Helen Harmon was glad when the colonel was gone. She went to a mirror, fixed to the wall between the two windows of the room, and she carefully rearranged her hair. She could not feel quite herself until she knew that the scar was covered again and hidden from curious eyes. Then she sat down, glad to be alone. It had been a great and unexpected pleasure to see Wimpole, but the discovery he had made, and the things he had said, had disturbed and unnerved her.
There had been conviction in his voice when he had said that Harmon might recover, and the possibility of a change in her husband's condition had crossed her mind more than once. She felt that a return to such a state of things as had made up her life before he had become insane, would kill her by slow torture. It was of no use any longer to tell herself that recovery was impossible, and to persuade herself that it was so by the mere repetition of the words. Words had no more weight, now.
She thought of her freedom since that merciful deliverance. It was not happiness, for there were other things yet to be suffered, but it was real freedom. She had her son's affliction to bear, but she could bear it alone and go and come with him as she pleased. She contrasted this liberty with what she had borne for years.
The whole history of their married life came back to her, the gradual progress of it from first to last, if indeed it had yet reached the end and was not to go back to the beginning again.
First there had been the sort of half-contented resignation which many young women feel during the early months of married life, when they have made what is called by the world a good match, simply because they saw no reason for not marrying and because they were ashamed to own that they cared for a man who did not seem to be attached to them. Sometimes the state lasts throughout life, a neutral, passionless, negative state, in which the heart turns flat and life is soon stale, a condition in which many women, not knowing what pain is, grow restless and believe that it must be pleasanter to be hurt than to feel nothing.
Henry Harmon had been handsome, full of life and nerve and enthusiasm for living, a rider, a sportsman, more reckless than brave and more brave than strong-minded, with a gift for being, or seeming to be, desperately in love, which had ultimately persuaded Helen to marry him in spite of her judgment. He turned pale when he was long near her, his eyes flashed darkly, his hands shook a little, and his voice trembled. An older woman might have thought it all rather theatrical, but he seemed to suffer, and that moved Helen, though it did not make her really love him. Women know that weakness of theirs and are more afraid of pitying an importunate suitor than of admiring him. So Helen married Harmon.
Disillusionment came as daylight steals upon dancers in a ballroom. At first it was not so painful as might have been imagined, for Helen was not excessively sensitive, and she had never really loved the man in the least. He grew tired of her and left her to herself a good deal. That was a relief, at first, for after she had realized that she did not love him, she shrank from him instinctively, with something very like real shame, and to be left alone was like being respected.
"Mrs. Blank's husband is neglecting her," says one.
"She does not seem to care; she looks very happy," answers another.
And she is temporarily happy, because Mr. Blank's neglect gives her a sense of bodily relief, for she knows that she has made a mistake in marrying him. It was so with Helen, and as she was not a changeable nor at all a capricious person, it might have continued to be so. But Harmon changed rapidly in the years that followed. From having been what people called fast, he became dissipated. He had always loved the excitement of wine. When it failed him, he took to stronger stuff, which presently became the essential requisite of his being. He had been said to be gay, then he was spoken of as wild, then as dissipated. Some people avoided him, and every one pitied Helen. Yet although he ruined his constitution, he did not wreck his fortunes, for he was lucky in all affairs connected with money. There remained many among his acquaintances who could not afford to disapprove of him, because he had power.
He drank systematically, as some men do, for the sake of daily excitement, and Helen learned to know tolerably well when he was dangerous and when he might be approached with safety. But more than once she had made horrible mistakes, and the memories of them were like dreams out of hell. In his drunkenness her face recalled other days to him, and forgotten words of passion found thick and indistinct utterance. Once she had turned on him, white and desperate in her self-defence. He struck her on the forehead with a cut-glass decanter, snatched from her toilet table. When she came to herself hours afterwards, it was daylight. Harmon was in a drunken sleep, and the blood on his face was hers.
She shuddered with pain from head to foot when she thought of it. Then had come strange lapses of his memory, disconnected speech, even hysterical tears, following senseless anger, and then he had ceased to recognize any one, and had almost killed one of the men who took care of him, so that it was necessary to take him to an asylum, struggling like a wild beast. Twice, out of a sense of duty, she had been to see whether he knew her, but he knew no one, and the doctors said it was a hopeless case. Since then she had received a simple confirmation of the statement every month, and there seemed to be no reason for expecting any change, and she felt free.
Free was the only word she could find, and she applied it to herself in a sense of her own, meaning that she had been liberated from the thraldom in which she had lived so many years face to face with his brutality, and hiding it from the world as best she could, protecting and defending his name, and refusing pity as she would have refused money had she been poor. People might guess what she suffered, but no one should know it from her, and no one but herself could tell the half of what she underwent.
Yet, now that it was all over, Wimpole suggested that it might begin again, unless she took measures to defend herself. But her heart revolted at the idea of a divorce. She wondered, as she tried to test herself, whether she could be as strong if the case really arose. It never occurred to her to ask whether her strength might not be folly, for it lay in one of those convictions by which unusual characters are generally moved, and conviction never questions itself.
