CHAPTER XXHOW A THORN WAS PLANTED
‘Look here, Michael, if you ever mean to sit still again, I should be awfully glad if you would begin to do it now, if it’s quite the same to you. A man whirring about the room, and crumpling up newspapers without ever reading them is not the best sort of help in working out calculations.’
‘I’m sure I beg your pardon. I was really lost in thought.’
‘Humph! Pretty noisy kind of thoughts,’ said Roger, bending again over the sheet which had occupied him.
There was perfect silence now for a few moments (the scene was, of course, the library at the Red Gables), too perfect a silence to last very long. Then Michael suddenly burst out in his turn—
‘Are you obliged to finish those wretched calculations to-night? Because, if not, I should like to speak to you.’
Roger threw his pen down.
‘Thankful for an excuse to let them alone,’ said he. ‘What’s up?’
‘I told you how I came to meet Miss Askam this afternoon.’
‘You did.’
‘You may be aware that from the Black Bank Ford to Thorsgarth is a good five miles?’
‘It is every bit of it. I admit it freely.’
‘Perhaps you can also comprehend that we did not ride all that distance in unbroken silence?’
‘Rather stupid of you both, if you did, I should say.’
‘Yes. Well, we had a good deal of conversation.’
‘Ah! Was it of an agreeable nature?’
‘It was interesting, at any rate.’
‘That was well. I am yearning to hear more. What did you talk about?’
‘Scenery, amongst other things.’
‘Yes? Has she an eye for the picturesque?’
‘A taste for it, I should say, seeing the kind of expedition she had undertaken, and how she came to be where I found her.’
‘To be sure! I had forgotten that. Well?’
Michael paused, and Roger looked at him. He had spoken flippantly, but he had not been altogether delighted to find how full his friend was of the afternoon’s adventure.
‘She talked about her brother,’ said Michael, slowly.
‘To you! Well——’
‘Wait a bit! It came on quite accidentally. The whole thing was accidental, and I don’t know that I am not very sorry to have got let in for it at all. It was apropos of Otho’s having gone away from home. She told me he had gone to Friarsdale, and asked me where, exactly, it was. My reply enlightened her considerably. Would you believe that she was perfectly ignorant that he possessed that place in Friarsdale? She was in a great state about it when she gathered, from my casual remark, that he had horses over there.’
‘No wonder, if she has any idea of the value of money, or any conception of the way in which it flies in Friarsdale.’
‘Bah! She knows nothing about that, of course. She had an idea that everything of that kind must be low. I tried to make things straight, but she had got thinking, and putting two and two together as quick-witted women will; and before I had time to take my breath, almost, she had hit upon the exact truth, turned upon me, and demanded to know if Otho were a gambler.’
‘How intensely disagreeable for you!’
‘Humph! Not very pleasant for her, when I had to say yes to her question. She did not speak for an immense time. It seemed an eternity to me. I began to wish myself well out of it.’
‘Well, you are well out of it now,’ said Roger, looking at him from under his bushy brows. But he spoke with some uncertainty.
‘No, I’m not, unless I break a promise I made her.’
Roger was too entirely in sympathy with Michael and his every mood to express surprise, but, well though he knew his friend, he felt it. Michael must, he understood at once, have been very much moved, to have made promises to Eleanor Askam.
‘What sort of a promise was that, Michael?’ he asked, quietly.
‘When we parted at her door, I lifted her from her horse, and she looked so utterly sad and heartbroken, that I could hardly bear to see her. She asked me to call upon her to-morrow afternoon, as she had something to say to me, and I—said I would.’
Silence again. Roger pondered the situation, and at last said—
‘I suppose, if you made a promise of that sort, you must keep it.’
‘I must, I think. I’m only under the impression that I was an awful fool evertomake it.’
‘I don’t see why. It commits you to nothing.’
‘Oh, nothing, of course,’ said Michael, quickly. ‘I’m sorry for her, that’s all. And I hate to see a woman in trouble.’
‘She may have got over her trouble by the time you get there.’
‘She’ll never get over it, if you mean that she may have begun not to care about her brother’s weaknesses, or vices—whichever you please to call them.’
‘Does she expect you to help her in curing them?’ asked Roger, rather bitterly.
‘I don’t know what she wants,’ said Michael curtly. ‘I thought I’d tell you about it, that was all. It’s all right.’
With that he seemed to consider the subject at an end. Roger knew quite well that what Michael meant was, that he repented him bitterly of his incautious promise to set foot again within Thorsgarth, and that in speaking about it, he had had one lingering wish that Roger might say, ‘Don’t go. Say you can’t, or won’t.’ But Roger had not been able to say that, and if he had, Michael would not have been able to act upon it. The thing was settled. He was to go.
