"Before you receive this letter, my dear Dugdale," wrote Hayes Meredith, "you will have seen Mrs. Hungerford, and she will have told you all the news about me, in giving the history of herself--a history, by the bye, which has had a better ending than I expected, when first I made her out, according to your request.
"She is not much given to talking, I fancy, to any one, and I dare say she will not let you know much about her wretched life out here; but I can tell you it was wretched; and when I came to know her, and understand how superior a woman she is to the generality of women, such as I have known them, I was really grateful to you for giving me the chance of serving her. I don't think I was much more obliged to you in my life, and Ihaveowed you a turn or two.
"Hungerford was a regular blackguard, and an irredeemable snob as well, and she was only to be congratulated heartily on his death. The mode of it was rather horrible, to be sure; but if he had not been knocked on the head in the bush, the chances are he would have been hanged; and there's something to choose between the two, at all events.
"She is an interesting young woman, and I was sincerely glad to do her all the service in my power, which was not much, after all. I should like to know what becomes of her. I hope she has better days to see than any she lived through here; and I hope you will write to me when you can.
"But my letter does not solely concern Mrs. Hungerford. I have a selfish purpose in writing to you also, and the explanation of it needs some detail. You know that I am, and that I have been for some years, what I may safely call a prosperous man; and though I have a large family to provide for--five of them now (they were seven, but two little ones early succumbed to the climate)--I have never found that same very difficult to do. My children are all well, hearty, jolly, sturdy children, with the exception of our eldest boy--you have seen him, you may remember--Robert. He is not exactly sickly, but he is not strong; but it is less his bodily than his mental health that troubles his mother and myself.
"The boy is not contented, not happy, not a born colonial, like the rest; he has ideas and fancies other than theirs; he has an unruly temper, a quick impressionable brain, and a great aptitude for the graces, refinements, and luxuries of life, which--as I need not tell you it has had no chance of cultivation here--must be natural to him.
"His mother and I are not people to have a favourite among our children; it is share and share alike with them all, in affection as in everything else; but Robert is a discord somehow, and captious--in short, very hard to manage--and I have not the time to devote to an exceptional person in the family.
"He has a great notion that he is very superior to his brothers--quite an unfounded one--and thinks he should do no end of wonderful things in England, if he had the chance, by which, of course, he means the money. This I can give him; and as there is no doubt he can get a better education in England than here, and should his projects fail, or should he get tired of them, he can come back whenever he pleases, and still find a corner for himself here, I am quite disposed to let him try his own plans out.
"The others are true colonials; they have not the least desire to see the old country until they can do so in independent manhood; but I can plainly perceive that, for his own sake, and that of all the household, Robert must be allowed to have his own way, as far as it lies in my power to give it him.
"There is some prospect of an improved and accelerated communication between us and England, and should it be realised by the spring of next year, I will probably bring the boy to England myself, and thus see you once more in this world, which I never had any hope of doing a little while ago.
"My wife does not like, nor, to tell the truth, do I, the notion of a whole year being taken out of our span of life together, which it must be if I make my proposed voyage; but neither does she like the idea of her son travelling alone to a strange country, and commencing his career without the assistance and the comfort of his father's presence and guidance in those important 'first steps.' We shall see, when the time comes, which of these feelings will prevail.
"In the mean time, my dear Dugdale, I rely on your friendship, aided by your experience of English life, and all the changes in public opinion and manners which have taken place since my time, to guide me in this matter, to tell me what it will be best for me to do for and with the boy.
"Robert is not ill educated, in as far as the limits of our colonial possibilities extend; but his education will aid him little in English life, and towards that his inclinations set.
"Turn all I have said over, and write to me concerning it. Then, by the time I get home, if I ever get home, and, if I do not, by the time I send my boy home, you will have made up your mind, which, in a matter of this kind will be, as it ought to be, equivalent to making up mine, as to the proper course to be pursued.
"With all his faults, Robert will interest you, my dear Dugdale, I am certain; in his industry, his ambition, and his adaptive nature you will find something to admire.
"I have almost forgotten the ways of the old country, so completely have I turned--not my mind only, but my heart and my tastes--to the life of the new. I daresay you remember the days in which I was rather a 'buck,' ran heavy accounts with our common tailor, and knew, or pretended to know, a lot about good dinners and wines.
"Ask Mrs. Hungerford what sort of rough and gruff old fellow I am now, and you will understand, from her description, the difficulty I should have in getting into, or even comprehending, the ways of the other side of the world again. But, remembering what I once did know, and thinking of what I have heard and seen since I ceased to know, I think Robert is cut out for success in England. Mind, he will not have itallto do unaided; he will have a little money, enough to keep him respectable, to back him.
"I feel I am unwise in thus talking to you so much beforehand of Robert--time enough when we meet, as I hope we shall do; but I have a notion you might hit upon some plan for him for the future more easily and successfully if you had an idea of the sort of person he is.
"If his mother could see this letter, and recognise the very moderate colours in which I have sketched her eldest son, I don't think I should hear the last of it between this and the date at which I and he are to start for England. I am such a dolt in these matters, I do not rightly know what to ask you to think about, or advise me upon; but you will know generally. Shall it be private tuition, or public school, or business life at once combined with education?
