"Something has happened! What is it?" said Margaret in a whisper to her husband, as soon as he had gone through the formalities of the occasion, and she could approach him without being remarked. "Is there any bad news from home? Is anything wrong with papa?"
"Nothing, my darling. I have been upset by some unpleasant intelligence from Curtis. It is only a matter of business; you shall hear all about it when we get home."
"Only a matter of business. Thank God! But you look very ill, Fitzwilliam. Is it anything very wrong?"
"Yes; it may involve me in much annoyance. But I cannot say more now. Don't look so anxiously at me; I am not ill, only worried over the affair. Can you get away soon?"
"Yes, immediately. I have only to gather up Eleanor and baby."
She smiled faintly as she spoke, and he returned the smile more faintly still.
"Gather them up, then, and let us go."
The few minutes consumed in leave-taking were very tedious to Fitzwilliam Baldwin, and his pale face and uncontrollably absent manner did not pass unnoticed by the lady of the house.
"I am sure there is something the matter with Mr. Baldwin," said Mrs. Sinclair to her husband, when the visitors had departed, a strange sort of gloom accompanying their leave-taking. "Did you notice, William, how ill he looked?--just like a man who had seen a ghost."
"Nonsense," was the uncompromising reply of Mr. Sinclair; "I daresay he is not well. You should not say such things before the children, Minnie; you'll see now we shall have them gravely demanding to be informed what is a ghost. What shall you do then?"
"Refer them to you, sir, as the source and dispenser of universal knowledge. And it's all very well for you to say 'nonsense;' but I am certain something is very wrong with Mr. Baldwin. However, if there is, we shall soon know it. I am sure I hope not, for his sister's sake."
"And his wife's, surely; she is a very sweet creature."
"I prefer Lady Davyntry," said Mrs. Sinclair shortly; and the conversation dropped.
Mr. Baldwin was perfectly right in his anticipation of the manner in which the communication he had to make to his "womankind" would be received by them. Lady Davyntry was very voluble, Margaret was very silent and closely observant of her husband.
"What a horrid nuisance, my dear Fitz!" said Lady Davyntry; "and I must say I think it is extremely stupid of Curtis. Of course I don't pretend to understand mining business, and rights and royalties, and all the rest of it; but I do wonder he needs must bother you about it just now, when we are all so comfortable here, and Madge getting ever so much better. I suppose writing to these odious people would not do?"
"No, Eleanor, certainly not," replied her brother; "I must go to them, there's nothing else for it; I saw that at once."
"Dear, how tiresome! And how long shall you be away, Fitz?"
"It is impossible to tell, Nelly; and I must start as soon as possible.--How soon can you be ready, Margaret?"
There was an extraordinary tenderness in his tone, something beyond the customary unfailing sweetness with which he invariably addressed her; a compassionate unconscious deference in his manner which thrilled her sensitive nerves. She had not removed her gaze from her husband's face since he had made the communication which he had promised; but she had not spoken a word. Now she said simply, still looking at him:
"I can be ready to start to-morrow, if you are."
"To start to-morrow, Madge!" exclaimed Lady Davyntry in half-angry, half-incredulous astonishment. "You cannot mean it. There was never such an idea entertained by Fitz, I am certain, as your going.--Of course you don't mean it?" And she turned anxiously to her brother.
"I certainly did think Margaret would come with me," returned Mr. Baldwin.
"I assure you, Nelly," said Margaret, "nothing could induce me to remain here without him."
Lady Davyntry was very good-humoured, as she always was, but very voluble and eager in her remonstrances. The discussion was somewhat of a relief to Mr. Baldwin, and it ended as he had foreseen it would end. Margaret and her little daughter would accompany him to England, and his sister would remain at Naples. The servants, with the exception of the child's nurse, were to be left at the villa. Mr. Baldwin had remembered that the absence of attendants on Margaret and himself would materially contribute to the maintenance of that secrecy which was so necessary. The simplicity of the personal habits of both rendered their travelling without servants a matter of surprise to no one.
"You are quite sure you will be back in a month, Fitz?" Lady Davyntry said at the close of the discussion, when she had accepted the inevitable with her usual unfailing cheerfulness, and was actually almost ready to think the plan a very pleasant variety. "You must, you know, for I don't believe it would be safe for Margaret to travel after a longer time; and you know what Cooper said about March in England for her chest. And a month will give you time to settle all this bothering business. I really think I should get rid of Curtis, if I were you, and give Madge plenty of time to see Mr. Carteret. I have some lovely lava to send him; and, Madge, I will let you have the flat knife Signor Lanzi gave me, you know--the one they found in Pompeii. They say it belonged to Sallust's cook, and he used to slap it on the dresser when dinner was ready to be served. Mr. Carteret would be delighted to have it; don't you think so?"
"I am sure he would," Margaret answered absently.
Lady Davyntry went on: "You mustn't worry about this business, Fitz; it is not like you to bother so about any mere matter of money."
"It is more than a mere matter of money, Nelly," said Mr. Baldwin hastily. "But there, don't let us talk of it any more.--You will get ready to start on Wednesday, Margaret; and, please God, we shall all be here together again before long."
