Crying for the Light Volume Iii Part 3

'But you know we did not get married according to ordinary notions of propriety. We did not go to a fas.h.i.+onable church. We had no fas.h.i.+onable people to see us made one, and there were none to wish us G.o.d-speed as we took the cab to the Midland Railway _en route_ for Liverpool. So what can you expect?'

'And worst of all,' said Wentworth, laughing, 'we got married-'

'At the registrar's office,' said Rose, shrugging up her shoulders and making a face with a sad expression of horror, adding, after an interval: 'And I don't believe anyone knows it yet.'

'So much the better. What has the world got to do with our private affairs? What to us is the world or the world's laws?'

'Upon my word, Wentworth, you are talking as improperly as ever.'

'Yes. I fear I've got that bad habit, and I don't expect I shall ever get rid of it as long as I live. You and I can talk plainly. We need not try to humbug each other. It is little we have to trouble ourselves about Mrs. Grundy. The law has bound us together, but we are bound together by something stronger than the law, I hope.'

'Hope, Wentworth, is not the word. You know it,' said Rose, as she lovingly looked into his somewhat grave and worn face.

On board the steamer thus the newly-married couple talked. Marriages are of many kinds. For some we have to thank G.o.d, for others, alas! the devil.

Referring to his marriage, William Hutton, the far-famed Birmingham historian, writes: 'I never courted her, nor she me, yet we, by the close union with which we were cemented, were travelling towards the temple of Hymen without conversing upon the subject. Such is the happy effect of reciprocal love.' This reciprocal love generally leads to matrimony, and thus it was Rose and Wentworth had married. A good deal is to be said against the inst.i.tution. Matrimony is not always a bed of roses. If the roses are there, they are often furnished with an intolerable supply of thorns. There can be no doubt of the fact that in many cases matrimony has led to an immense amount of misery. It has kept in chains men and women who had been better apart. It has made for them life dull, blank, sunless, joyless, a thing only to terminate with death. It is hard that men and women thus ill-mated are not permitted to burst their fetters and be free. Take, for instance, the case of Mehetabel Wesley, the younger sister of the celebrated founder of Wesleyanism. Her heart was sensitive and full of love. We know what the mother of the Wesleys was-a stern, hard woman, whose first duty as a mother, according to her own statement, was to break the wills of her children. The father left his wife's bed because, when he prayed for King William, she would not say amen. None of the girls seemed to have married happily, but this, the youngest and fairest of them all, had a Benjamin's mess of misery. Her father compelled her to suffer the brutality of a marriage with a low wretch utterly unfit to be her lord and master. Was not her marriage an immorality? Was it not a shame that society should have compelled her to live with such a man?-so much so 'that her only hope,' as she told a friend, was death, 'because we Methodists always die in transports of joy.' But what do men and women know of each other, as a rule, before marriage? Very little, indeed. Hence so much of the wretchedness of the wife, of the immorality of the man. I fear that it is the married men who chiefly sustain and create the vices of our great cities. Hence the bitter cry of him-our chief poet-the stern Puritan, who wrote in strains that can never die-

'Of man's first disobedience and the fruit Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste Brought death into the world and all our woe,'

on man's behalf. Hence the earnestness with which he pleaded for relief to him who finds himself bound fast 'to an image of earth, with whom he looked to be the co-partner of a sweet and pleasant society.' However, Milton is practically not so much an advocate for divorce as is generally supposed. It is well known that he took his wife back, and they lived happily together till her death, There is generally a _modus vivendi_, unless the husband and wife be altogether foolish. Neither man nor woman in the long run can withstand true love, and it is hard to break a tie which once seemed desirable, and which is easily made bearable, especially when the young ones come and play around the hearth. Fathers and mothers find it hard to leave their offspring, even if in the commerce of life they have found each other out. The children bring with them the old atmosphere of tenderness and love.

Returning to Douglas, Wentworth found a telegram to the effect that Sir Watkin Strahan had suddenly died of apoplexy.

'Not very surprising,' said Wentworth.

