The news which Mr. William Bowker had heard from Inspector Blackett troubled its recipient considerably, and it was not until he had thought it over deeply and consumed a large quantity of tobacco in the process, that he arrived at any settled determination as to what was the right course to be pursued by him. His first idea was to make Geoffrey Ludlow acquainted with the whole story, and let him act as he thought best; but a little subsequent reflection changed his opinion on this point. Geoff was very weak in health, certainly in no fit state to leave his bed; and yet if he heard that Margaret was found, that her address was known, above all that she was ill, Bowker knew him well enough to be aware that nothing would prevent him at once setting out to see her, and probably to use every effort to induce her to return with him. Such a course would be bad in every way, but in the last respect it would be fatal. For one certain reason Bowker had almost hoped that nothing more might ever be heard of the wretched woman who had fallen like a curse upon his friend's life. He knew Geoffrey Ludlow root and branch, knew how thoroughly weak he was, and felt certain that, no matter how grievous the injury which Margaret had done him, he had but to see her again--to see her more especially in sickness and misfortune--to take her back to his heart and to his hearth, and defy the counsel of his friends and the opinion of the world. That would never do. Geoff had been sufficiently dragged down by this unfortunate infatuation; but he had a future which should be independent of her, undimmed by any tarnish accruing to him from those wondrous misspent days. So old Bowker firmly believed; and to accomplish that end he determined that none of Inspector Blackett's news should find its way to Geoffrey's ears, at all events until he, Bowker, had personally made himself acquainted with the state of affairs.
It must have been an impulse of the strongest friendship and love for Geoff that induced William Bowker to undertake this duty; for it was one which inspired him with aversion, not to say horror. At first he had some thoughts of asking Charley Potts to do it; but then he bethought him that Charley, headstrong, earnest, and impulsive as he was, was scarcely the man to be intrusted with such a delicate mission. And he remembered, moreover, that Charley was now to a great extentliéwith Geoff's family, that he had been present at Geoff's first meeting with Margaret, that he had always spoken against her, and that now, imbued as he was likely to be with some of the strong feelings of old Mrs. Ludlow, he would be certain to make a mess of the mission, and, without the least intention of being offensive, would hurt some one's feelings in an unmistakable and unpardonable manner. No; he must go himself, horribly painful as it would be to him. His had been a set gray life for who should say how many years; he had not been mixed up with any woman's follies or griefs in ever so slight a degree, he had heard no woman's voice in plaintive appeal or earnest confession, he had seen no woman's tears or hung upon no woman's smile, since--since when? Since the days spent withher. Ah, how the remembrance shut out the present and opened up the long, long vistas of the past! He was no longer the bald-headed, grizzle-bearded, stout elderly man; he was young Bowker, from whom so much was expected; and the common tavern-parlour in which he was seated, with its beer-stained tables and its tobacco-reek faded away, and the long dusty roads of Andalusia, the tinkling bells of the mules, the cheery shouts of the sunburntarrieros, the hard-earned pull at thebota, and the loved presence, now vanished for ever, rose in his memory.
When his musings were put to flight by the entrance of the waiter, he paid his score, and summoning up his resolution he went out into the noisy street, and mounting the first omnibus was borne away to his destination. He found the place indicated to him by Blackett--a small but clean and decent street--and soon arrived at Mrs. Chapman's house. There, at the door, he stopped, undecided what to do. He had not thought of any excuse for demanding an interview with Mrs. Chapman's lodger, and, on turning the subject over in his mind, he could not imagine any at all likely to be readily received. See Margaret he must; and to do that, he thought he must take her unprepared and on a sudden: if he sent up his name, he would certainly be refused admittance. His personal appearance was far too Bohemian in its character to enable him to pass himself off as her lawyer, or any friend of her family; his only hope was to put a bold front on it, to mention her name, and to walk straight on to her room, leaving it to chance to favour his efforts.