He left the women together, and went away, pleading letters to be written for the mail in the morning. As he closed the door, Margaret's quick ear caught the sound of a heavy sigh. In her turn she thought what Eleanor had said, "It is not like him to think so much of a mere matter of money;" for his explanation had not made it clear to her that anything more than money was concerned.
Her sister-in-law talked on and on to her, growing more excited by and better pleased with the occurrences of the day as she did so, until she finally persuaded herself that no real harm, or even permanent unpleasantness, could come out of them to her brother. Margaret hardly heard her. Her heart was heavy and troubled; and that night, as she and her husband stood by the bed where their child was sleeping, watching the infant's happy slumber, as was their invariable custom, she gathered confirmation of her shapeless misgiving from the expression of his face, from the infinite tenderness of his tone to her, and the deep melancholy of the look he turned upon the child.
"Is there a shadow, a dread, a skeleton inhispast too?" Margaret mused, when she was alone; "and am I about to find it out? I thought there was nothing in all his noble history which needed an hour's concealment, or could bring a cloud to his face. But I must, as surely I can, trust him. If there be more to tell than he has told,--and I think there must be, for what is a money risk to him and me?--it is my part to wait patiently until the time comes for me to know it. When he thinks it right, he will tell me; until then I ought to be satisfied, and Iwill. He said the chief part of his business would be in London; I shall hear all about it there."
Calling to her aid her former habit of self-control,--a little fallen into disuse in the new and perfect happiness of her life, in which it was seldom needed,--Margaret did not embarrass Mr. Baldwin by a question, by the slightest betrayal that she suspected any concealment on his part; but she said to herself very frequently, in the brief interval before the commencement of their journey, "I shall learn the truth in London."
The old presentiment which had once haunted her so constantly, which had been so readily awakened by the merest chimerical cause, of which she had felt guilty, ashamed, combating its influence by reasoning upon its ingratitude, its weakness, its unworthiness, had left her, it seemed, at this time. No shadow from the brooding wings of the terrific truth swept across her soul.
The journey was commenced at the appointed time, and safely accomplished, with as much celerity as was possible nearly thirty years ago.
On their arrival in London, the travellers went to a hotel in Bond-street, and Margaret, much tired by the journey, fell almost immediately into a sound sleep. They had reached London at noon, and it was quite dark when she awoke. The glimmering firelight showed her Mr. Baldwin's figure seated beside her bed, and she awoke to the consciousness that he was looking at her with terrible intentness.
"Are you quite rested, my darling?" he said.
"Quite."
She answered only one word. The time had come, and she was afraid, though still no shadow from the brooding wings of the terrific truth swept across her soul. He kissed her on the forehead, and rose. Then he said,
"Come down as quickly as you can. I asked Dugdale and Mr. Meredith to meet us in London, and they are here."
A silent party was assembled in the large old-fashioned room in which Margaret's presence was awaited. On the high mantel clusters of tall wax-candles were grouped, which failed to light the dusky apartment half-way along its length or across its breadth, but threw their lustre around the hearth, covered with a Turkey rug.
Hayes Meredith leaned moodily against the fluted side of the grim black-marble chimneypiece, with one foot on the brass fender, and his keen dark glance turned towards the glowing red fire. James Dugdale sat in a heavy arm-chair, his head leaning back against the red-leather cushion, his long thin fingers grasping the sides of the chair, his face, always pale, now of an ashen-gray colour, and the nervous tremor which pervaded his entire frame painfully evident to the two stronger men. Mr. Baldwin paced the room with folded arms. All three were silent. They had said all that was to be said in the absence of her whom their consultation concerned so deeply.
A light tread in the passage outside the door caught Mr. Baldwin's strained ear. James Dugdale heard it too, but he did not move; he only closed his eyes, and passed his hand across his brow. In another moment Margaret was in the room, was within the luminous circle made by the light, and had advanced towards Meredith. Her face was deadly pale, but her eyes were bright, and the old look of resolution which he had so often remarked and admired struck him once more, with his first glance at her. Her figure was as slight and girlish as when he had seen her last, the principal change was in the rich dress, now become habitual to her.
Hayes Meredith tried hard to make his earnest greeting as gladsome as it might have been; to say, "I told you we should meet again--you see I was a true prophet;" but there was something in her face which made it quite impossible. She shook hands with him, and then she turned to James, who had now stood up, and laid her hand upon his shoulder. Fitzwilliam Baldwin made no sign. The worst had come now, and he had very little strength to face it.
"James," she said, "is my father dead?"
"Good God, Margaret," he made answer, catching her hands in his, "no! What can have put such an idea, such a fear, into your mind? He is quite well."
She kissed him on the cheek, and sat down, keeping her hand on his arm still, and, slightly turning her head towards Baldwin, said in a quiet voice,
"I know there is something wrong. My husband is concealing something from me; he is right in having concealed it so far, for he is always right--" she paused for a moment to smile at him, and then Meredith did not know the face--he had never seenthatlook in it--"and he has asked you to meet us here and tell me what it is, because he cannot bear to tell me himself. Well, I will hear anything you have to tell me, if it is his wish"--again she paused and smiled at him--"but he is here, and well; my father, and my child, and you"--she pressed James's arm with the hand that lay upon it--"are well; what can there be for me to fear so very much that my husband should dread to tell it to me himself?"