"My other boys never give me the least anxiety. I know they will take to the sheep-walk or the counting-house as readily as to their food, and plod on as comfortably and as cheerily as possible. And, indeed, while I am anxious about Robert, it would be giving you an unfair impression to say that I am uneasy about him. I amnot that; but he is so different a stamp, I hardly know how to manage him.
"I have written all this to you with as much ease and confidence as if we were smoking together in the old quarters, velveteen-coated and slippered, as in the time I remember so well. I wonder if you--who have remained in England, to whom, at all events, life cannot have brought such physical changes as it has brought to me--remember it half so well as I do.
"There are hours even yet, when I am alone and thinking, when all that has intervened seems utterly unreal, and those old days, with their old associations, the one true and living period in my life. Do you remember the day after you, poor little shivering youngster as you were then, came to school, when I was a great hulking fellow, and my mother, God bless her! came to visit me, and, being taken by old Maddox to see the playground, was just in time to behold me tumble from the very top of the forbidden pear-tree and break my arm?
"I can see her face and hear her voice now, as plainly as if I could see the one and hear the other by going into the next room. And how you cried! Well, well, I suppose something of the boy remains until the last in every man's nature, and that more of it has the chance of remaining in our lives here than in yours at home.
"The progress of this place is extraordinary, and there are rumours of discoveries in metals, and so forth, which, if verified, will give it very great impetus. I don't mind them much; they don't disturb and they don't excite me even in this go-ahead colonial life. I carry my old steadiness about with me, and am go-ahead in my own business only.
"There is much in the political and social world here which would interest, but little which would please you, unless you are very much changed.
"I never could arrive at a very clear notion of you from Mrs. Hungerford; she was not communicative on any point, and she never told me anything about you, except that your health was delicate, which I could have told her from your letter. The sort of life we lead here is certainly calculated to give one the power of feeling acutely for a man to whom bodily exertion is forbidden; but you were always a patient fellow."
The letter was a very long one; the above is but an extract from it. James Dugdale had recognised the handwriting of his friend with pleasure, and had opened the letter with delighted eagerness. It would tell him something of Margaret; it would give him an insight into the troubles of her life; it would give him a clue to the enigma which lived and moved within his sight and his reach daily.
But his calculations were overthrown; he perceived at once that he was destined to gain no further knowledge of Margaret's past life from Hayes Meredith. The disappointment was so keen that at first he hardly had power to feel the interest in his friend's communication which it was calculated to evoke; and, when he had read half through the letter, he returned to the earlier portion in which Margaret was mentioned, and reperused it.
"I wish he had even told me more about Hungerford's death," said James Dugdale to himself. He was lying on a couch drawn close to the window of his own room, and he allowed the letter to drop by his side, and his gaze fixed itself on the landscape as he spoke. "I wish he had said more about him. What were the circumstances of his death? The little he says here, and one sentence of Margaret's--'when I first heard that my husband had been murdered by the black fellows'--comprise all I know--all any one knows--for her father would not mention his name, and I verily believe has forgotten that the man ever existed. I wish he had told me more."
He resumed the letter and read it again, this time through to the end, steadily and attentively.
Then he said slowly, and with a despondent shake of the head:
"I am very much afraid my old friend's son, Robert, is a bad boy."
James Dugdale had not been more than an hour at Chayleigh when he had read Hayes Meredith's letter. His return was unexpected, and he had been told by the servant who admitted him that the "ladies" were out. This was true, inasmuch as neither was in the house, but incorrect in so far as it seemed to imply that they were together.
Mrs. Carteret had departed in her pony-carriage, arrayed in handsome apparel, the materials and tints whereof were a clever combination of the requirements of the season then expiring and the season just about to begin, with a genteel recognition of the fact that an individual connected with the family had died within a period during which society would exact a costume commemorative of the circumstance. Mrs. Carteret had gone out, in high good humour with herself, and her dress, and her pony-carriage, with her smart servant, her pretty harness, her visiting-list, and the state of her complexion.
This latter was a subject of unusual self-gratulation, for Mrs. Carteret's complexion was changeable: it needed care, and, on the whole, it caused her more uneasiness, and occupied more of her attention, than any other mundane object. She was by no means a plain woman, and she had once been pretty--but her prettiness had been of a sunny, commonplace, exasperating, self-complacent kind; and now that it existed no longer, the expression of self-satisfaction was rather increased than lessened, for there was no delicacy of feature and no genuine bloom to divert attention from it.
If Mrs. Carteret believed anything firmly, it was that she was indisputably and incomparably the best, and very nearly the handsomest, of created beings; and she had a way of talking solemnly about her personal appearance,--taking careful note of its every peculiarity and variation, and bestowing upon it the minutest and most vexatious care,--which was annoying to her friends in general, and to James Dugdale in particular.
Mrs. Carteret was a woman who would be totally unmoved by any kind or degree of human suffering brought under her notice, but who would speak of a cold in her own head, or a pimple on her own face, as a calamity calculated to alarm and grieve the entire circle of her acquaintance. She was almost amusing in her transparent, engrossing, uncontrolled selfishness--amusing, that is, to strangers. It was not so pleasant to those who lived in the house or came into constant contact with her; they failed to perceive the humorous side of her character.
