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"It's no good quoting Marcus Aurelius," said Tarvrille, "to a chap with his finger in the crack of a door." "I suppose it isn't," I said. "One doesn't want to be a flatulent ass of course," said Tarvrille, "still " He resumed with an air of plunging. "It will sound just rot to you now, Stratton, but after all it comes to this. Behind us is a situation with half-a-dozen particular persons.
We went out with Tarvrille expanding the topic of the seasons. "It's a damned good month, November, say what you like about it." Philip walked grimly silent on my other hand. "And it's a damned awkward situation you've got us into, Stratton," said Tarvrille, "say what you like about it." "It isn't as though old Justin was any sort of beast," he reflected, "or anything like that, you know.
Tarvrille opened the half of the heavy front door for me, hesitated, and came down the broad steps into the chilly grey street and a few yards along the pavement with me. He wanted to say something that he found difficult to say. When at last he did find words they were quite ridiculous in substance, and yet at the time I took them as gravely as he intended them.
It was as if Tarvrille was as concerned as I was for this particular divorce, as if he struggled with a lively desire to see me and Mary happily married after the shortest possible interval. And indeed he manifestly wasn't unsympathetic; he had the strongest proclivity for the romantic and picturesque, and it was largely the romantic picturesqueness of renunciation that he urged upon me.
I made some remark, I forget what, but he overbore me. Real things we want are Hate Hate and COARSE think'n. I b'long to the school of Mrs. F's Aunt " "What?" said some one, intent. "In 'Little Dorrit," explained Tarvrille; "go on!" "Hate a fool," said my assailant. Tarvrille glanced at me. I smiled to conceal the loss of my temper.
The Liberal dissensions and the belated but by no means contemptible Socialist candidate were providential interpositions. I think, however, the conduct of Gane, Crupp, and Tarvrille in coming down to fight for me, did count tremendously in my favour. "We aren't going to win, perhaps," said Crupp, "but we are going to talk."
I came back to find two letters from Mary and a little accumulation of telegrams and notes, one written in my flat, from Tarvrille. Mary's letters were neither of them very long, and full of a new-born despair. She had not realized how great were the forces against her and against us both. She let fall a phrase that suggested she was ill.
He was I think amazed beyond measure at this revelation of the possibilities of his cold and distant wife, with a vast passion of jealousy awaking in him, and absolutely incapable of forming any plan to meet the demands of his extraordinary situation. Guy and Philip got to him that night, Tarvrille came down next morning, and Martens became a debate.
I cried, weeping also, and held out my arms, and we clung together and kissed with tear-wet faces. "No," cried Guy belatedly, "we promised Justin!" But Tarvrille restrained his forbidding arm, and then after a second's interval put a hand on my shoulder. "Come," he said.... And so it was Mary and I parted from one another.
Moreover, as I was presently to be told, she was ill. Guy and Philip were, I believe, the moving spirits in the affair; Tarvrille was their apologetic accomplice, Justin took the responsibility for what they did and bore the cost, he was bitterly ashamed to have these compulsions applied to his wife, but full now of a gusty fury against myself.
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