She turned an earnest, imploring gaze on James, and saw the look he directed at Meredith. Baldwin stepped hastily towards her, but she stretched her hand out, and shrank away from him. The terrible truth was fast swooping down upon her now.
"It does not come from him," she said breathlessly; "it is the resurrection of the past--it is my old dread--it is bad news thatyouhave brought"--her white face addressed itself to Meredith--"tell me what it is quickly, for God's sake! I can bear to know it--I cannot bear the suspense."
"I will tell you, my dear," said Meredith; and he left his place, and put his strong arm round her--the other two stood side by side at a little distance. "It is bad news, but not very bad; the trouble it brings will soon be over, and no ill can ever come of it. Do you remember when we heard, one night when you were at my house, that Hungerford had been murdered?"
She started, and said, "Yes, yes."
"You recollect the date?"
"Perfectly." Her voice was hardly audible.
"He did not meet that dreadful fate, Margaret. He did not die thus, or then."
"Thank God!" she said. And then, in a bewildered way, she thought for a moment, and cried out, "He is not dead! He is not dead! That is your news--your dreadful news!"
"No, my darling, no," said Mr. Baldwin, coming to her side. "It is not so bad as that. Thank God, your fears are so far beyond the truth. He is dead. We are not parted. No, no."
"No, no," continued Meredith, still holding her; "it is not so bad as that. Hungerford is dead; I saw his body, and I gave it decent burial; but he did not die until long after the time when you believed him dead."
"When did he die?" she asked. The relief was immense; but if the news she was to hear was onlythat, it was rather good than bad. "Whendidhe die?"
Meredith hesitated. Baldwin turned away.
"Tell me," she insisted.
"He died only a short time ago," said Meredith slowly. "He died only a few days before I left Melbourne."
She was still standing, upheld by his arm, but she lost consciousness for a little as she stood. He placed her gently in a chair, and they kept aloof from her, until her eyes opened, and she drew a long breath. Then she lifted her hand to her forehead, and slowly pushed the hair away from it.
"You are better now?" said James.
"I am quite well," she said. "Let me understand this. I don't quite take it in."
"It is better that she should understand all about it at once, Baldwin," said Meredith. "The shock is over now, and time must not be lost. The only difference this unfortunate affair will make to you, my dear, is that you must be married over again."
He spoke the words with extreme reluctance, and Margaret's face crimsoned.
"What," she exclaimed, "do you mean?" And then she said gently, "Ah--yes--I see--I understand," and covering her face with her hands she burst into tears.
Mr. Baldwin knelt down by her chair, and gently drew one hand from before her eyes.
"I think you had better leave her with me now for a little while," he said.
The two men went silently away.
All through the hours of the wintry night, Margaret strove with the anguish that had come on her as bravely as she had striven against that which had turned her youth to bitterness. But she strove now with a different kind of strength, and she had consolation then denied to her. Yet even in that consolation there was more sorrow. In the past she had stood alone, her grief was hers only, her misery troubled no one's peace, or she did not realise that it had any outside influence; she had to fight the battle all alone, in patience, in endurance, in defiance, no softening influence, no gentle thoughts and blessed hopes to hamper or to aid her. The hard material conflict of life had been hers, and in her heart the sting of cruel mortification, of bitter disappointment, disgust, and scorn.
But she had borne this all alone, and had been able to bear it, had come through it somehow, and, if severely wounded, had hidden her wounds, now healed by the balm of love and happiness. But in this sorrow she did not stand alone; she had the additional misery that it had brought grief upon the man who had changed her whole life into gladness, him to whom she owed all, and more than realised every dim misgiving; she had ever felt when the idea of a second marriage presented itself.
She had seen Meredith and Dugdale again, after her long interview with Mr. Baldwin had come to an end--an interview full of exquisite pain to both, and yet stored among the most precious memories of their lives--and had learned all the particulars of the plan of action upon which they had decided. Then she had requested that she might be left quite alone, until her presence should be necessary in the morning. During this trying time Margaret had successfully maintained her composure, and when she left them the three men remained silent for several minutes, under the impression produced by her calmness, good sense, and self-control. Meredith was the first to break the silence.
"How wonderfully she has borne it!" he said. "I never hoped she would have taken it like that, though I have seen her in great trouble before, and ought to have known what she could do and bear when the screw was put on her."
"I have never seen her in any trouble until now," said Mr. Baldwin--there was a strange kind of pain to him in this first association with the man who had seen and helped Margaret in the time now again linked so mysteriously to the present--"she does, indeed, bear this wonderfully."
"I doubt whether any of us--whether evenyou--can tell what it is to her," said James, and there was a little impatience in his tone.
Who could really know what she suffered but he--he, dowered with the power of feeling and understanding grief as these two men, so different, and yet in some qualities of their organisation so alike, were not dowered?
The exceptional circumstances had broken down the ordinary barriers which would have shut out the subject, and the three talked over the history of Margaret's life in Australia fully and freely. Hayes Meredith told the others all he knew, and from his narrative Mr. Baldwin learnt how tolerantly, how mercifully, Margaret had dealt with the wretched man who had made her youth so miserable, and how, while telling him the simple terrible truth as she saw it, there was much she had not seen, had failed to understand. And, as he listened to the story, and thought how the ghost of the horrid past had risen up again to blight her, he felt as if all the love with which he had loved her were nothing in comparison with that which filled his heart now; and he grieved purely, unselfishly, for her, as she was then grieving for him.