Her husband, who, with all his oddity and absence of mind, was not destitute of a degree of tact, in which there was asoupçonof cunning, and which he aired whenever there was any risk of his dearly-prized "quiet life" being endangered, had invented a kind of vocabulary of compliments of simulated solicitude and exaggerated sympathy, which was wonderfully efficacious, and really gave him very little trouble. To be sure he was rather apt to adhere to it with a parrot-like fidelity, and on her "pale days" to congratulate Mrs. Carteret on her bloom, and on her "dull days" to discover that it was difficult to leave her, she talked so charmingly--"but those new specimens must be seen to," &c. &c.
But these were mere casualties, and, as intense vanity is frequently accompanied by dense stupidity, they never endangered the good understanding between the husband--who was not nearly so tired of his wife as a more clever and practical man must inevitably have been--and the wife, whose wildest imaginings could never have extended to the possibility of any one's finding her less than perfectly admirable, or her husband otherwise than supremely enviable.
In the days when Mrs. Carteret had been pretty, her prettiness was of the corset-maker's model description, a prettiness which consisted in straight features, a high and well-defined colour, and a figure which required, and could bear, a good deal of tight-lacing.
Women did lace tightly in the golden prime of Mrs. Carteret's days, and she was not behindhand in that or any other fashion; indeed, she had a profound and almost religious respect for fashion, and she had, in consequence, a stiffness of figure suggestive of her being obliged to turn round "all at once" when it was necessary for her to turn at all, which gave her whole person an air and attitude of stiff and starched stupidity, highly provoking to an observer endowed with taste.
The paying of morning visits was an occupation especially congenial to Mrs. Carteret's taste, and well suited to her intellectual capacity, which answered freely to the demand made on it on such occasions. She was not by any means a vulgar gossip, but she possessed a satisfactory enough knowledge of the affairs and "ways" of all the "visitable" people within reach, and she found discussing them a very agreeable pastime.
She was not so stupid a woman as to be unaware that she and her affairs were discussed in their turn; but her invariable conviction that, in all respects, she was a faultless being, rendered the knowledge painless.
Thus, when Mrs. Carteret set out on a round of visits, in the aforesaid equipage and in her customary choice apparel, she was as happy as it was in her not expansive nature to be.
All the happier that Margaret did not accompany her, for, though Margaret's heavy mourning dress was not a bad foil to the taste and elegance, as she believed, of her own, people were apt to be too much interested in, too curious about, the young widow--always rather an interesting object--for the fancy of Mrs. Carteret, who did not admire her stepdaughter herself, and to whom it was neither intelligible nor pleasant that other people should admire her.
As to Lady Davyntry and Mr. Baldwin (for she had been forced to include the brother with the sister in the category of Margaret's friends), she had, as we have seen, resolved to find her account inthatintimacy, and she did not trouble herself about it.
At the same hour in which Mrs. Carteret was giving way to her self-complacent sentiments, Margaret was taking leave of Lady Davyntry. She had been at Davyntry since the morning, and was then going home. Mr. Baldwin was ready, according to his now almost invariable custom, to offer her his escort.
It was quite the end of October, a soft, shadowy, beautiful day, the air full of the faint perfume of the fallen leaves and of the golden gleam of the sunshine, which lingered as if regretfully. Lady Davyntry accompanied Margaret to the little garden-gate which opened into the demesne, and then took leave of her.
When her friend and her brother had left her, she stood for a few minutes looking after them, then walked up the garden-path, saying to herself:
"I hope I shall be able to hold my tongue about it, and not spoil all by letting her see that such an idea has ever entered into my head!"
In many respects Lady Davyntry was a sensible woman.
Margaret and her companion went on their way, slowly. They were talking of a projected journey on the part of Mr. Baldwin. He was going to visit his Scotch estates.
"I have not been much there," he said; "my time has mostly been passed abroad. My longest stay at the Deane was when poor Nelly was there with Sir Richard; and, of course, I can't expect her to go back to the scene of all her trouble so soon; so I must go alone."
"Can't you?" said Margaret, with a sudden flush on her cheek; "I should have thought it would have been her greatest, her best consolation. But people feel so differently," she said absently; and then made some remark about the beauty of the day. Her companion wondered at her strange manner. He took the hint to change the subject.
"Shall you be long away?" Margaret asked him.
He would have been only too happy to tell her that the duration of his absence would depend entirely on her pleasure--to tell her what was the truth, that he was leaving her now because he loved her, and hoped the day might come when he might try to make her love him; when respect for her position should no longer bind him to silence.
He felt he could not remain in her vicinity during the time that must elapse before he could venture to acknowledge his feelings, without the risk of offending her, perhaps losing her by their premature betrayal, and he had determined to go to Scotland and remain there until the time should be near when she thought of leaving Chayleigh.
Then he would return and take his chance. If she would accept the love, the home, the fortune he had to offer her, he almost dreaded to think what happiness life---which had never been adorned with any very brilliant hues of imagination by him before--would have in store for him.