All the following day he went about his business and his work, seemingly just as usual. But behind all his occupations he had constantly before his mind’s eye the scene of the previous evening—a sepia-tinted landscape, a picture all in neutral hues, behind whose grayness he could feel a warmth and a glow which thrilled him.He saw again the darkling sky and fields, heard the roaring of the swollen Balder, and then the measured clank of their horses’ hoofs through the streets and along the frosty roads. And when this recollection faded for a time, it was replaced by that of their parting—the tired voice, the earnest request, the promised, ‘I will not keep you long,’ the sweet burden held for one moment in his arms, and the door closed between them when she went in.
‘Pooh! What folly. I shall not give way to any such nonsense. Otho Askam—Otho is her brother. Magdalen—Gilbert—what part or lot have I with them? She has some crotchet in her head. I would not be unkind to her, but I will make no more promises. I shall give her to understand that.’
It was a powerful and an honest resolution, and came from the very depths of Michael’s convictions on the subject of his own relations with these persons who had once, years ago, played so important a part in his life.
Directly after four o’clock, he found himself walking up the Thorsgarth avenue, and, as he went, he could not but remember, mistily at first, how he and those three other boys had once made that now so mournful aisle ring with their shouts of mirth and delight. ‘The thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts,’ and as he walked on and emerged in the open space before the house, the dimness vanished, and there came, glowing and sunshiny as at the time, athwart all the frost and grayness of the present, the vivid recollection of those summer days, when he had seen this same girl on whom he was now going to call, led by her nurse’s hand, or by that of the proud young beauty, her mother, pacing the terraces, and he, a boy of twelve, had lain upon the river-bank,and dreamed his dreams, lulled half to sleep by the warmth of the sunshine and the murmur of the stream.
Then, almost before he had adjusted his mind to this recollection it seemed, he heard his name announced to her and stood before her, in a sombre room on the ground-floor—the library.
Eleanor, who was pale and tired, as he saw when he entered, rose from a chair by the fire, and offered him her hand, a slow, deep blush spreading itself over her whole face. But she betrayed no embarrassment of speech or manner. She looked grave, sad, composed.
‘It is kind of you to come, just because I asked you,’ said she, as they both sat down.
‘There is no kindness in that,’ said Michael, beginning to measure his words, in pursuance of his resolution. ‘You said you wished to speak to me, or to ask me something—I forget which,—and of course I came. Equally of course, you may find me the most ignorant or silent of men, before I leave you.’
‘I know you are not ignorant on the points as to which I wish for information. But you may very easily choose to be silent,’ answered Eleanor.
‘First of all, let me ask how you are to-day? How did you sustain the shock of the cold water yesterday afternoon?’
‘I have taken no cold, thank you. In fact, when I had got my wet things off, and had become warm by the fire, I was so utterly worn out that I couldn’t sit up any longer, and ignominiously went to bed.’
‘And to sleep, I hope?’
‘Well—I won’t boast of having slept much; but that was not because of the plunge into the Balder Beck.... Mr. Langstroth, I am not going to make apologiesor say I am sure you must be surprised at my asking you to call upon me to-day, or anything of that kind. I think you can believe I am trying to act for the best.’
‘I am sure you are,’ said he, briefly and coldly.
‘Yes. Therefore, no apologies are needed; but perhaps a word of explanation is. You know I am almost a stranger here?’
‘Yes.’
‘But of course you do not know that my brother is as much a stranger to me and my friends as I am to him and his.’
‘I did not know it—but——’
‘You did not know it. But it is so. What you told me last night, in answer to my question,’—she hastened to add, as he looked up quickly—‘you could not help it, it was not your fault, but it distressed me dreadfully. I thought about it all night. I felt that I was groping in the dark, with no one and nothing to guide me. There is no one here from whom I can ask a question—not one. I want to know if you will answer me one or two.’
‘It will depend upon what they are,’ he replied in the same curt, dry voice.
‘Yes, of course. First of all—ah, I cannot go on in this way, cataloguing things,’ exclaimed Eleanor, passionately. ‘It is too horrible. I don’t believe I have the right to ask one of these questions; and yet I feel as if so much depended on my knowing the answers to them!’
She had sat up, and leaned forward, looking with intense earnestness, pleading earnestness at him. Michael, imperceptibly to her, caught his breath. The temptation was strong to bid her ask what she would, since he knewher motives must be pure. As a matter of fact, he looked at her steadily, gravely, and attentively, awaiting what more she had to say. He said no words to help or lead her on.
‘I will tell you what I want to know,’ she said. ‘Does Miss Wynter know about Otho—about what he does with his money—his gambling? Does he want to marry her? and would it be good for him if he did marry her?’