Margaret had taken her child into her room. The nurse, weary of the journey, was nothing loth to be rid of her charge, and being an honest, stupid, bovine sort of person, and therefore admirably suited to her functions, she did not trouble her mind about her mistress's movements or remark her appearance. The little girl, already strikingly like her mother, now slept tranquilly in Margaret's arms, and now, when in the restlessness of mental suffering she could not sit still, but walked about the room, in a deep chair before the fire.
As the night wore on, Margaret would kneel beside the chair, and look at the child by the fire-light, and then stand up again, and resume her wandering up and down. Surely the dawn was very long in coming. She lived through those hours as probably every one in every kind of suffering lives through certain supreme hours of that experience; in alternate paroxysms of acute anguish, spells of quiet concentrated thought, and lapses of dull pain, in which there is a kind of confused forgetfulness, wanting little of being quite a blank. When the latter came, she would rock the child upon her knees before the fire, or stand idly at the window, the curtain held back in her hand, and her face pressed against the cold damp panes.
Memory formed a rack on which she was stretched, until her powers of endurance were almost exhausted, and when the release came, it was accompanied by the stupor which follows terrible physical pain. Every circumstance of her past life, every pain in it, from the fiercest pang to the most ignominious little insult, came up to her, and gave her a deliberate wrench, and above all, the sense of loneliness in all this, contradictory though such a feeling was to the general tenor of her thoughts, oppressed her. No one could share that trouble with her which came from the past--therein she must suffer alone.
Then she would force herself to think of the dead man, and what he had suffered; to realise that he had actually been living, and her husband, while she was on her voyage to England, while she was living her peaceful life at Chayleigh, while--and at this point in her thoughts she shuddered, and a deadly coldness laid hold upon her-while she had loved and married another man, had filled a high position, and enjoyed all that wealth, station, and consideration could give her. The full horror of her position swept over her then, and afterwards came the deadness, the confusion, the vain helpless weeping over her child, the natural shrinking from what the morrow was to bring, the strange wondering sense of a totally false position, of an utterly new and disturbing element in her life, making all that had gone before seem unreal.
The hardest of all was to know, to make herself believe practically, that she, bearing Fitzwilliam Baldwin's name--she, the mother of his child--was not his wife. She knew how innocently, how unconsciously, she had done this wrong; they had made it plain to her how small its importance really was; but she was oppressed with a sense of shame and anguish in reference to it, almost intolerable, even when she did not turn her thoughts towards her child.
When she did not! That was seldom, indeed; for, underlying all the rest, there was the agony of the wrong her child had sustained, never to be assuaged, and many times during that dreadful night she uttered aloud to the unconscious infant some of the burden of her soul. The injury to her child, the possible touch of disgrace on the stainless story of Baldwin's life; he who, as she said to herself over and over again, had lived in unblemished honour before the world, he who never needed, never wished to hide thought, or word, or deed of his, he who so loved her--these constituted the almost unbearable agony of the grief which had come upon her.
They had told her whence the remedy for all this evil was to be looked for. If the child to be born three months hence should prove to be a son, the wrong would be righted; little Gerty would be no worse than if this had never happened, for it was not in any reason to be feared that the secret should ever transpire.
"And if my child should not be a son?" she had asked them simply.
"Then there would be two to share Baldwin's savings, and the unentailed property," Hayes Meredith had answered her, "and you would have to wait till the son and heir really did arrive."
She had said no more then, and now, as she mused over all that had been said, a passionate prayer arose in her heart, that the child for whose birth she now hoped, with feelings so widely, so sadly different from what they had been, might be a son. If it were so, Baldwin would be satisfied; the sting would be taken out of this calamity for him, though for her it never could be.
James Dugdale was right in the estimate he had formed of her feelings, little as she supposed that they were within any human ken. She did love little Gertrude wonderfully; and to know her to be illegitimate, to know that she must owe her name and place in the world to a concealment, a false pretence, was a wound in the mother's heart never to be healed, and whose aching was never to be allayed.
So the hours wore away, and with their wearing; there came to Margaret an increased sense of unreality. The ground she had trodden so securely was mined and shaken beneath her feet, and with the stability all the sweetness of her life had also passed away. In her thoughts she tried to avoid the keen remembrance of that beautiful, pure summertime of love and joy, over which this shadow had fallen, but she could not keep away from it; its twilight had too newly come. With keen intolerable swiftness and clearness a thousand memories of her beautiful, stately home came to haunt her, like forms of the dead, and it was all in vain that she strove to believe, with the friends who had endeavoured to cheer and console her, that the black shadow which had fallen between that home and her could ever be lifted more.
When the wintry dawn had fully come, she lay down on her bed, with her child in her arms, and slept. One tiny infant hand was doubled up against the mother's neck and her tear-stained cheek rested on the soft brown curls of the baby's hair.
