CHAPTER XVIA FRIENDSHIP EXPLAINED
Michael, tired himself, threw himself on to his tired horse when he left Magdalen’s parlour, and rode down the drive and into the high-road. He had had a long and hard day, and there was weariness visible in the paleness of his face, which was a thinner and an older face than it had been.
But there was a theme in his mind, occupying it to the exclusion of his weariness, and this it was which engrossed him as he rode towards Bradstane.
‘So that is Otho Askam’s sister?’ he reflected. ‘I had nearly forgotten that he had a sister. Somehow, one never associates him with human, kindly connections of that kind. I remember her now, though, when we used to be children together in the Thorsgarth garden. She wore a blue velvet frock, I remember, and little kid shoes. I used to think her a pretty little thing. She is something more than a pretty little thing now, though’—he smiled a little to himself—‘rather a superb young woman, I should say, and, judging from all one can gather from a flying glimpse and a few words about the antipodes of her brother in everything—yes, I should say everything. I wonder if she knows about his character? I wonder how she got to Balder Hall sosoon after her arrival? With him for a brother, and Magdalen for a friend—she is splendidly equipped, and need fear nothing, morally or socially.... She is a beautiful girl. Such eyes, and such a fine expression.’
Thinking such thoughts, he presently arrived at the Red Gables, where he had to devote himself to work till Roger came in for dinner. Eleanor had wondered, after she had heard Michael’s story, how he had been able to remain on terms of politeness with Magdalen, who said plainly that he was her friend still. But Magdalen had given no recital of the steps by which she and Michael had arrived at their present degree of mutual courtesy and neutrality. It was hardly likely that she should, when such a recital must have laid bare the very eye and core of her own humiliation, of the degradation which was constantly present in her consciousness, and of the disappointment and the failure which made her see all things in the light of bitterness and cynicism.
She had broken with Michael, suddenly, promptly, and pitilessly: she had not stayed her hand, she had not softened her expressions; she had dealt a blow which she knew might ruin his life, and that knowledge had not deterred her, or caused her hand to tremble as she struck. She had sent Michael—a broken man, as he thought—to recover his health, moral and physical, as best he might; and he had returned, saying he was glad that nothing remained of the man who had been Michael Langstroth, since that man had been a great fool.
When things have happened to a man which make him feel as if the sun had fallen out of the heavens, and the stars changed their courses, he is, no doubt, a little apt to feel astounded on finding, after a time, that it was not the sun nor the stars, but himself who was disturbedand jolted out of his old orbit into a new one. But let him be astonished as much as he will—let him even be indignant, as he very often is, at such vagaries of the universe so distressing him—he cannot alter things. The sun goes on shining, and the stars pursue their appointed march, and by and by he—to descend from great things to small ones—also falls into some sort of progress, be it march, or shamble, or shuffle, or steady struggle onwards and upwards. This always happens if the man be a very man, and not an amorphous sort of thing without backbone or sinew.
In obedience to this law it had come to pass that Michael Langstroth, five years after he had been stricken down, found himself able to stand upright—found that he was still living, moving, working; could laugh when a joke tickled him, which it did pretty often; could feel hungry when he had fasted, and thought perhaps a little more of the nature of the provision set before him than he had formerly done. This last trait was, no doubt, if one argues rightly, a powerful sign that if he moved now easily enough, still it was in a different way, and on a different platform from the old ones.