Having asked her questions, Eleanor sat, with her face aflame, and looked at him, every trace of her first self-possession having vanished. As he did not immediately answer, she went on hurriedly—
‘I asked Miss Wynter if she knew about Otho’s character and habits. I asked her partly in joke and to tease her, because I saw she hated me to take any interest in him; but she told me that if she knew everything about him to the most minute particular, she would not think of sharing her knowledge with me.’ Then, seeing Michael’s lips grow tight and his eyebrows draw together, she added, ‘That is why I know it is useless to ask her.’
‘It would be absurd to refuse to answer that question,’ said Michael, almost contemptuously. ‘Every one in Bradstane knows that Miss Wynter and your brother are friends—intimate friends, and that she knows more about him than any one else, except——’ He paused, with a look of deep distaste on his face.
‘I know, I know,’ said Eleanor, quickly.
‘Therefore that is no secret. As for your other questions—I must decline to make any kind of an answer to them. I cannot imagine any circumstances under which I would discuss those points.’
‘It is perfectly natural that you should feel so,’ said Eleanor, every spark of spirit gone from her voice and attitude, as she sat, leaning rather droopingly forward, despondency on her face, and her fingers loosely twined together. She looked towards the ground after that remark, and was silent, giving a deep sigh after a while.
Michael could not help looking at her as she sat thus, having evidently almost forgotten his presence. In contemplating her he was vividly aware of her beauty, and of the noble order to which it belonged; but he was still more keenly alive to something else—to the deep sadness which overspread her whole countenance and attitude. He was sure, from her whole appearance, and from what his experienced eye knew to be her temperament, that she was well-formed for the enjoyment of pleasure. But not, it would seem, to the exclusion of other things. It was quite evident that since the discovery she had made with regard to Otho, she had not had much delight in existence, or even found much relief in looking forward to a better time. Michael could understand and appreciate this kind of disposition; in a woman, he had grown greatly to admire it. Eleanor, as she sat now, disappointed, puzzled, unhappy, seemingly wondering what she was to do for the best, appealed very strongly to the emotional side of his nature, which had been dormant for years now—ever since he had taken his life and career into his own hands again, after the great shock they had once sustained. But he was no longer a boy, or even a very impetuous man,—at least, not the man any more to let his impetuses run away with him. There was no possible justification for the questions which Eleanor had asked him. He was not going to answer them—was not going for one moment to enter into any discussion onthose points. But while his reason told him how wrong she had been in asking the questions, his heart forgave her freely the indiscretion. She had asked him—because she felt she could trust him. He liked the bold frankness and unconventionality of the action. Magdalen had ever loved the strictest observance of outside form—unless there had been some advantage to be gained by disregarding it. At this moment Eleanor looked up, and met his eyes dwelling steadily on her face. She blushed deeply.
‘I have to beg your pardon,’ said she, ‘for having brought you here on such a fruitless errand. I might have known—I did know, in my inmost heart—that you could not, and would not answer those questions. But I felt so at sea in the matter. I had such a need of guidance.’
Michael rose, smiling slightly.
‘Do not apologise,’ said he; ‘we all do impetuous things sometimes. You, at least, were actuated by no bad motives.’
‘No,’ she said, in a low voice, as she, too, rose.
Then Michael, in his turn, gave way to a sudden impulse.
‘Because I cannot speak to you on these subjects,’ said he, ‘that is no reason why you should not ask some one else; it is no reason why you should not know what you wish to know. For my part, I think you are quite right in seeking to learn the truth on these matters.’
‘But there is no one else,’ said Eleanor. ‘You and Miss Wynter are the only——’
‘You are quite mistaken,’ he interrupted her gravely. ‘What you say shows that you are, indeed, a stranger to your brother and his associates. He has one friend whoknows him more intimately and has more influence over him than even Miss Wynter, and that one is——’
‘Your brother,’ Eleanor almost whispered, again rushing to the right conclusion, and saving Michael the pain of finishing his sentence.
‘Yes,’ he answered, gravely. ‘It is he whom I mean. And as I believe he comes here often——’
‘He is coming down for Christmas, Otho told me,’ she interposed eagerly.
‘Ask him what you wish to know,’ said Michael, a hardness coming into his tone which was peculiar to him in speaking of Gilbert. ‘He can have no reasons for concealing anything from you, and can tell you all you have asked me, and as much more as you wish to know—that is, if he chooses.’
‘Thank you,’ said Eleanor unenthusiastically. ‘I will remember what you say.’
