Domestic fiction; Inheritance and succession -- Fiction
During the whole of that day the matter was discussed. Lord George
obstinately insisted on taking his wife down to Cross Hall, if not on
the next day, then on the day after. But the Dean, and with the Dean
the young wife, positively refused to accede to this arrangement. The
Dean had his things brought from the inn to the house in Munster Court,
and though he did not absolutely declare that he had come there for his
daughter's protection, it was clear that this was intended. In such an
emergency Lord George knew not what to do. Though the quarrel was
already very bitter, he could not quite tell his father-in-law to leave
the house; and then there was always present to his mind a feeling that
the Dean had a right to be there in accordance with the pecuniary
arrangement made. The Dean would have been welcome to the use of the
house and all that was in it, if only Mary would have consented to be
taken at once down to Cross Hall. But being under her father's wing,
she would not consent. She pleaded that by going at once, or running
away as she called it, she would own that she had done something wrong,
and she was earnest in declaring that nothing should wring such a
confession from her. Everybody, she said, knew that she was to stay in
London to the end of June. Everybody knew that she was then to go to
the Deanery. It was not to be borne that people should say that her
plans had been altered because she had danced the Kappa-kappa with
Captain De Baron. She must see her friends before she went, or else her
friends would know that she had been carried into banishment. In answer
to this, Lord George declared that he, as husband, was paramount. This
Mary did not deny, but, paramount as the authority was, she would not,
in this instance, be governed by it.
It was a miserable day to them all. Many callers came, asking after
Lady George, presuming that her speedy departure from the ball had been
caused by her accident. No one was admitted, and all were told that she
had not been much hurt. There were two or three stormy scenes between
the Dean and his son-in-law, in one of which Lord George asked the Dean
whether he conceived it to be compatible with his duty as a clergyman
of the Church of England to induce a wife to disobey her husband. In
answer to this, the Dean said that in such a matter the duty of a
Church dignitary was the same as that of any other gentleman, and that
he, as a gentleman, and also as a dignitary, meant to stand by his
daughter. She refused to pack up, or to have her things packed. When he
came to look into himself, he found that he had not power to bid the
servants do it in opposition to their mistress. That the power of a
husband was paramount he was well aware, but he did not exactly see his
way to the exercise of it. At last he decided that he, at any rate,
would go down to Cross Hall. If the Dean chose to create a separation
between his daughter and her husband, he must bear the responsibility.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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