On his return from Hastings, after the illness which followed his father’s death and Magdalen’s repudiation of him, Dr. Rowntree had attacked him, and gone near to kill him with kindness of a very practical sort; insisting that he was an old man, tired of hard work, who had long been wanting to retire, and had only been waiting till Michael should be ready to take his place. All tenders of payment for his generosity he had firmly and steadily put aside, till Michael had been forced to stop any such suggestions. He had finally accepted the doctor’s goodness, as the latter had fully made up hismind that he should; and so it came to pass that, soon after his return to work, Michael had found himself in possession of a practice of his own, and also that the retirement of his old friend had called a rival into the field, another surgeon, who perhaps thought that the Bradstane circuit was too large for the unaided management of one man. Thus Michael, while he became better off than he had ever been before, in a pecuniary point of view, found at the same time that he must work with all his might, just to keep the lead—not to be swamped in the struggle. The practice he now had was not as lucrative as the practice of the old doctor, untroubled by any rival, had been, but it was a practice on which Michael could have afforded that marriage which had been his goal for three years. When he had come home and begun work, he had heard many rumours, many asseverations, even, that Magdalen Wynter and Otho Askam were to be married. Scandal-mongers said that she had jilted Michael in order that she might marry Otho. Michael had to steel his heart and his nerves and his whole moral man in a triple brazen armour, in order to receive these assaults without wincing, and in order to hear without shrinking the proofs adduced in support of the hypothesis—Otho’s constant visits, namely, to Balder Hall, and Magdalen’s graciousness to him. For his own part, with a natural revulsion of feeling, the result of the demolition of his blind trust in her, he was firmly persuaded that the marriage would take place; but it did not. Months passed by, and the indignation at Magdalen’s infidelity had merged into ridicule of her failure—if failure it were, for Otho’s visits to Balder Hall continued with unabated regularity.
During these months Michael had never even seen her, and he took it for granted, without thinking very much about it, that he was not to see her any more, nor hold any intercourse with her. Then, one day, a messenger came in haste from Balder Hall, to Dr. Rowntree, to say that Miss Strangforth was very ill, and he was to go to her immediately. But Dr. Rowntree was not in Bradstane at the moment. Michael was, and of course there could be no question of hesitating or debating. He went to Balder Hall; was ushered straight into Miss Strangforth’s room, where the first object he saw was Magdalen Wynter’s face, pale and anxious, raised to look at him as he came in. Michael had just time to feel that all that he had been sure he would experience on first meeting her, was conspicuous by its absence—all that he would have thought it least likely that he should feel, he felt. It was she who showed the more agitation of the two. Her eyes fell, her lips fluttered—she could not meet Michael’s gaze. She spoke in a low voice, timidly, deprecatingly. From that moment he felt master of the situation, and of her. It did not give him a more kindly feeling towards life in general, or towards Magdalen in particular, but it made him conscious he was a free man. It was he who from this day took the lead in the intercourse between Magdalen and himself—chose how far it should go, laid down the terms on which they should meet. Magdalen had said to Eleanor, ‘We have been friends ever since.’ Perhaps Michael would not have contradicted her, even had she asserted this before his face. But none could know better than Magdalen herself what Michael in reality felt for her now—none was better acquainted than herself with the nature of those ashes left after theedifice of his faith in her had been so entirely consumed and demolished. She knew that she was powerless now to move him in any way—that he was stronger than she was, and that, instead of crushing him, she had exposed herself to the possibility of being crushed by him. He despised her—she knew it: he esteemed her no higher than his brother Gilbert, if he did not choose to visit his contempt upon her in the same way. She was his ‘friend,’ not because he could not tear himself away from her presence, but because she had now become to him a thing of so little consequence that it was not worth his while to avoid her. He had never said so to her, but she knew it, and it was more convenient to say to Eleanor Askam, ‘We are friends,’ than it would have been to explain to her the nature of the friendship.
And thus it can be understood how Michael this night thought more of Eleanor Askam, and felt more interest in her—of a purely speculative kind—than in the woman he had known and loved for so many years. He had cut himself off entirely from the Askam clan, as it were—Gilbert was mixed up with them; Magdalen and Otho were friends, and Otho was a man whom he disliked inevitably, from his very nature. The vision of this bright and beautiful girl, suddenly appearing in a quarter to which he was accustomed to consider himself a perfect stranger, had struck him, and he felt interested in her, as we feel interested in amusing or curious things with which we do not expect or desire to have any intimacy. And while he was waiting for Roger to come in to dinner, and ostensibly reading, he found himself half-dreaming, for he was sleepy, and ever the vision before his mental eyes was Magdalen’s scented, warmparlour, with its ruddy glow of firelight cheering the dull afternoon, and the sudden appearance upon the scene of that bright and beautiful girl, with her open gaze, and her abundant life and fire.