It was not that in order to be divorced she must almost necessarily bring up in public and prove by evidence a certain number of her many wrongs. The publicity would be horrible. Every newspaper in the country would print the details, with hideous head-lines. Even her son's deficiency would be dragged into the light. She should have to explain how she had come by the scar on her forehead, and much more that would be harder to tell, if she could bring her lips to speak the words.
Nevertheless, she could do that, and bear everything, for a good cause. If, for instance, Archie's future depended upon it, or even if it could do him some good, she could do all that for his sake. But even for his sake, she would not be divorced, not even if Harmon were let out of the asylum and came back to her.
Some people, perhaps many, could not understand such a prejudice, or conviction, now that all convictions are commonly spoken of as relative. But will those who do not understand Helen Harmon consider how the world looked upon divorce as recently as five and twenty years ago? Nothing can give a clearer idea of the direction taken by social morality than the way in which half the world has become accustomed to regard marriage as a contract, and not as a bond, during the lifetime of people now barely in middle age.
Twenty-five or thirty years ago divorces were so rare as to be regarded in the light of very, uncommon exceptions to the general rule. The divorce law itself is not yet forty years old in England, nor twenty years old in France. In Italy there is no civil divorce whatever at the present day, and the Catholic Church only grants what are not properly divorces, but annullations of marriage, in very rare cases, and with the greatest reluctance.
Even in America, every one can remember how divorce was spoken of and thought of until very recently. Within a few years it was deemed to be something very like a disgrace, and certainly a profoundly cynical and immoral proceeding. To-day we can most of us count in our own acquaintance half a dozen persons who have been divorced and have married again. Whatever we may think of it in our hearts, or whatever our religious convictions may be on the subject, it has become so common that when we hear of a flagrant case of cruelty or unfaithfulness, by which a man or woman suffers, the question at once rises to our lips, 'Why does he not divorce his wife?' or 'Why does she not divorce her husband?' We have grown used to the idea, and, if it does not please us, it certainly does not shock us. It shocked our fathers, but we are perfectly indifferent.
Of course there are many, perhaps a majority, who, though not Roman Catholics, would in their own lives put up with almost anything rather than go to the divorce court for peace. Some actually suffer much and ask for no redress. But there are very many who have not suffered anything at all, excepting the favourite 'incompatibility of temper,' and who have taken advantage of the loose laws in certain states to try a second matrimonial experiment. In what calls itself society, there seems still to be a prejudice against a third marriage for divorced persons, but at the present rate of so-called progress this cannot last long, and the old significance of the word marriage will be quite lost before our great grandchildren are dead; in other words, by the end of the next century, at the furthest.
There are various forms of honourable political dreaming and of dishonourable political mischief-making nowadays, which we are accustomed to call collectively 'socialism.' Most of these rely for their hope of popular success upon their avowed intention of dividing property and preventing its subsequent accumulation. Marriage is an incentive of such accumulation, because it perpetuates families and therefore keeps property together by inheritance. Therefore most forms of socialism are at present in favour of divorce, as a means of ultimately destroying marriage altogether. A proverb says that whosoever desires the end, desires also the means. There is more truth in the saying than morality in the point of view it expresses. But there are those who desire neither the means nor the end to which they lead, and a struggle is coming, the like of which has not been seen since the beginning of the world, and of which we who are now alive shall not see the termination.
The Civil War in the United States turned upon slavery incidentally, not vitally. The cause of that great fight lay much deeper. In the same way the Social War, which is coming, will turn incidentally upon religion, and be perhaps called a religious war hereafter, but it will not be declared for the sake of faith against unbelief, nor be fought at first by any church, or alliance of churches, against atheism. It will simply turn out that the men who fight on the one side will have either the convictions or the prejudices of Christianity, or both, and that their adversaries will have neither. But the struggle will be at its height when the original steady current of facts which led to inevitable strife has sunk into apparent insignificance under the raging storm of conflicting belief and unbelief. The disadvantage of the unbelievers will lie in the fact that belief is positive and assertive, whereas unbelief is negative and argumentative. It is indeed easier to deny than to prove almost anything. But that is not the question. In life and war it is generally easier to keep than to take, and besides, those who believe 'care,' as we say, whereas those who deny generally 'care' very little. It is probable, to say the least of it, that so long as the socialists of the near future believe assertively that they have discovered the means of saving humanity from misery and poverty, and fight for a pure conviction, they will have the better of it, but that when they find themselves in the position of attacking half of mankind's religious faith, having no idea, but only a proposition, to offer in its place, they will be beaten.
That seems far from the question of divorce, but it is not. Before the battle, the opposing forces are encamped and intrenched at a little distance from each other, and each tries to undermine the other's outworks. Socialism, collectively, has dug a mine under Social Order's strongest tower, which is called marriage, and the edifice is beginning to shake from its foundations, even before the slow-match is lighted.
