dora?"

"No, I have thought only of you."

"But you must think of my business. How can you expect me to give it up? Why, the 'Campbell Iron Works' are almost historic. They were founded by my great-grandfather. They are making more money under my management than ever they did before."

"If you put your historic iron works before me, you are not worthy of me."

"My mother's, and my sister's livelihoods are in the works. They look to me to protect them."

"If you put your mother, and your sisters before me, you are not worthy of me."

"They love me, Dora."

"Your mother has many investments. She is rich. Your sisters are well married. Neither of them would put you before their husbands, why should you put them before your wife and son? If they had loved you, they would not have broken up your home, and driven your wife and child away from you. You were a provider of cash, a giver of social prestige to them-no more."

"Then you expect me to give up my family, my business, my country-everything."

"I will have everything, or nothing."

She rose as she said these words, and stood looking into his face with eyes full of love and trouble.

"Then God help me, Theodora," he faltered, "for this hour I die to every hope of happiness in this life!" He lifted her hand, and his tears dropped on it as he kissed it. "Farewell! Farewell!"

He was standing before her the image of despairing Love, and she lifted her eyes, and they met the passionate grief in his. She could not bear it. "Oh, Robert!" she sobbed, "Oh, Robert, I do love you. I have loved none but you. I never shall love any other." She laid her head against his shoulder, and he silently kissed her many times, and then went slowly away.

He went straight to his brother with his sorrow, and David listened in grave silence, until the story of the interview was over. Then he said softly:

"Poor Theodora!"

Robert was astonished, even hurt by the exclamation. "Why do you pity Theodora?" he asked. "It is I you ought to pity."

"You ought to have had pity on yourself, Robert. Of course, you are miserable, and you will be far more miserable. How could you bear to give your wife such a cowardly disappointment; how could you do it?"

"I do not understand you, David-cowardly--"

"Yes, that is the word for it. You have been persuading her for a month, that you loved her before, and above, all earthly things. As you noticed, she did not at first believe this, but I am sure the last two weeks she has taken all your protestations into her heart."

"I told her nothing but the truth."

"And as soon as you think she loves you--"

"She does love me-she says so."

"You take advantage of her love, and ask her to go back to a life that almost killed her, before she fled from it. Poor Theodora! And I call your act a selfish, cowardly one."

"What did you expect me to do?"

"To give up everything for her."

"To give up the works-the Campbell Iron Works! To give them up! Sell them perhaps at a loss! Did you expect I would do this?"

"I did. I supposed you wished her to be again your wife."

"You know I wished it."

"I do not believe you. I think as your holiday was over, you wished to back out of your promise, and you knew the easiest way to do so was to require her to go back to Glasgow."

"Back out! What do you mean, David?"

"Your mother orders you home, and rather than offend her, or meet her sarcasms, you ask Theodora to do what you well know she will never do. Having taught her to love you again, you make her an offer that it is impossible for her to accept; then you leave her to suffer once more the pang of wrong and despairing love. Cowardly is too mild a word; your conduct is that of a scoundrel."

"My God, David, are you turning against me?"

"Robert, Robert! I am ashamed of you. Suppose Theodora went back to Glasgow with you, what would be her position, and what would people-especially women-say about it? She would be a wife who ran away from her husband, but whom her husband discovered, and brought back to her duties. Upon this text, what cutting, cruel speeches mother and all the women in your set would make. The position would be a triumph for you-some men would envy and admire you, all would praise you for standing up so persistently for the authority of the male. But poor Theodora, who would stand by her?"

"I would."

"And your defence of your wife would be counted as a thing chivalrous and magnanimous in you, but it would be disgraceful in her to require it. She, the poor innocent one, would get all the blame and the shame, you, the guilty one--"

"Stop, David! I never thought of her return in this light."

"I can imagine mother and the rest of the women chortling and glorying over the runaway wife brought back."

"I tell you, I would stand by her through thick and thin."

"But you could not prevent the women hounding her, and upon my honor, Robert, she would deserve it."

"No, David. She would not deserve it."

"I say she would."

"What for?"

"For coming back with you. Every woman with a particle of self-respect would feel that she had betrayed her s*x, and dishonored her wifehood, and they would despise, and speak ill of her for doing so. And she would deserve it."

"Then all this month you have been expecting me to come here to live?"

"There was no other manly and gentlemanly way out of your dilemma; and your coming at all authorized the expectation."

"The iron works are not all, David. Do you think I care nothing for my family, and my country?"