When she asked him, in her clear, sweet voice, whose tones were to-day as pure and untroubled as if she had never spoken any words but those of the gladness which should so well have beseemed her youth, that careless question, he felt all the difficulty of the restraint he had imposed upon himself.
"I am not quite certain," he replied; "I daresay I shall find a great deal to do at the Deane, and a good deal will be expected from me in the way of sociability--a tribute, by the way, which I render very unwillingly. I--I suppose you will not leave Chayleigh this winter?"
"I don't think my father has any intention of going anywhere," Margaret said; "and I shall remain with him until I leave him 'for good;'--as people say when they leave for the equal chance of good or evil. I believe, too, there is a chance of my brother's coming home."
"Indeed," said Mr. Baldwin; "that is good news. I didn't hear anything of it."
"No. I told Lady Davyntry this evening, before you came in. I should like to be here when Haldane comes"--and her face was overcast by the mournful, musing expression he knew and loved so well. "He and I quarrelled before he went away--but I suppose he will not keep that up with menow."
She looked round with a forlorn kind of smile actually painful to see. In it there was an appeal to the dreariness of her lot, to the terrible blight which had settled on her youth, against harsh judgment of the wilfulness and folly which had led her to such a doom, inexpressibly affecting.
The strong restraint, the habitual patience which she maintained over all her emotions, seemed to forsake her quite suddenly. Her companion might have taken it as a good omen for him that it was in his company alone the control was loosened; but he did not think of himself, only of her.
The forlorn smile was succeeded by an ominous twitching of the lips, and the next moment Margaret had covered her face with her hands and burst into tears.
Mr. Baldwin watched her with inexpressible pangs of love and pity. He dared not speak. What could he say? He knew nothing, though he could surmise much, of the past which had given rise to this burst of emotion.
To try to console, was to seem to question her. He stood by her in the keenest distress, and could only entreat her to remember that it was all over now. The paroxysm passed over as he uttered the words for the second time.
Margaret took her hands away from her face, and looked at him, and there was an angry sparkle in her eye which he had never seen before, but which he thought very beautiful.
"You don't believe what you say," she said quickly, and walking on hurriedly as she spoke; "you don't believe what you say. You know there are things in life which are never over--sorrows and experiences which time can never change. When you say to me that it is all over now, you say what is not true, and you know it, or you guess it; you might know it if you would. Do you think I am like other women, like your sister, for instance, with nothing but pure and sanctifying grief for the dead, to ripen my mind? Do you think I am like her, or like any other woman, whose quiet life, however sad, has been led in decency, and has been sheltered and guarded by the protections which may be found in honest poverty? Do you think I can come home here, and find myself once more among the people and places I knew when I was a girl, and not feel like a cheat? I tell you the Past isnotall over; it will stand as long as I live between me and other people--not my employers, for there will be no associations in their case; but every one who knew me once, and who knows me now. Why does no one speak tome, in even a casual way, of the places I have seen, or the people I have been amongst? Do you think I imagine it is because they are unwilling to awaken a slumbering sorrow? No! You know, and I know, it is because they feel that I have seen sights unfit for women's eyes, and heard words unfit for women's ears; and can I ever forget it while others remember it whenever they see me? No, no, no! I never, never can!"
She pressed her small hands together and slightly wrung them; a gesture habitual to her in distress, but which he had never seen before. He caught her right hand in his, and drew it within his arm. She walked on with him, but was, as he knew, almost unconscious of his presence.
How he loved her! how he hated the dead man who had caused her to suffer thus! A young man himself, and she no more than a girl; and yet how little of the aspect, how little of the sense of youth there was about either as they walked together through the woods and fields that day!
This sudden revelation of Margaret's feelings brought a sense of despair to Fitzwilliam Baldwin. If the spectre of the past haunted her thus, if she were divided from all the present by this drear shade, then was she divided from him too.
How should he hope to lay the ghost which thus walked abroad in the noonday beside her? Had he had a little more experience, had not Margaret been so completely a new type of womanhood to him, had he had a little less humility, he would have taken courage from the fact that she had given utterance to such feelings before him.
That he had seen Margaret as no other human being had ever seen her, ought to have been an indication to him that, however unconsciously to her, he was to Margaret what no other human being was. The time was to come in which he was to make that discovery; but that time was not yet, and he left her that day with profound discouragement.
She recovered herself after a little, and when they reached the confines of the demesne of Chayleigh they were talking in their ordinary manner of ordinary subjects, but Margaret's arm still rested on that of her companion, nor was it removed until they reached the little gate between the wood and the pleasaunce.
As they crossed the lawn, Margaret's dress swept the fallen leaves rustling after her. She was very near the house now, and the sound caught James Dugdale's ear as he lay on his couch in the window. He raised himself on his elbow and looked out. The letter from Hayes Meredith was still in his hand. Margaret looked up and greeted him with a smile.
The next moment she was in the verandah, and he heard her laugh as she spoke to her father. Her voice thrilled his heart as it had done on the first day of her return. Her laugh had something like the old sound in it, which he had not heard since she was a girl. Good God! how long ago! She was looking better than when he went away. She was happy again in her old home.