To one who has known the world well for a quarter of a century, it seems as though the would-be destroyers of the existing order had forgotten, among several other things, the existence of woman, remembering only that of the female. They practically propose to take away woman's privileges in exchange for certain more or less imaginary 'rights.' There is an apparent justice in the 'conversion,' as it would be called in business. If woman is to have all the rights of man, which, indeed, seem reducible to a political vote now and then, why should she keep all the privileges which man is not allowed? But tell her that when she is allowed to vote for the president of the United States once in four years, no man shall be expected to stand up in a public conveyance to give her a seat, nor to fetch and carry for her, nor to support her instead of being supported by her, nor to keep her for his wife any longer than he chooses, and the 'conversion' looks less attractive.
The reason why woman has privileges instead of rights is that all men tacitly acknowledge the future of humanity to be dependent on her from generation to generation. Man works or fights, and takes his rights in payment therefor, as well as for a means of working and fighting to greater advantage. And while he is fighting or working, his wife takes care of his children almost entirely. There is not one household in a hundred thousand, rich or poor, where there is really any question about that. It sounds insignificant, perhaps, and it looks as though anybody could take care of two or three small children. Those who have tried it know better, and they are women. Now and then rich mothers are too lazy to look after their children themselves. To do them such justice as one may, they are willing to spend any amount of money in order to get it well done for them, but the result is not encouraging to those who would have all children brought up 'by the state.' Even if it were so, who would bring them up? Women, of course. Then why not their own mothers? Because mothers sometimes--or often, for the sake of argument--do not exactly know how. Then educate the mothers, give them chances of knowing how, let them learn, if you know any better than they, which is doubtful, to say the least of it.
Moreover, does any man in his senses really believe that mothers, as a whole, would submit and let their children be taken from them to a state rearing-house, to be brought up under a number on a ticket by professional baby-farmers, in exchange for the 'right' to vote at a presidential election, and the 'right' to put away their husbands and take others as often as they please, and the 'right' to run for Congress? Yet the plan has been proposed gravely.
There seems to be a good deal to be said in favour of the existing state of things, after all, and particularly in favour of marriage, and therefore against divorce; and it is not surprising that woman, whose life is in reality far more deeply affected by both questions than man's life is, should have also the more profound convictions about them.
Woman brings us into the world, woman is our first teacher, woman makes the world what it is, from century to century. We can no more escape from woman, and yet continue to live our lives as they should be lived, than we can hide ourselves from nature. We are in her care or in her power during more than half our years, and often during all, from first to last. We are born of her, we grow of her, as truly as trees and flowers come of the mother earth and draw their life from the soil in which they are planted. The man who denies his mother is a bad man, and the man who has not loved woman is a man in darkness.
Man is not really unjust to woman in his thoughts of her either, unless he be a lost soul, but he has not much reason in respect of her nor any justice in his exactions. Because within himself he knows that she is everything and all things for the life and joy of men, therefore he would seem perfect in her eyes; and he rails against whatsoever in her does not please him, as a blot upon the lustre of his ideal, which indeed he would make a glorified reflexion of his own faults. When he is most imperfect, he most exacts her praise; when he is weakest, she must think him most strong; when he fails, she must call failure victory, or at the least she must name it honourable defeat; she must not see his meanness, but she must magnify the smallest of his generosities to the great measure of his immeasurable vanity therein; she must see faith in his unfaithfulness, honour in his disgrace, heroism in his cowardice, for his sake; she must forgive freely and forgettingly such injury as he would not pardon any man; in one word, she must love him, that in her love he may think and boast himself a god.
It is much to ask. And yet many a woman who loves a man with all her heart has done and daily does every one of those things, and more; and the man knows it, and will not think of it lest he should die of shame. And, moreover, a woman has borne him, a woman has nursed him, a woman taught him first; a woman gives him her soul and her body when he is a man; and when he is dead, if tears are shed for him, they are a woman's.
If we men are honest, we shall say that we do not give her much for all that, not much honour, not much faith. We think we do enough if we give her life's necessities and luxuries in fair share to the limit of our poverty or wealth; that we give much, if we love her; too much, if we trust her altogether.
It is a wonder that women should love, seeing what some men are and what most men may be when the devil is in them. It is a wonder that women should not rise up in a body and demand laws to free them from marriage, for one-half the cause that so many of them have.
But they do not. Even in this old age of history they still believe in marriage, and cling to it, and in vast majority cry out against its dissolution. No man ever believes in anything as a woman who loves him believes in him. Men have stronger arms, and heads for harder work, but they have no such hearts as women. And the world has been led by the heart in all ages.
Even when the great mistake is made, many a woman clings to the faith that made it, for the sake of what might have been, in a self-respect of which men do not dream. Even when she has married with little love, and taken a man who has turned upon her like a brute beast, her marriage is still a bond which she will not break, and the vow made is not void because the promise taken has been a vain lie. Its damnation is upon him who spoke it, but she still keeps faith.
So, when her fair years of youth lay scattered and withered as blown leaves along the desert of her past, Helen Harmon, wisely or unwisely, but faithfully and with a whole heart, meant to keep that plighted word which is not to be broken by wedded man and woman 'until death shall them part.'