Someone at a Distance Part III

Avery takes Louise to a hotel in London, and then they go to France, but Louise wont let him meet her parents till they are safely married. Ellen is hurt and angry and she tells her friends and family that she wants a divorce and wont take any money from Avery. Hugh says the same, that he will stay in the army sooner than let Avery pay for him to go to College after his national service. Avery tries to talk to him but he is half in love with Louise and half very much ashamed of his own bad behaviour. He starts to drink heavily and Louise does not like this but she hangs onto her lover. Meanwhile in her home town, her former lovers wife is having her first baby and Paul is becoming a devoted husband. Ellen's friends try to persaude her to wait a while for Avery to lose interest in Louise and come back to her, or at least to ask for generous alimony. She tells her friends that neither she nor the children want much from him - she has some money of her own and she will get a job, though she has no training or experience. Anne has a horse that she loves, and hates the idea of haivng to give him up if they leave their house in the country, but Ellen has a lucky break. They live near a hotel which caters to elderly widows, and the manageress there is tired out and bad tempered. She suggests to Ellen that she could become her assistant, and live in a cottage on the site, where they could keep the horse. Avery's business partner tells him that he thinks badly of him for leaving his wife and that he would like to buy him out of the publishing house they own, as he doesnt want to work with him. Avery feels very hard done by... and its worse when his partner says that he would be glad to take Hugh, the son into the business, if Avery sells up. He and Louise make a trip to America to visit publishing houses there, and Louise is hopeful that Avery will be successful in another business, or become a rich gentleman of leisure, but she is getting irritated by Avery's self pity and his drinking when he is depressed. When the divorce is made absolute, Avery marries her, more out of a feeling of obligation than anything else, and they go to France to visit her parents. HOwever, when the parents find out that she was named in a divorce and has now made a civil marriage with a Non Catholic, they fall out with her and say they will not receive her. Louise, angry and upset, meets her old beau, Paul and hints broadly to his wife that she was his lover. Paul's wife gets very upset but he and she manage to patch up their marriage as he has grown to love her. Louise's spiteful streak puts people off her, and when they go back to England Avery feels very mixed up. He meets Ellen and tells her that he no longer even likes Louise but that he has to stay married to her for a while, as he has caused a lot of the mess by his stupidity in rushing into an affair and then into leaving her and getting a divorce. Ellen tells him it will be a long time before Anne who is only a kid, gets over the whole thing, but she does not rule out forgiving him in due course. The ending is ambivalent, with Avery being married to a girl much younger than him, whom he no longer likes or respects, and Louise being in what seems to be now a marriage in name only. Avery is trying to pull himself together and go back to work, but his weakness in falling into Louis's trap is not a hopeful sign. However, Ellen has like many of Whipple's heroines, found some salvation in finding a job, and going to work and keeping busy..... She is lucky to find the assistant housekeeper job, at 43, but she is willing to work hard and make a new life for herself and her children.