He went downstairs, and they had a pleasant meeting. Margaret was kindly interested in his Oxford news. Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Carteret talked together. James and Margaret remained in the verandah until after Mr. Baldwin had taken his leave, and the sharp trot of Mrs. Carteret's ponies was audible. Then Margaret said:
"I must go and get ready for dinner."
And James detained her for a moment, saying:
"I have a letter which will interest you. It is from a friend of yours."
"A friend of mine?" said Margaret, in surprise. "Who can it be? I have but two or three friends in the world."
"A cynic would tell you you were exceptionally rich in friends, according to that calculation. How do you count them?"
"Yourself," said Margaret, with more frank kindness of tone than he had ever before recognised in her manner towards him.
"Après?"
"Well, Lady Davyntry."
"And Hayes Meredith? That is it, is it not? The letter is from him. You shall hear all about it, after dinner."
Margaret left him and went to her room. She felt rather vexed with herself. When she answered James Dugdale's question, she hadnotbeen thinking of Hayes Meredith.
Shortly after the incidents narrated in the preceding chapter, Mr. Baldwin left Davyntry. His sister maintained to the last the strong constraint she had put upon herself. She had seen with a genuine disinterested pleasure, for which the world in general might fairly have been excused for not giving her credit, that her young favourite had captivated her only brother.
Without being a very wise, a very witty, or in any marked way a very superior woman, Eleanor Davyntry possessed certain admirable and estimable qualities. Not the least remarkable, and perhaps the most rare of these, was disinterestedness. This virtue was in her: it did not arise from circumstances. She was not disinterested because she was rich,--the amount of wealth in people's possession makes no difference in their appreciation of and desire for wealth,--and Lady Davyntry "had no nonsense about her."
She thoroughly understood the value of her money as a means towards the enjoyment of the happiness which she acknowledged to be hers; but it never occurred to her for a moment to consider her own interests in the question of her brother's future. That he would probably marry at some time she looked upon as certain; and the inheritance of the Deane from one so much younger than herself would not have been a hopeful subject of speculation, had she been a person who would have speculated upon it at all. Even if she had had children, it would have been all the same to Lady Davyntry. She would not have been covetous for them any more than for herself. She had thought rather nervously, since Sir Richard's death had left her more dependent on her brother for the love and companionship without which life would have been intolerable to a woman of her disposition, of the probabilities of Mr. Baldwin's marriage.
Lady Davyntry had her prejudices; one of them was against Scotchwomen. She hoped he would not marry a Scotchwoman, therefore she had never encouraged her brother's residence at the Deane.
"It is not so much their ankles and wrists," she had assured Sir Richard, when he had remonstrated with her for "snubbing" a florid young lady who hailed from Aberdeen; and did it in a voice which set Lady Davyntry's teeth on edge, and made her backbone quiver, "as it is their minds and their ways. Of course, the way they speak is very awful, and the way they move is worse; but I could stand all that, I daresay. But what I cannot stand is their coarse way of looking at things, and the hardness of them in general. And as for flirting!Youmay think it is not dangerous, because it is all romping and hoydenism; but I don't want a sister-in-law of Miss MacAlpine's pattern, and so I tell you."
"Hadn't you better tell Baldwin so, my dear Nelly," the reasonable baronet had made answer. "Idon't want a MacAlpine importation into the family either; but, after all, it'shisbusiness, not mine."
"No, no," said the astute Nelly; "I am not quite so stupid as to warn any man against a particular woman of whom he has hitherto taken no special notice. That would be just the way to make him notice her, and that would be playing her game for her. I am not really afraid of the fair Jessie; Fitzwilliam can see her wrists, and her ankles too, quite as plainly as I can; and I fancy he suffers rather more acutely from her accent. I shall limit my interference to getting him away from the Deane."
Other and sadder preoccupations soon after claimed Lady Davyntry, and Miss Jessie MacAlpine was forgotten. And now, when her brother spoke of leaving her to return to the Deane, she remembered the young woman and her mosstrooper-like accomplishments without a shade of apprehension.
"My darling Margaret has made my mind quite easy onthatpoint, at all events," thought Eleanor, as Mr. Baldwin imparted to her some of his intentions for the benefit of his tenantry and estate. "Whether she cares for him or not, whether good or evil is to be the result,--and I believe all will go well with them both,--he is safe in such an attachment."
When her brother had left her, Eleanor thought long and happily over it all. Of his feelings she did not entertain a doubt, and her keen feminine perception had begun to discern in Margaret certain symptoms which led her to hope that for her too the dawn of a fair day was at hand. If she had known more of the young widow's inner life, if she had had a clearer knowledge of her past. Lady Davyntry would have hoped less and feared more. But her ignorance prevented the discouragement of fear, and her natural enthusiasm aided the impulses of hope; and she saw visions and dreamed dreams which were pure and beautiful, for they were all of the happiness and the good of others.
Thus Margaret's sadness and silence, the gloom which sometimes settled heavily over her, did not grieve her watchful friend. If only she loved, or should come to love, Fitzwilliam Baldwin, all this should be changed. All the darkness should pass away, and a life adorned with all that wealth could lend, enriched with all that love could give, should open before the woman whose feet had hitherto trodden such weary ways. Lady Davyntry pleased herself with fancies of all she should do to increase the happiness of that splendid visionary household at the Deane.