‘Then I will wish you good afternoon,’ said Michael, holding out his hand. Eleanor put hers within it silently. ‘Miss Askam,’ he said, quickly, ‘do not, I say again, make too much of this trouble. Do not battle too hard with it, if you know what I mean. I expect that to you, who have very likely never known a cross, in the real sense of the word, it seems something to be resented bitterly, but——’
‘No, you are quite mistaken,’ said Eleanor, quickly but softly, lifting her eyes to his face with a steady look in them that struck him very much. ‘I see that it is something I shall have to live with. There is no use in resenting a trouble of that kind. When I came here, I came looking for joy. I have found sorrow. I found it the very day after I got here, though I hardly knew what it was, then. I understand now. I shall not rebel against it.’
‘That is right,’ he could not help exclaiming heartily, in a very different tone of voice from any which she had yet heard from his lips. And he gave her hand a pressure and a little quick shake. ‘Forgive me if I take the freedom of saying to you, that from the first time I saw you I thought you were made of the rightstuff.’stuff.’
‘Did you?’ she said, smiling involuntarily, and with a queer look adding, ‘I don’t mean to make fun of serious things, but it always did seem to me that people made, as you say, of the right stuff, meant those who were chosen out to bear a lot of trouble, because their backs were broader or stronger than those of their neighbours.’
‘That is one view of the case, certainly,’ said Michael, going to the door. ‘Good day!’
And he walked out, having a final impression of her, standing with her hands folded before her, and looking after him with an expression, half anxiety, half relief, on her face.
‘A fine girl!’ said he to himself, as he walked very slowly down the avenue: he did not feel, now, in such a desperate hurry to shake the dust of the place from his feet. ‘What a blending of fire and softness, of vigour and gentleness! No weak-willed fool would have spoken in that way. It was not a spiritless acquiescence in evil because she really had no power to cope with it. It is that she understands something of what is below the surface. She has found out the best way to meet it. “I came here looking for joy. I have found sorrow.” How noble she did look as she said it! Well, may she find strength too, to carry her sorrow wisely and well. It is the best any of us can ask for in this world.’
But he pondered the theme in every variety of aspect on his homeward way. He wondered what she would do after he had left her—how pass the dreary evening, alone and uncheered, in the great, desolate house. At this idea Michael suddenly felt a wave of exceeding great pity and compunction sweep over his soul. Well might she say, ‘I have found sorrow.’ What else could one, nurtured as she had been, look for, in that house and its associations? He suddenly became conscious how very bad it was for a young woman to sit alone and brood over troubles—bad for both mental and bodily health. And he fell to wondering who, in all the social circles of Bradstane and its neighbourhood could in some way play the part to her of friend or associate.
Of course, what he pictured her as doing was entirely different from what she really did. After he had left the room, she stood looking at the door which had closed after him, and listened to his footsteps for the few short moments during which it was possible to hear them. Then, suddenly, with a quick, restless movement she began to pace the room. Backwards and forwards she went, with an uneasy step, for some time, till, in the gathering dark, Barlow came in with a lamp, and with a taper lighted some candles which stood on the mantelpiece. He soon went away again, and the illumination he had made would have revealed her to any one who had happened to be there, with a face pallid but excited, and a strange unusual light in her eyes. She made a pause in her walk, moved uncertainly once or twice, and then walked up to the mantelpiece. She was not now thinking of the ill news and the trouble which had, as it were, stalked into her life, but of him through whom, indirectly, she had become acquainted with them. Whatdid it all mean? and herself of two days ago, where was it? Was it laughter or tears now struggling within her—pleasure or pain? Something had happened to her, that she felt, and she would always be different from what she had been before. Had she been lifted up, or struck down? She could not tell, she had not the faintest idea, but she felt Michael’s voice thrilling again through every nerve, till at last the sensation of the mastery he had gotten over her became almost unbearable. If he had thus laid her under a spell which she felt to be almost terrible in its strength and intensity, what of herself? She was not yet so lost in her own subjective sensations as to be unable to take his into consideration, and at this moment she suddenly lifted her eyes and looked at her own reflection in the mirror over the mantelpiece—her lips parted, and a new searching eagerness in her expression.
‘He saw my face this afternoon, clearly enough,’ something within her seemed to say, with an uncontrollable frankness, for which her usual self was in no wise accountable. It was as if a voice apart, and yet belonging to her, spoke, and she had to listen. Some phase of her own nature which had never yet addressed itself to her, appealed to her now, crying aloud, so that other voices were stilled; it made itself imperiously audible.
‘He saw it. Did it please him, I wonder? What did he think of it? What does he think of me? I would give all the world, if I had it, to know.’
But the reflection of herself which she saw, only flung her own doubt and wonder and groping speculation back into her own face, and presently she sat down again, muttering, ‘I wish I had never seen him.’
Then, at last, the wished-for tears broke forth, and she whispered to herself between them, ‘He is good, he is good, he is good! I know he is.’
Good or bad, he had that day planted a thorn in her breast, and it grew apace.