Margaret's slumber did not last long. She awoke long before the time at which she had told Baldwin she would be ready. When she drew back the curtains and let in the cold gleaming light, there was as yet but little stir or noise in the street, and the shops opposite the hotel were but slowly struggling into their full-dressed and business-like appearance. She turned from the window, and looked at her face in the glass. Was that face the same that had looked out at her only this time yesterday? She could hardly believe it was, so ghastly, so worn, so old it showed now. She turned away abruptly, and took off her dress, which she replaced by a dressing-gown, and shook down her rich hair about her neck and shoulders. Presently the child awoke and cried, and Margaret carried her to her nurse. She did not kiss the child, or look at her, after she had placed her in the woman's arms, but went away at once, with her teeth set.
How horrible, how unnatural, how shameful it seemed to Margaret, as she dressed herself in the plainest garments her travelling trunks supplied, that this should be her wedding-day, and she was dressing for her marriage! All the painful feelings which she had experienced were concentrated and expressed in those terrible, almost incredible words. She went through her unaided task steadily, only avoiding seeing her face in the glass; and when it was quite done, when her shawl, and bonnet, and gloves were on, she knelt down by her bed, with her face upon the coverlet, and her clasped hands outstretched, and there she prayed and waited.
At nine o'clock James Dugdale knocked at the door of Margaret's room. She opened the door at his summons, and silently gave him her hand.
"Baldwin is in the sitting-room," he said. "I see you are quite ready. Are you feeling strong?"
"I am perfectly well," she replied.
They went downstairs, and into the room which the party had occupied on the preceding evening. Preparations for breakfast were in active progress, and two waiters were conducting them with as much fuss and display of alacrity as possible.
Hayes Meredith greeted Margaret with a cheerful aspect. Mr. Baldwin merely set a chair for her. Their "good-morrow" was but a look, and what a pang this caused Margaret! The servants were not to know they had not met till then.
To the practical, business-like mind of Hayes Meredith the painful matter on hand had not, indeed, ceased to be painful, but had advanced so far towards a happy termination, which should end its embarrassment positively, and in all human probability its danger, that he felt able to be cheerful without much effort or affectation, and took upon himself the task of keeping up appearances, to which his companions were much less equal. He really ate his breakfast, while the other three made the poorest pretence of doing so, and he did the talking about an early shopping expedition which had been proposed over night.
At length this portion of the trial came to an end in its turn, and Margaret, accompanied by James, and followed by Meredith and Baldwin, left the hotel on foot. The two waiters witnessed the departure of the party.
"A precious glum lot for a party wot is wisitin' the metrop'lis, eh, William? said one to the other.
"Ain't they just, Jim! They are swells though, from wot I hear."
When they reached Piccadilly Meredith procured a hackney-coach, and the silent little company were driven to the City. Margaret sat back, leaning her head in the corner with closed eyes. The three men hardly spoke. The way seemed very long, and yet when the coach stopped, in obedience to Meredith's directions to the driver, in a crooked, narrow, dirty little street, which she had a confused notion was near the great river, Margaret started, and her heart, which had lain like a lump of lead in her breast, began to beat violently.
A few minutes' walking, but by a tortuous way, brought them to a shabby little old church, damp, mouldy, and of disused aspect, and into the presence of a clergyman whose appearance matched admirably with that of the building, for he, too, was shabby, little, and old, and looked as if he were mouldered by time and seclusion. An ancient clerk, who apparently combined the clerkly office with those of the pew-opener and the verger, was the only other person present. Not even a stray boy, not even a servant-girl out on an errand, or a nursemaid airing her charges in the damp, had been tempted, by the rare spectacle of an open church-door, to enter the building.
A little whispered conversation with the shabby little old clergyman, a paper shown by Meredith, and a ghost-like beckoning by the clerk, with intent to marshal the wedding-party to their places, and all was ready. The words of the solemn marriage service, which it was so dreadful to those two to repeat, which they had spoken once with such joyful hearts, were said for the second time, and nothing but the signing of the register remained to be done.
As Mr. Baldwin with his wife followed the shabby little old clergyman into the vestry, he whispered to Margaret,
"It is all over now, dearest; nothing can ever trouble or part us more but death."
She pressed the arm on which she was leaning very close to her breast, but she answered him never a word.
"Sign your name here, if you please, madam," said the clerk, putting a dirty withered old finger on the blank space in the large book which held in such trite record so many first chapters of human histories.
Mr. Baldwin had already signed, and was looking at his wife with eager attention. He saw the spasm of agony which crossed her face as she wrote "Margaret Hungerford." James Dugdale saw it too.
When Meredith and Dugdale in their turn had signed the register, and Mr. Baldwin had astonished the clergyman, to a degree unprecedented in his mild and mouldy existence, by the magnificence of the sum with which he rewarded his services, all was done, and the wedding-party left the church. Mr. Baldwin and Margaret got into the coach, and were driven to a shop in Piccadilly. There the driver, who was rather surprised at the novelty of a bridal pair being "dropped" at a shop instead of being taken home in orthodox style to breakfast, was dismissed. Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin returned to the hotel, as they had left it, on foot.
"Let me see--what's the name of the church and the parson?" said Hayes Meredith to James Dugdale, as they stood in the street when the coach had taken Baldwin and Margaret away, and the church-door was shut upon them.
He had an old-fashioned red morocco-leather pocket-book, with a complicated clasp, composed of brass wire, open in his hand, and he carefully noted down James's reply, heading the memorandum with the initials,
F. M. B.M. H.
"What do you write that down for?" James asked him.