If Lady Davyntry could have known what were Margaret's thoughts just at the time when Mr. Baldwin went away, she would have felt some discouragement, though not so much as a person less given to enthusiasm, and to the raising of a fancy to the rank and importance of a hobby. She had never realised any of the painful features of Mrs. Hungerford's past life; she had never tried to realise them. Her mind was not of an order to which the realisation of circumstances entirely out of the sphere of her experience was possible, and she never speculated upon them.
In a different way, and for quite another class of reason, Lady Davyntry had arrived at a state of mind similar to that of Mr. Carteret, who regarded the blissful feet of his son-in-law's death as not only the termination, but the consignment to oblivion, of all the misery his existence had occasioned.
"Of course she is low at times," thought Lady Davyntry; "that is only natural. After all, she must feel herself out of her place at Chayleigh, with that detestable woman. But that will not last; and she will be all the brighter and the happier when Fitz has her safely at home."
The world would have found it hard to understand that Mr. Baldwin's only sister--the great, rich, enviable, to-be-captured-if-possible Mr. Baldwin's sister--should desire so ardently the marriage of her brother with a person who had no fortune, no claim to personal distinction, and--a story. Horrible dowry for a woman! Better any insignificance, however utter.
And Margaret? While Mr. Baldwin was attending to the long-neglected demands, undergoing active persecution at the hands of a neighbourhood resolved on intimacy, and longing, with all the strength of his heart, for the sight of Margaret's pale face and the sound of her thrilling voice--while his sister was building castles in the air for him to tenant--what of Margaret? What of her who was the centre, so unconsciously to herself, of all these hopes and speculations?
She was perhaps farther just then than she had ever been from a mood which was likely to dispose her towards their realisation. She had been disturbed rather than affected by the perusal of Hayes Meredith's letter. It had immediately succeeded to the outburst of emotion to which she had yielded in the presence of Mr. Baldwin, and for which she had afterwards taken herself severely to task; and it had upset her hard-won equanimity.
She was ashamed of herself, angry with herself, when she found out how much she desired that the past should be utterly forgotten. She had had to bear it all, and she had borne it, not so badly on the whole; but she did not want any reference to it; she shrunk from any external association with it as from a physical pain. Her reluctance to encounter any such association had strangely increased within the past few weeks.
She did not know, she did not ask herself, why. Was she ungrateful because she had felt intense reluctance to read Hayes Meredith's letter? Had she forgotten, had she ceased to thank him for all he had done to lighten her lot? Was she so cold, so "shallow-hearted," as to think, as many a vulgar-minded woman would have thought, that her account with the man who had succoured her in a strange land was closed with the cheque which her father had given her to be sent to him, in payment of the money he had lent her?
No, Margaret Hungerford was not ungrateful; but there was a sore spot in her heart which something--she did not ask what--was daily making sorer; the letter had touched it, and she shrunk with keen unexplained anguish from the touch. She lay awake the whole night after she had read the letter from Melbourne, and it seemed to her that she lived all the old agonies of despair, rage, humiliation, and disgust over again.
It chanced that the next day James Dugdale was ill. This was so common an occurrence that no one thought much about it. James was familiar with suffering, and it was the inevitable penalty of fatigue. Not for him was the healthy sense of being tired, and of refreshing rest. Fatigue came to him with pain and fever, with racked limbs, and irritable nerves, and terrible depression. His journey had tired him, and he lay all day on the couch placed in the window of his room.
Hither came Mrs. Carteret frequently, fussily, but genuinely kind, and Mr. Baldwin, to say some friendly words, and feel the truest compassion for the strong man thus imprisoned in his weak frame. Hither, later in the day, and much to the surprise of James Dugdale, came Margaret. He had thought she had gone to Davyntry, and said so. She reddened, a little angrily, as she replied,
"No: I have not been out. You seem to think I must always go to Davyntry."
"NotI, indeed, Margaret," said James, with a smile; "but I thinktheydo. Since I have been away, I understand you have been constantly at Davyntry, and I am very glad to hear it; it is good for you and for Lady Davyntry also."
"Perhaps so; she is very kind," said Margaret absently. "At all events, I am not there to-day, as you see, and I am not going there, or anywhere, but I will sit here with you, if I may."
She turned on him one of her rare, winning smiles--a smile far more beautiful, he thought, than any her girlhood had been decked in. She drew a low chair into the bow of the window, beside his couch, and sat down. Between him and the light was her graceful figure, and her clear pale face, with its strangely-contrasted look of youth and experience.
"Are you really going to give up all the afternoon to me?" said James, in delight.
"I really am. I will read to you, or we can talk, just as you like. I suppose you don't feel any great fancy for turning tutor to me over again, though I see all my old school-books religiously preserved on your book-shelves," she said, glancing round at the well-stocked walls of the room, which had been the schoolroom in the days when Haldane and she had been James's pupils.
"I have kept every remembrance of that time, Margaret," said James.
There was a tone in his voice which might have been a revelation to her, had she heard it, but she did not. She smiled again, and said:
"You had a troublesome pupil. I am in a good mood to-day, as I used to say long ago, and I want to talk to you about this."
She took Hayes Meredith's letter out of her pocket as she spoke.