"Do you think you are the only person who cares for their family? What about Theodora's feelings? Her father gave up his ministry, and taking his wife and the savings of his whole life, he came here to the ends of the earth with his child, because you had treated her and her son cruelly. Now you ask her to leave them here, in a new country, where they have not one relative-in their old age--"

"I forgot their claim. I will pay all their expenses back to England."

"Mrs. Newton could not bear the journey back. Mr. Newton has lost all his interests in England; what money they have is invested here. Oh, if you do not instantly see their pitiful condition without their daughter, it is useless to explain it to you. Then there is their grandchild. He is the light of their life. If their grandchild was taken away, they would be bereft indeed."

"Their grandchild is my son. My claim is paramount. I must have my boy at all hazards. I want him educated in Scotland, and brought up a Scotchman, not an American. He will be heir to the works, and must understand the people, and the conditions he has to live with, and work with."

"You will never make a Scotchman of Davie. You will never get him out of this country, or this state. You will never make an iron-worker of David, he loves too well the free, and open-air life; and the blue skies, and sunshine."

"He is under authority, and must come."

"Under his mother's authority yet, and mind this, Robert, you will not be permitted to take him from her; not be permitted, I say."

"My God, what am I to do?"

"Do right. There is no other way to be happy."

"There are two rights here, my mother and my sisters have claims as well as my wife and my son."

"Then for God's sake go to your mother and your sisters! Why did you come to me for advice, when you are still tied to your mother's apron-strings."

"Now, you are angry at me."

"Yes, and justly so. But if you are bent on Glasgow, the sooner you start for the dismal city, the better."

"I will go at once. Will you let some one drive me to San Francisco?"

"I will tell Saki to bring a buggy to the door in half-an-hour."

"Don't go away from me, David-don't do that! I am miserable enough without your desertion."

"I am disappointed in you, Robert-sorely, sorely disappointed. I have had a dream about our future lives together, and it is, it seems, only a dream. Good-bye, Robert! I do not feel able to watch the ending of all my hopes, so Saki will drive you to the city. And you, too, will be better alone. Good-bye, good-bye!"

So they parted, and Robert was driven into the city and took his ticket for the next train bound for New York. He had some hours to wait, and he went to the hotel he had frequented with his brother, and sat down in the office. Undoubtedly there was a secret hope in his heart, that David would follow him, and he watched with anxiety every newcomer. But David did not follow him, and when he could wait no longer, he went to his train. Bitter disquiet and uncertainty wrung his heart, and he was glad when the moving train permitted him to isolate himself in a dismal, sullen stillness.

He had also a violent nervous headache, and physical pain was a thing he knew so little about, that he was astonished at his suffering, and resented it. "And this is the end of everything!" he muttered to himself, "the end of everything! It was brutal to expect me to give up my business, my family, and my country," and then he ceased, for something reminded him that Theodora had once made that same sacrifice for him. In any crisis the "set" of the life will count, and the "set" of Robert's life was selfishness. This passion now boldly combated all dissent from his personal satisfaction, denied any supremacy but his will, drowned the voice of Honor, the pleadings of Love, and insisted on his own pleasure and interest, at all costs.

Sorrow, if it be possible, takes refuge in sleep; but sleep was far from Robert Campbell. His body was racked with physical suffering that he knew not how to alleviate; his soul was aching in all its senses. He was assailed by memories, every one of which he would like to have met with a shriek. All he loved was behind him, every moment he was leaving them further behind. And his God dwelt-or visited-only in sacred buildings. He never thought of Him as in a railway car, never supposed Him to be observant of the trouble between his wife and himself, would not have believed that there was present an Omniscient Eye, looking with ancient kindness on all his pain, and ready to relieve it. And oh, the terror of those long nights, when suffering, sorrow, and remorse were riotous, and where to him, God was not!

On the second day, the conductor began to watch Campbell. He induced him to take a cup of strong coffee and lie down, and then went among the passengers seeking a physician. "I am a physician," said a young man whose seat was not far from Robert's. "I am Dr. Stuart of San Francisco. I have been watching the man you mean; he is either insane or ill. I will not neglect him."

Robert was really ill; he grew better and worse, better and worse constantly, until they were near Denver. Then Dr. Stuart went to his side and made another effort to induce him to converse. "You are ill," he said. "I am a physician and know it. You must stop travelling for a few days. Get off at Denver. Where is your home?"

"In Scotland. I am going there."

"Impossible-as you now are. Get off at Denver. Go to an hotel, and send for this physician," and he handed him a slip of paper on which the name was written. Robert glanced at it, and held it in his hand.

"Put it in your vest pocket."