Sir Watkin belonged to the past in that respect rather than the present-to the age of port wine drinkers, when men got real port wine, and did not seem to be much the worse for it. The light wines of France had little charm for him, and soda-water and seltzer were equally obnoxious. His medical man had warned him, but Sir Watkin laughed at his warnings. He came of a long-lived family. His father and his grandfather had alike far exceeded their threescore years and ten when they were gathered to their fathers, and Sir Watkin argued that so it would be with him, a blunder which nearly cost him his life.

A later telegram, however, gave the particulars of the sad accident.

'This is a sad ending to a pleasant day,' said Wentworth, as they climbed the rock on which they had pitched their tent. Below was the town, with its noisy merry-makers. Up there, amongst the roses and the myrtles, they were alone. Over there was England, while between them lay a gorgeous ocean, on which scarce a s.h.i.+p was to be seen, blue as the heavens above, save where tinged by the crimson and gold of the setting sun. 'How pleasant it is here!' continued Wentworth; 'no work to do, no friends to bother, no letters to worry.'

Rose burst out laughing.

'Why do you laugh when I try to be poetical?'

'Because, dear boy,' was the reply, 'it is not in your line, and because I see the postman coming up the hill with the letter-bag.'

Away rushed Wentworth to meet him with an ardour by no means consistent with his recent speech. The fact is, however tired of life we may be, however happy in some rural retreat, however absorbed and enraptured with one another a man and wife may be-especially during the idle season known as the honeymoon-there is a mysterious fascination in the appearance of the postman, and we bless the memory of Sir Rowland Hill.

'There are no end of letters and newspapers. I vote we don't look at them till after breakfast to-morrow, I will have a cigar, and you can work.'

'Yes, that is how you men talk. I am to work like a slave, while you are to lie on the gra.s.s smoking. But I suppose I must do as you tell me, for

"Sufferance is the badge of all our tribe."

I tell you what-if you're lazy, I will be lazy, too.'

'Yes, that is what I meant.'

'Then why did you not say so, sir?'

'I did. When I tell a woman to work, of course I mean that you are to sit and do nothing.'

'Yes, but I am not going to do nothing. I am going to read what looks to me a very extraordinary letter. It bears the Sloville post-office mark.

It was addressed to London, and here it has followed us all the way from town. I must look at it-it is such a scrawl.'

'Remember our compact.'

'No, I don't. I must open this letter-I am dying to read it.'

'Oh, the curiosity of woman,' said Wentworth, as he smoked his cigar.

Presently Rose gave a shriek.

'What is it all about?' asked Wentworth.

'There, read it for yourself,' Rose exclaimed.

It was as follows:

'DEAR MADAME,

'That pore boy as you took from Sloville, is the true son and heir of Sir Watkin Strahan, go to horspitle in the Boro' where a woman named Sally is hill. She can prove it-but she can't live long. Hopin'

this will find you in 'elth as it leaves me at this present time, I am yours most respectfully a sincere friend to the pore boy.'

'Wentworth,' said Rose energetically, 'we must leave here by the first boat to-morrow morning.'

'What a bore. I suppose we must. And so fades away love in a cottage,'

exclaimed Wentworth, as he went indoors to help his wife to pack up.

CHAPTER XXV.

A REVELATION.

No sooner was Rose in London than she made her way to the hospital indicated in the anonymous note which had been the cause of her and her husband's unwelcome return to town.

She had never been inside a hospital before. There was something bewildering in its vastness and its antiquity. Close by ran swift the current of City life, ever turbid and boisterous. In there all was calm and still. The one thought that brightened and hallowed the spot was the life that had been saved, especially among the poor, to whom our great hospitals are indeed a blessing and a boon.

'I want to see a patient in the women's ward,' said Rose to the porter, as she alighted at the entrance.

The porter expressed his fear that she had come in vain, unless she had a better clue to identification.

In his despair he sent the lady in the direction of the women's ward, and there her difficulties began anew. There were many poor suffering ones in the women's wards. How could they tell where was the one she sought?

As she was waiting, one of the staff came downstairs.