James Dugdale kept silence, looking at her. "Is she going to tell me the story of her life?" he thought. "Am I going at last to learn something of the history of this woman whom I love?"
Margaret did not speak for some moments; she looked at the letter in silence. Then she unfolded it, and said:
"I am glad you let me read this letter for myself, James" (she had dropped into the habit of calling him by his name); "there are some hard things in it, but they are true--and so, better spoken, no matter how hard they may be. But let us pass them over, they are said of the dead."
Her face hardened, and she turned it away from him. James Dugdale laid his thin hand on her arm.
"Margaret," he said, "you know I would not have given you that letter to grieve you. I was thinking so much of what Meredith says of himself and his son that I forgot the allusion to--"
"I know, I know," she said hurriedly; "don't say his name; I never do."
The admission was a confidence. She was breaking down the barrier of reserve between them. She trusted him. She might come to like him yet. The friendship at least of the woman he loved might yet come to gild this man's lonely life. It would be much to him to know that she forgave him; and there was something in her manner now so different from anything that had ever been there formerly, that he began to hope she had really forgiven him.
In his quiet life, James Dugdale had contrived to attain, with very little aid from experience, to a tolerable amount of comprehension of human nature, and he understood that Margaret's practically-enforced conviction, that he had been unerringly right in all he had suspected and predicted of the fate in store for her, in her marriage, had not made her more inclined to pardon the interference on his part which she had so bitterly resented. But this was all over now, he did not know why; he felt it, he did not understand it.
Was it that the natural elasticity of youth was asserting its power--that Margaret was regaining her spirits, was throwing off the burden of the past, and, with it, all the feelings which had obscured the brightness and injured the gentleness of her nature? This was the most probable explanation; if, indeed, there was any other, it did not present itself as an alternative to James Dugdale. While he was thinking thus, she began to speak again in a hurried tone:
"I should like to tell you now, James, because I would rather not have to refer to the matter again, that I know how kind you were to me, and how right in everything you said, and how hard you tried to save me. Yes, yes; let me speak," she went on, and tears, seldom seen in her eyes, stood in them now. "I could not again; let me speak now. You tried, James, I know; but you could not succeed. It was from myself I needed to be saved. Never think that you could have done anything more than you did; indeed you could not. Nothing could have saved me."
She was trembling now, even as the hand which he laid on hers, unnoticed, was trembling. Her lustrous eyes were wet, and the emotion in her face made it quite beautiful. James Dugdale did not attempt to speak; he looked at her, and his heart was wrung with pity.
"Ithadto be, James, and it is done with, as much as it ever can be in this world, in which there is no release from consequences of our own acts. And now"--she raised her head, she released her hand, she was regaining her composure, the momentary expansion was past, as he felt, and he had learned nothing!--"let us talk of your friend, who was so kind to me, and retains so kind a recollection of me. What do you think of all he says?"
"I think badly of it," said James, as he leaned back on his couch again, and adopted the tone she had given to their conversation. "I fear Robert Meredith is a bad boy."
"So do I," said Margaret. "I have seen him, though not often, and I never saw a boy--almost a child--whom I disliked so much. He is a handsome fellow, but selfish, heartless, and sly. His very cleverness was revolting to me, and I suspect the feeling of dislike between us was mutual; he has an American-like precocity about him which I detest. His little brothers, rough colonial children as they are, are infinitely more to be liked than he is. Of course you must do as Mr. Meredith asks you; but if you will credit my judgment--and, all things considered, I am rather daring in asking you to do so--you will not undertake anything like personal charge of Robert Meredith."
"I will certainly take your advice in the matter, Margaret; youknowthe boy. I fancy I had better urge Meredith to bring him to England himself, if it is determined that he is to come. Tell me as much as you remember about the boy, and all the family. I remember Mrs. Meredith a pretty, active, pert kind of girl--strong and saucy--a capital wife for him, I should think."
"I daresay," Margaret answered carelessly; "I did not know much of her."
Then their conversation turned on the career and circumstances of Hayes Meredith, with which this story has no concern. In aftertime James Dugdale remembered that day as one of the happiest of his life. They were quite uninterrupted until late in the evening. Mrs. Carteret had carried off to a dinner-party her reluctant husband, who would have infinitely preferred to superintend the dinner of a peculiarly fine spider--whose proceedings he was watching just then, and whose larder was largely provided with the last unwary flies of the expiring autumn.
Margaret and James Dugdale dined alone. She was in good spirits on the occasion; she had almost lost the painful impression produced by Hayes Meredith's letter, by talking it over with James; and between herself and him there reigned harmony and unreserve which had had no previous existence. James had never seen her look so nearly beautiful; he had never seen her so kind, so gentle to him.
The hours passed over him in a kind of trance-like spell of pleasure. Margaret talked as he had never imagined she could talk. He had soon recognised that her character was hardened and strengthened by the trials she had endured; but until this day he had not known that her intellect had grown and brightened in proportion.
They read together Haldane's letters to his old Mend, and Margaret found in them many a kindly mention of her. Her brother would know of her arrival in England at about this time.
"You must promise to tell me what he says, James, if it is not something very disagreeable indeed."
And James promised.