He entered the shop--a dull dismal little place, with a pair of stays lying helplessly in the window, and a staring black-eyed torso of a female doll, for cap-making purposes, insanely smiling on the counter. Such a heavy footfall as Mr. Bowker's was seldom heard in those vestal halls; such a grizzly-bearded face as Mr. Bowker's was seldom seen in such close proximity to the cap-making dummy; and little Mrs. Chapman the milliner came out "all in a tremble," as she afterwards expressed it, from her inner sanctum, which was about as big and as tepid as a warm-bath, and in a quavering voice demanded the intruder's business. She was a mild-eyed, flaxen-haired, quiet, frightened little woman, and old Bowker's heart softened towards her, as he said, "You have a friend of mine lodging with you, ma'am, I think--Mrs. Lambert?"
"O, dear; then, if you're a friend of Mrs. Lambert's, you're welcome here, I can assure you, sir!" and the little woman looked more frightened than ever, and held up her hands half in fear, half in relief.
"Ah, she's been ill, I hear," said Bowker, wishing to have it understood that he was thoroughlyen rapportwith the lodger.
"Ill!--I'm thankful you've come, sir!--no one, unless they saw her, would credit how ill she is--I mean to be up and about, and all that. She's better to-day, and clearer; but what she have been these few days past, mortal tongue cannot tell--all delirium-like, and full of fancies, and talking of things which set Hannah--the girl who does for me--and me nearly out of our wits with fright. So much so, that six-and-sixpence a-week is--well, never mind, poor thing; it's worse for her than for us; but I'm glad, at any rate, some friend has come to see her."
"I'll go and do so at once, Mrs. Chapman," said Bowker. "I know my way; the door straight opposite to the front of the stairs, isn't it? Thank you; I'll find it;" and with the last words yet on his tongue, Mr. Bowker had passed round the little counter, by the little milliner, and was making the narrow staircase creak again with his weight.
He opened the door opposite to him, after having knocked and received no answer, and peered cautiously in. The daylight was fading, and the blind of the window was half down, and Bowker's eyesight was none of the best now, so that he took some little time before he perceived the outline of a figure stretched in the white dimity-covered easy-chair by the little Pembroke table in the middle of the room. Although some noise had been made by the opening of the door, the figure had not moved; it never stirred when Bowker gave a little premonitory cough to notify his advent; it remained in exactly The same position, without stirring hand or foot, when Bowker said, "A friend has come to see you, Mrs.--Lambert." Then a dim undefined sense of terror came upon William Bowker, and he closed the door silently behind him, and advanced into the room. Immediately he became aware of a faint sickly smell, a cloying, percolating odour, which seemed to fill the place; but he had little time to think of this, for immediately before him lay the form of Margaret, her eyes closed, her features rigid, her long red hair falling in all its wild luxuriance over her shoulders. At first William thought she was dead; but, stooping close over her, he marked her slow laboured breathing, and noticed that from time to time her hands were unclenched, and then closed again as tightly as ever. He took a little water from a tumbler on the table and sprinkled it on her face, and laid his finger on her pulse; after a minute or two she opened her eyes, closing them again immediately, but after a time opening them again, and fixing them on Bowker's face with a long wistful gaze.
"Are you one of them also?" she asked, in a deep hushed voice. "How many more to come and gibber and point at me; or, worse than all, to sit mutely staring at me with pitiless unforgiving eyes! How many more? You are the latest. I have never seen you before."
"O yes you have," said Bowker quietly, with her hand in his, and his eyes steadfastly fixed on hers--"O yes you have: you recollect me, my dear Mrs. Ludlow."
He laid special stress on the name, and as he uttered the words, Margaret started, a new light flashed into her beautiful eyes, and she regarded him attentively.
"What was that you said?" she asked; "what name did you call me?"
"What name? Why, your own, of course; what else should I call you, my dear Mrs. Ludlow?"
She started again at the repetition, then her eyes fell, and she said dreamily,
"But that is not my name--that is not my name." Bowker waited for a moment, and then said,
"You might as well pretend to have forgotten me and our talk at Elm Lodge that day that I came up to see Geoffrey."