He did so, but his hands trembled so violently, and he looked into the man's face with eyes so full of unspeakable suffering and sorrow, that the stranger's heart was touched. He resolved to get off at Denver with him, and see that he was properly attended to.

"What is your name?" he asked.

"I am Robert Campbell."

"Brother of David Campbell of San Francisco?"

"Yes."

"He is as good a man as ever lived. I know him well."

"Write and tell him his brother is dying-he will come to me."

"Oh, no! you are not dying. We will not bring him such a long journey. I will stay with you, until you are better-but off the train you must get."

"Thank you! I will do as you say. I will pay you well."

"I am not thinking of 'pay.' I know your brother, it is pay enough to serve him, by helping you."

Robert nodded and tried to smile. He put his hand into the doctor's hand, went with him to a carriage, and they were driven to an hotel. During the change, he did not speak, he had all that he could manage, to keep himself erect and preserve his consciousness. But there are mystically in our faces, certain characters, which carry in them the motto of our souls; and the motto the doctor read on Robert's face was-No Surrender. He told himself this, when he had got his patient into bed, and surrounded him with darkness and stillness and given him a sedative. "Some men would proceed to have brain fever," he mused, "but not this man. He will fight off sickness, resent it, deny it, and rise above it in a few days. I'll give him a week-but he will not succumb. There's no surrender in that face, though it is white and thin with suffering."

For four days, however, Robert wavered between better and worse, as the gusts of frantic remorse and despair assailed him. Then he forgot everything but the irreparable mistake that had ruined his life, and during the paroxysms whispered continually: "Oh, God! oh, God! that it were possible to undo things done!" a whisper that could hardly be heard by mortal ears, but which passed beyond the constellations, and reached the ear and the heart of Him, who dwelleth in the Heaven of Heavens.

It was in one of those awful encounters of the soul with itself, that he reached the depth of suffering in which we see clearly; for there is no such revealer as sorrow. Suddenly and swift as a flash of light, he knew his past life, as he would know it in eternity-its selfishness, its cruelty, its injustice. Then he heard words which pealed through his soul, with heavenly-sweet convincingness, and left their echo forever there. For awhile he remained motionless and speechless, and let the comforting revelation fill him with adoring love and gratitude. And those few minutes of pause and praise were not only sacrificial and sacramental, they were strong with absolution. He knew what he must do; he had not a doubt, not a reservation of any kind. In a space of time so short that we have no measure for it, he had surrendered everything, and been made worthy to receive everything.

O, Mystery of Life, from what a depth proceed thy comforts and thy lessons! Even the chance acquaintance had had his meaning, and had done his work. Robert had some wonderful confidences with him, as he lay for a week free of pain, and quietly gathering strength for the journey he must take the moment he was able for it. He had no hesitation as to this journey. He knew that he must go back to Theodora-back to the same goal he had turned away from. Peradventure the blessing he had rejected might yet be waiting there.

In ten days Dr. Stuart permitted him to travel, and without pause or regret he reached San Francisco, refreshed himself, and taking a carriage drove out to the Newtons'. It was afternoon when he reached the place, and it had the drowsy afternoon look and feeling. He sent the carriage to the stable, and told the driver to wait there for further orders-and then walked up to the house. As he passed Mr. Newton's study he saw him sitting reading, and he opened the door and went in. The preacher looked up in astonishment, rose and walked towards him.

"Robert," he said softly, "is that you?"

"Yes, father. I have been very ill. I have come back to ask your forgiveness-and hers-if she will listen to me."

"I am glad to see you. Sit down. You look ill-what can I do for you?"

"Listen to me! I will tell you all."

Then he opened his heart freely to the preacher, who listened with intense sympathy and understanding-sometimes speaking a word of encouragement, sometimes only touching his hand, or whispering, "Go on, Robert." And perhaps there was not another man in California, so able to comprehend the marvellous story of Robert's return unto his better self. For he had in a large measure that penetrative insight into spiritualities, which connect man with the unseen world; and that mystical, incommunicable sense of a life, that is not this life. He knew its voices, intuitions, and celestial intimations-things, which no one knoweth, save they who receive them. And when Robert had finished his confession, he said:

"I also, Robert, have stood on that shining table-land which lies on the frontier of our consciousness; and there received that blessed certainty of God which can never again leave the soul. And you must not wonder at the suddenness and rapidity of the vision. Every experience of this kind must be sharply sudden. That chasm dividing the seen from the unseen, must be taken at one swift bound, or not at all. You cannot break that leap. Thank God, you have taken it! This remembrance, and the power it has left behind, can never depart from you; for