From that day Margaret was a less unhappy woman than before. The first effect produced on her by Meredith's letter returned when she went to Davyntry, after Mr. Baldwin's departure, and was more than ever warmly greeted by her friend.
"I don't think I could bear Fitzwilliam's absence if I had not your society," Lady Davyntry said to her; and, fond and flattering as the words were, there was, not in them, but in the mood in which she listened to them, something that hurt Margaret.
The young widow's pride was for ever rebelling against the unshared knowledge of the experiences through which she had passed. Eleanor talked to her incessantly of her brother, of the Deane, of his occupations, his neighbours, and his popularity. The theme did not weary Margaret; and Lady Davyntry accepted her unflagging attention as a delightful omen.
"She misses him; I am sure she misses him," was her pleased mental comment.
"I hardly expected Margaret to remain so long at Davyntryto-day," said Mrs. Carteret to James Dugdale, as the family party were assembled in the drawing-room at Chayleigh.
James observed the emphasis, and replied:
"Indeed; why not?"
"Mr. Baldwin is not there, you know, and I fancy he is the great attraction."
James made her no reply. He fully understood the spiteful animus of the observation, but he also admitted its terrible probability; not in the present--he did not take so superficial a view of Margaret's character as that would have implied--but a thrill of fear for the future came over him, troubling his Fools' Paradise. In a little while Margaret came in, looking as tranquil as usual, and, in her accustomed manner of placid, unalterable calm,--the bearing she always opposed to the masked battery of Mrs. Carteret's insinuations and insolences,--answered the questions put to her.
When James Dugdale was alone that night he took himself to task, in no gentle manner. He knew he had nothing to expect beyond the unexpected boon of kindness and confidence she had already extended to him; and yet the thought that another might again stand nearer to Margaret than he, struck him with an anguish almost as keen as the first torment had been. He had doubted that fate could bring him anything very hard to bear again, and here was a faint sickening indication that fate intended to resolve his doubt into a fatal certainty.
But no: he would not think of it; he would not let it near him; it could not be. He knew he was weak in shrinking as he did, in striving to shut out anything that might possibly be true--and, therefore, ought to be faced--as he did; but the weakness would have its way, like the fainting of the body, and, for the present time at least, he would put the apprehension from him.
The days and the weeks passed by, and the external state of things remained unchanged at Chayleigh. Uninterrupted friendship, and a certain degree of confidence, were maintained between Margaret and James. The health and spirits of the young widow improved; her friendship with Lady Davyntry remained unimpaired. The correspondence between Eleanor and her brother was frequent and lengthy, and the letters from the Deane were imparted with great frankness by the elder to the younger lady. They were vivid, amusing, and characteristic, and invariably included a message of cordial remembrance to the household at Chayleigh. Peace of mind was prevalent among all the parties concerned in the littledrame intimewith which we are dealing.
Lady Davyntry's mind was at peace, because she saw that Margaret's interest in Mr. Baldwin's report of his doings at the Deane did not flag; and, as she said to herself, "there was no one to interfere with his chances."
James Dugdale's mind was at peace, because Margaret seemed happier and calmer than he had ever again expected to see her; and, as Mr. Baldwin remained away, he was not to be feared; and it was evident that the source of her renewed content was to be found in her present sphere.
Mrs. Carteret's mind was at peace, because Margaret gave her no trouble, and kept herself so quiet, so completely aloof from "the neighbourhood," that that noun of moderate multitude,--having satisfied its curiosity by observing how Mr. Carteret's daughter looked in her "weeds,"--was content to forget her existence, or ready to condole with Mrs. Carteret upon her stepdaughter's strange unsociability, and to compliment the lady upon the contrast in that respect which they presented.
Things had turned out so differently from Mrs. Carteret's first apprehensive anticipations--she had been able toexploiterMargaret so successfully; her boasted intimacy at Davyntry had been so complacently indorsed by Lady Davyntry, who would have gone more directly against her conscience even than that to make Margaret's position at home easier--that Mrs. Carteret had almost ceased to wish for Margaret's departure--had even thought casually that it would certainlylookbetter, and might possiblybebetter, if she could be induced to remain at her father's house.
"Perhaps she may settle herself advantageously yet," Mrs. Carteret--whose ideas were eminently practical--said to herself; and she even thought of consulting James as to whether she had not better suggest such a solution of the problem of the future to Margaret.
Mr. Carteret's mind was at peace, because his mind had never been in any other condition since Godfrey Hungerford's death had restored it to ordinary equilibrium, and because his collections were getting on splendidly.
When Margaret Hungerford had been five months at Chayleigh--when the time was approaching which she had fixed upon as the period at which she would commence her career of labour and independence--when eleven months had elapsed since Godfrey Hungerford's death--when the snows of February lay thick and white upon the earth--an event occurred which disturbed the calm of Chayleigh.
Mrs. Carteret distinguished herself in a most unexpected manner. She caught cold returning from one of the dull dinner-parties which her soul loved, and which no inclemency of weather, or domestic crisis which could be ignored with any decency, would have induced her to forego. A second dinner-party was to come off within three days; so Mrs. Carteret denied the existence of the cold, and attended that solemn festival. That day week she was dead.