"Partly from habit, old fellow, and partly because I never was concerned in so strange an affair before, and I have a fancy for reminding myself of it."
He had put up the pocket-book as he spoke, and they were walking slowly away.
"I remember well," said Meredith, "when I said good-bye to her on board the Boomerang, I wondered what sort of fate awaited her in England. It is a very enviable one on the whole, in spite of this little cloud, which I look upon as quite blown over. It might have been an ugly business if that poor wretch had pulled through in the hospital. What a comfort that it has all been so capitally managed, isn't it?"
"Yes," said James absently; "how very, very miserable she looked!"
"Never mind that--it was natural--it was all so awkward you know. Why, now that it is over, I can hardly believe it. But she will be all right to-morrow--the journey had something to do with her looks, you must remember."
When they reached the hotel they found Mr. Baldwin alone in the sitting-room. Hayes Meredith had recovered his spirits much more than any of the party. He was quite chatty, and inclined to enjoy himself, now that it was possible, in the delightful novelty of London. Besides, he judged wisely that the less difference the event of the morning should be allowed to make in the disposition of the day the better.
Mr. Baldwin was ready to devote himself to his guest's pleasure, and a pleasant programme was soon made out. On reference being made to Margaret she said she would remain at home all day, with the child. James, too, pleaded fatigue, and did not leave the house. And when the other two were gone he thought, "No one, not evenheknows what this is to her so well as I know it."
On the third day after the quiet marriage ceremony had been performed in the City church, Margaret Baldwin, her husband, and their child left London for Chayleigh. She had been told that her father knew nothing of the revelation which it had been Hayes Meredith's difficult task to impart to her, and she felt that she owed much to the wise consideration which had concealed it. In the first place, to have enlightened her father would only have been to inflict unnecessary pain upon him, and in the second, it would have embarrassed her extremely.
To keep her feelings in this supreme hour of her fate as much to herself as possible was her great desire, and especially as regarded her father. His pride and delight in the good fortune which had befallen her were so great, his absolute oblivion of the past was so complete and so satisfactory, that she would not, if even it could have made things better rather than worse for her, have had the one feeling disturbed, or the other altered. He had never mentioned her first husband's name to her, and she would not, to spare herself any suffering, have had an occasion arise in which it must needs be mentioned. So, as they travelled towards her old home, there was nothing in the prospect of her meeting with her father to disturb her, and the events of the week she had just gone through, began to seem already distant.
After the day of the marriage, Baldwin had not spoken of the grief that had befallen them. If it had been possible for him to love her better, more tenderly, more entirely, more deferentially than before, he would have done so; but it was not possible. In all conceivable respects their union was perfect; not even sorrow could draw them more closely together. Neither could sorrow part them, as sometimes it does part, almost imperceptibly, but yet surely, those whose mutual affection is not solidified by perfect similarity of temperament.
The gravity of Margaret's character, which had been increased by the experiences of her life, by the deadly influences which had tarnished her youth, had been much tempered of late by the cordial cheerfulness, the unfailing sweetness of disposition which characterised Baldwin, and which, being entirely free from the least tinge of levity, harmonised perfectly with her sensitiveness. So, in this grief, they felt alike, and while he comprehended, in its innermost depths and intricacy of feeling, the distress she suffered, he comprehended also that she needed no assurance of his appreciation and sympathy.
The details of business and the arrangements for the future which the terrible discovery had made necessary were imparted to her by Hayes Meredith, and never discussed between her and Baldwin. She understood that in the wildly improbable--indeed, as far as human ken could penetrate, impossible--contingency that the truth should ever become known, the little Gertrude's future was to be made secure, by special precautions taken with that intent by her father. Thus no material anxiety oppressed her for the sake of the child, over whom, nevertheless, she grieved with a persistent intensity which would have seemed ominous and alarming to any one aware of it. But that no one knew; the infant was the sole and unconscious witness of the mother's suffering.
What intense shame and misery, what incoherent passionate tenderness, what vague but haunting dread, what foreshadowing of possible evil had possession of her soul, as, her head bent down over the little girl sleeping in her arms, Margaret approached her father's house!
Mr. Carteret was standing at the entrance, and behind him, in the shade of the portico, was a figure whom Margaret did not recognise, and whom she was about to pass, having received her father's affectionate greeting, when Mr. Baldwin said, "This is Mr. Meredith's son, Margaret," and Robert held out his hand. Then she spoke to the boy, but hastily, being anxious to get her child and her father out of the cold air.
When the whole party had entered the house, and Mr. Baldwin and Mr. Carteret were talking by the fire in the study, Robert Meredith stood still in the hall watching the light snow flakes which had begun to fall sparingly, and which had the charm of novelty to him, and thinking not overpleasantly of Margaret.
"A proud, stuck-up fine lady," the boy muttered, and the expression of scorn which made his face so evil at times came over it. "I suppose she thinks I don't remember her in her shabby old clothes, and with her hands all rough. I suppose she fancies I was too much of a child to know all about her when she used to do our needlework, and my mother used to puzzle her head to make out jobs for her, because she was too proud to take the money as a present. I saw it all, though they didn't tell me; and I wonder how she would like me to tell her fine husband or her old fool of a father all about it! I remember how they talked about her at home when the black fellows killed Mr. Hungerford, and my father said they might venture to take her into the house now, until she could be sent to England. And my lady's too fine to look at one now, is she, with her precious self and her precious brat wrapped up in velvet and fur." And the boy pulled off a chair in the hall a mantle of Margaret's which had been thrown there, and kicked it into a corner.