At last Roger came in, apologising for being late.
‘I went to meet Ada, and it is a good half-hour’s walk from Balder Hall.’
‘Oh, I’ve been at Balder Hall this afternoon, too. Who do you think I saw there?’
‘Miss Askam—I’ve heard.’
‘Otho Askam’s sister. That is the light in which I saw her, I must confess.’
Roger shrugged his shoulders. They were as broad—he was as big, as clumsy, as saturnine as ever.
‘Ada says she is very handsome.’
‘Ay, she is! Handsome enough to make a sensation here, I can tell you.’
‘Ah! In her brother’s style?’
‘No, indeed. I should say they had no two points in common, unless physiognomy lies most atrociously.’
‘Wish her joy, I’m sure, then,’ said Roger, drily.
‘Just what I was thinking. Are you going out again to-night?’ he added, for they had returned to the library, and he saw Roger collecting sundry songs and pieces of music.
‘Yes. The usual rendezvous,’ replied Roger.
‘How go the rehearsals?’
‘First-rate; if she would only leave it to me, and not go up to Balder Hall after every lesson, to get a second opinion.’
Michael laughed a little sarcastically.
‘That must be flattering to youramour propre, both as teacher and betrothed,’ he said.
‘Very much so. Never mind! When we are wed, the Balder Hall alliance must come to an end.’
‘Now, I don’t call that fair, but the very reverse,’ said Michael, emphatically. ‘She would have just as much right to go to Miss Wynter and say, “Never mind! When we are wed, the Red Gables alliance must come to an end.”’
‘Oh no! There’s a great difference.’
‘Yes, there is. There is the difference that you could make her give up Miss Wynter, and that she could not make you give up me.’
‘No one makes me give up my friend,’ said Roger, deliberately; ‘neither wife nor mistress, nor any one else. It is no true wife’s part to wish to separate her husband and his friends.’
‘A wife has the strictest right to say the same thing with regard to her husband. And you have not a shadow of right, Roger, to say she shall not know Miss Wynter when she is married to you. If you make it asine quâ non, you ought to tell her so in advance.’
‘You are very hot about it. I’d as soon she had a serpent for a friend as——’ He nodded expressively.
‘Well, I say you have no right to say so,’ said Michael, ‘and I recommend you to think it over on your way down. You talk about educating her where she is deficient—poor little thing! but it isn’t education to say “you shall” and “you shall not.”’
‘You may be right,’ said Roger, deliberately. ‘Only, please, do me the justice to own that I did not say how I should stop the alliance. I only said it should come to an end. There is such a thing as persuasion.’
‘Oh, if you are going to get out of it in that way——’
‘Good night,’ said Roger, amiably. ‘Don’t leap so readily to conclusions another time.’
With which he went out, leaving Michael laughing to himself.
The latter had once again to turn out in the raw November air, to see some patients in the town. As he returned, he passed the shop of Mr. Dixon, the Bradstane stationer, and looking up, saw a bright light burning behind the red curtains of the windows on the second story. Distant sounds of music also came to his ears. He smiled and sighed, both at once; and in his mind there were running thoughts, almost identical with those which Roger Camm had thought of Michael’s own engagement, eight years ago, to Magdalen Wynter.
‘If she is the girl to make him happy, well and good. But I wish he had chosen differently. He talks about marrying into his own sphere—such bosh! Small shopkeepers are not his sphere, let him say what he likes. If Ada Dixon had been a squire’s daughter, I suppose he would have discovered that after all he was a clergyman’s son, and a gentleman, her social equal. Now it suits him better to call himself a working man, and say that like must wed like, to be happy. It is a pity; he might have had a career, only she drags him back.’
He called at Dr. Rowntree’s, and had half an hour’s chat with the old man; then back to his own house, his pipe, and a treatise on some new surgical experiments with which it behoved him to make acquaintance.