"Elm Lodge! Geoffrey!--ah, good God, now I remember all!" said Margaret, in a kind of scream, raising herself in the chair, and wringing Bowker's hand.
"Hush, my dear Madam; don't excite yourself; I thought you would remember all; you--"
"You are Mr. Bowker!" said Margaret, pressing her hand to her head; "Mr. Bowker, whose story Geoff told me: Geoff! ah, poor, good Geoff! ah, dear, good Geoff! But why are you here? he hasn't sent you? Geoffrey has not sent you?"
"Geoffrey does not know I am here. He has been very ill; too ill to be told of all that has been going on; too ill to understand it, if he had been told. I heard by accident that you were living here, and that you had been ill; and I came to see if I could be of any service to you."
While he had been speaking, Margaret had sat with her head tightly clasped between her hands. When he finished, she looked up with a slightly dazed expression, and said, with an evident attempt at controlling her voice, "I see all now; you must pardon me, Mr. Bowker, for any incoherence or strangeness you may have noticed in my manner; but I have been very ill, and I feel sure that at times my mind wanders a little. I am better now. I was quite myself when you mentioned about your having heard of my illness, and offering me service; and I thank you very sincerely for your kindness."
Old William looked at her for a minute, and then said,
"I am a plain-spoken man, Mrs. Ludlow--for you are Mrs. Ludlow to me--as I daresay you may have heard, if you have not noticed it yourself; and I tell you plainly that it is out of no kindness to you that I am here now, but only out of love for my dear old friend."
"I can understand that," said Margaret; "and only respect you the more for it; and now you are here, Mr. Bowker, I shall be very glad to say a few words to you,--the last I shall ever say regarding that portion of my life which was passed in--at--You know what I would say; you have heard the story of the commencement of my acquaintance with Geoffrey Ludlow?"
Bowker bowed in acquiescence.
"You know how I left him--why I am here?"
Then William Bowker--the memory of all his friend's trouble and misery and crushed hopes and wasted life rising up strongly within him--set his face hard, and said, between his clenched teeth, "I know your history from two sources. Yesterday, Geoffrey Ludlow, scarce able to raise himself in his bed, so weak was he from the illness which your conduct brought upon him, told me, as well as he could, of his first meeting with you, his strange courtship, his marriage,--at which I was present,--of his hopes and fears, and all the intricacies of his married life; of the manner in which, finally, you revealed the history of your previous life, and parted from him. Supplementing this story, he gave me to read a letter from Lord Caterham, the brother of the man you call your husband. This man, Captain Brakespere, flying from the country, had written to his brother, informing him that he had left behind him a woman who was called his mistress, but who was in reality his wife. To find this woman Lord Caterham made his care. He set the detectives to work, and had her tracked from place to place; continually getting news of, but never finding her. While he lived, Lord Caterham never slackened from the pursuit; finding his end approaching--"
"His end approaching!--the end of his life do you mean?"
"He is dead. But before he died, he delegated the duty of pursuit, of all men in the world, to Geoffrey Ludlow,--to Geoffrey Ludlow, who, in his blind ignorance, had stumbled upon the very woman a year before, had saved her from a miserable death, and, all unknowingly, had fondly imagined he had made her his loving wife."
"Ah, my God, this is too much! And Geoffrey Ludlow knows all this?"
"From Geoffrey Ludlow's lips I heard it not twenty-four hours since."