It would be difficult to do justice to the vile expression of his handsome face, as, having given vent to this ebullition of senseless rage, he again stood, looking through the side windows of the hall door for the approach of the carriage which was to bring his father and James Dugdale to Chayleigh. The boy's chief characteristic was an extreme and besetting egotism, which Margaret had unconsciously offended. She would not have thought much or perhaps at all of the fact had she known it, but from the moment when, with a polite but careless greeting to Robert Meredith, she had passed on into the house, she had an enemy in the son of her old friend.
"I thought Margaret would be in a hurry home," said the unconscious Mr. Carteret, in a sagacious tone to his son-in-law, "when Meredith came. She received much kindness from him, and I knew she would like to acknowledge it as soon as possible."
"And I, too, sir," said Baldwin. "What a good fellow he is, and a fine hearty fellow! What do you think of the boy?"
"A very fair kind of boy indeed," said Mr. Carteret, with unusual alacrity; "never requires to be told anything twice, and is never in the way. If he is noisy at all, he keeps it all for out of doors, I assure you. And not ignorant, by any means: gave me a very intelligible account of the habits of the wombat and the opossum. Really a very tolerable boy, Baldwin; I fancy you won't mind him much."
This was warm praise, and quite an enthusiastic supposition, for Mr. Carteret. Baldwin was much reassured by it; he and Margaret had been rather alarmed at the contemplation of his possible sufferings at finding himself alone with a real live boy. Baldwin was glad too of the excuse for talking about something apart from himself and Margaret. The most natural thing for him to say under the circumstances would have been, "Well, sir, and how do you think Margaret is looking?" but he hesitated about saying it, and was relieved when Mr. Carteret volunteered the opinion that she was looking very well, and began to question him about their doings in foreign parts.
Thus the time was whiled away until Meredith and Dugdale arrived, and Margaret, announcing that the child was asleep, came to sit with her father. A look from her husband showed her that all was well, and a look in return from her released him.
The evening passed away quietly. No incident of any moment occurred. Mr. Carteret displayed no curiosity about Meredith's business in London, though he was very congratulatory concerning the fortunate coincidence of the return of Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin, and very solicitous about the danger of James Dugdale's being made ill by the journey and the excitement of London, which presented itself to Mr. Carteret in most alarming colours. He had not been in "town" since Mrs. Carteret's death, and if, contrary to his usual placid habit, he speculated about his own future at all, it certainly was to the effect that he hoped he never should be there again.
The old gentleman was in a state of supreme mental content just now. He was very happy in all respects, and the return of Margaret and Mr. Baldwin completed his felicity. His daughter's account of her health was very satisfactory, and perhaps she need not go abroad again. They spoke of going on to the Deane if the weather should not prove very severe, and for his part he hoped they would do so. He had no great liking for foreign countries, and no strong faith in the remedial properties of their climate; and though he was very glad that Margaret had tried Italy and profited by it, he should be still more glad that she should decide on staying at home. With a splendid home, every conceivable comfort, and improved health, she need not gad about any more, especially under present circumstances.
On the whole, Mr. Carteret's state of mind was one of enviable contentment on the evening of his daughter's return, and as she and her husband commented on it when they were alone, they felt that his entire unconsciousness was most fortunate. They had nothing to fear from suspicion or inquisitiveness on his part--he was incapable of the one, except in the case of a traveller reporting on newly-discovered natural objects, or of the latter, except in the case of birds, beasts, and creeping things.
There was one dissatisfied person among the little party at Chayleigh on the night of the return. It was Robert Meredith. He had not succeeded in discovering the object of his father's visit to London. "I am going to London with Mr. Dugdale, for a few days, on particular business," his father had said to him before they went away. But he had not explained the nature of the business, and the boy was vexed by this reticence. He had quick, subtle perceptions, and he had detected some trouble in his father's mind before they left home, and during the voyage. He had a secret conviction that this visit to London, whose object Meredith, an open-mannered, unreserved man with every one, and always frank and hearty in his dealings with his children, had not explained, had reference to this undiscovered source of trouble.
Robert listened to all the conversation which took place during the evening, and closely watched the countenances of every one present, but nothing transpired which shed the least light on the matter which excited his curiosity. He had not failed to remark that, though his father had told him all about his correspondence with Dugdale, and how he looked to him for advice and assistance in forwarding Robert's wishes, as to his education in England and his future career, the subject had not yet been discussed, and he had been left to amuse himself, and become familiar with the house and the surroundings, as best he might. A less shrewd and more amiable person than Robert Meredith would have imputed this to the pleasure of old friends in meeting after a separation of many years, and to the number and interest of the subjects they had to discuss. But Robert Meredith was not likely to entertain an hypothesis in which sentiment claimed a part, and was likely to resent anything which looked like a postponement of his claims to those of any subject or interest whatsoever.
To baffle this youth's curiosity was to excite his anger and animosity--to make him determined that hewouldget to the bottom of the mystery sought to be concealed from him--to fill him with the belief that it must be evil in its nature, and its discovery profitable. It was to call out into active display all that was as yet worst in a nature whose capacity for evil Margaret had early detected, and concerning which his father had conceived many unspoken misgivings.
"It is almost as if he had come to England about these people's affairs, and not about mine," said Robert Meredith to himself. "I wonder how many more days are to be lost before I hear what is to be done about me."
Margaret happened to glance towards him as this thought passed through his mind, and the expression of his face struck her painfully. "He was a bad child as I remember him.--a bad, sly, deceitful, heartless child--and he is a bad boy. He will be a bad man, I fear." She allowed these sentiments to influence her manner to Robert Meredith more than she was conscious of--it was polite indeed, but cold and distant.
It would have been depressing to a shy or sensitive person, but Robert Meredith was neither. He felt her manner indeed, and thought with a sneer, that considering the friendship she professed for his father, she might at least have feigned some interest in him. But he did not care. This rich woman, of high station and social importance, which his colonial notions rather magnified, must befriend him in material concerns, and, therefore, how she felt towards him was a thing of no consequence whatever. She could not dislike him more than he disliked her, for he hated her and her fine husband. He remembered her poor, and almost at the mercy of his parents for daily bread, and now she was rich and independent of every one, and he hated her. How had she gained all the world had to give, all he had longed for, since in his childhood he had read and heard of the great world, and all its prizes and luxuries? Only by her beauty, only by a man's foolish love for her.
The boy's precocious mind dwelt upon this thought with peculiar bitterness and a kind of rage. He hated Baldwin, too, though with less of personal dislike than Margaret. He was the first man whom Robert Meredith had ever seen with whose wealth no idea of effort, of labour, of speculation, of uncertainty was associated, and the boy's ambition and his avarice alike revolted against the contemplation of a position which he coveted with all the strength of his heart, and which he knew could never be his. This man, who passed him over as a mere boy--this man, who had given wealth and station to a woman whom Robert disliked and despised--was born to all these good things; he had not to long for them vainly, or to strive for them through long and weary toilsome years, with only the chance of winning them at last, which was to be his own lot in life. He might live as he listed, and the money he should have to spend would still be there.
Then there was a strife in the boy's mind between the burning desire for wealth, and the pleasures which wealth procures, and distaste to, revolt against, the toil by which it must be earned. In the evil soil of his nature such plants were ripe of growth, and he rebelled blindly against the inevitable lot which awaited him. Only in the presence of Baldwin and Margaret, only in the innumerable trifling occurrences and allusions--all strange and striking; to the colonial-bred boy--which mark the presence and the daily habits of persons to whom wealth is familiar, had Robert Meredith been brought to understand the distinction between his own position in life and that of persons of assured fortune. As he learned the lesson, he also learned to hate the unconscious teachers.
He learned, by the discussion of plans which he heard in the course of the evening, that his father intended to visit Mr. Baldwin at the Deane, and that he was to be of the party. The prospect gave him no pleasure. He should see this fine lady, then, in her grand home. If he dared, how he should like to say a few things, in seeming innocent unconsciousness, which should remind her of the time when he had seen her in his father's house, and known far more about her than she or any one would have believed possible! The impulse to say something which should offend Mrs. Baldwin grew upon him; but he dared not yield to it, and his animosity increased towards the unconscious individual on whose account he was forced to impose restraint upon his spiteful and vicious nature.
Margaret retired early, and as she extended her hand to him with a kind "goodnight!" the diamonds which sparkled upon it caught his attention. Once more she marked the sinister look--half smile, half sneer--which came into his face. He was thinking, "I wonder whether you would like Mr. Baldwin to know about the trumpery ring my mother sold for you, and how you cried when you had to come to her afterwards, and tell her you had nothing left to sell."
On the following day the weather was bright, dry, and cheerful; Meredith, Baldwin, and Robert went out early, bent on a long walk. During the forenoon Margaret did not come downstairs, but in the afternoon she went to her father's study in search of James. She found him there, a large folio was on a reading-desk before him, but it was long since he had turned a page.
"Put this with the letters for post," she said, handing him a packet directed to Lady Davyntry, "and come out with me for a while."
James looked at her anxiously. She had a wearied, exhausted expression in her face, and her cheeks were deeply flushed.
"You are very tired, Margaret?"
"Yes, I am. I am easily tired now, and I have been writing for hours."
They went out together, and walked along the terrace into the flower-garden, which looked dreary in its desolate wintry condition. At first they talked vaguely of trifles, but after a while they fell into deep and earnest conversation, and Margaret leaned closely on James's arm as they walked, now quickly, now slowly, and sometimes she held him standing still, as she impressed upon him something that she was saying with emphasis.
The walk and the conference lasted long, and when at length the warning chill of sunset came, and James reminded Margaret of the danger of cold and fatigue, and she yielded to his counsel, and turned towards the house, traces of deep emotion were visible upon the faces of both.
"I will not speak thus to you again," said Margaret, as they reached the portico; "but I have implicit faith in your remembrance of what I have said, and in your promise."
"You may trust both," James answered her in an earnest but broken voice; "I will remember, and I will send for Rose Moore."