Margaret uttered a deep groan and buried her face in her hands. When she raised her head her eyes were tear-blurred, and her voice faltered as she said, "I acknowledge my sin, and--so far as Geoffrey Ludlow is concerned--I deeply, earnestly repent my conduct. It was prompted by despair; it ended in desperation. Have those who condemned me--and I know naturally enough I am condemned by all his friends--have those who condemned me ever known the pangs of starvation, the grim tortures of houselessness in the streets? Have they ever known what it is to have the iron of want and penury eating into their souls, and then to be offered a comfortable home and an honest man's love? If they have, I doubt very much whether they would have refused it. I do not say this to excuse myself. I have done Geoffrey Ludlow deadly wrong; but when I listened to his proffered protestations, I gave him time for reflection; when I said 'Yes' to his repeated vows, I thought that the dead past had buried its dead, and that no ghost from it would arise to trouble the future. I vowed to myself that I would be true to that man who had so befriended me; and I was true to him. The life I led was inexpressibly irksome and painful to me; the dead solemn monotony of it goaded me almost to madness at times; but I bore it--bore it all out of gratitude to him--would have borne it till now ifhehad not come back to lure me to destruction. I do not say I did my duty; I am naturally undomestic and unfitted for household management; but I brought no slur on Geoffrey Ludlow's name in thought or deed until that man returned. I have seen him, Mr. Bowker; I have spoken to him, and he spurned me from him; and yet I love him as I loved him years ago. He need only raise his finger, and I would fly to him and fawn upon him, and be grateful if he but smiled upon me in return. They cannot understand this--they cannot understand my disregard of the respectabilities by flinging away the position and the name and the repute, and all that which they had fitted to me, and which clung to me, ah, so irritatingly; but if all I have heard be true you can understand it, Mr. Bowker,--you can.--Is Geoffrey out of danger?"
The sudden change in the tone of her voice, as she uttered the last sentence, struck on Bowker's ear, and looking up, he noticed a strange light in her eyes.
"Geoffrey is out of danger," he replied; "but he is still very weak, and requires the greatest care."
"And requires the greatest care!" she repeated. "Well, he'll get it, I suppose; but not from me. And to think that I shall never see him again! Poor Geoffrey! poor, good Geoffrey! How good he was, and how grave!--with those large earnest eyes of his, and his great head, and rough curling brown hair, and--the cruel cold, the pitiless rain, the cruel, cruel cold!" As she said these words, she crept back shivering into her chair, and wrapped her dress round her. William Bowker bent down and gazed at her steadily; but after an instant she averted her face, and hid it in the chair. Bowker took her hand, and it fell passively into his own; he noticed that it was burning.
"This will not do, Mrs. Ludlow!" he exclaimed; "you have over-excited yourself lately. You want rest and looking after--you must--" he stopped; for she had turned her head to him again and was rocking herself backwards and forwards in her chair, weeping meanwhile as though her heart would break. The sight was too much for William to bear unaided, and he opened the door and called Mrs. Chapman.
"Ah, sir," said the good little woman when she entered the room, "she's off again, I see. I knew she was, for I heard that awful sobbing as I was coming up the stairs. O, that awful sobbing that Ive laid awake night after night listening to, and that never seemed to stop till daylight, when she was fairly wore out. But that's nothing, sir, compared to the talk when she's beside herself. Then she'd go on and say--"
"Yes, yes, no doubt, Mrs. Chapman," interrupted Bowker, who did not particularly wish to be further distressed by the narration of Margaret's sadness; "but this faintness, these weeping fits, are quite enough to demand the instant attention of a medical man. If you'll kindly look to her now, I'll go off and fetch a doctor; and if there's a nurse required--as Ive little doubt there will be--you won't mind me intruding further upon you? No; I knew you'd say so. Mrs. Lambert's friends will ever be grateful to you; and here's something just to carry you on, you know, Mrs. Chapman--rent and money paid on her account, and that sort of thing." The something was two sovereigns, which had lain in a lucifer-match box used by Mr. Bowker as his bank, and kept by him in his only locked drawer for six weeks past, and which had been put aside for the purchase of a "tweed wrapper" for winter wear.
Deliberating within himself to what physician of eminence he should apply, and grievously hampered by the fact that he was unable to pay any fee in advance, Bowker suddenly bethought him of Dr. Rollit, whose great love of art and its professors led him, "in the fallow leisure of his life," to constitute himself a kind of honorary physician to the brotherhood of the brush. To him Bowker hastened, and, without divulging Margaret's identity, explained the case, and implored the doctor to see her at once. The doctor hesitated for a moment, for he was at his easel and in a knot. He had "got something that would not come right," and he scarcely seemed inclined to move until he had conquered his difficulty; but after explaining the urgency of the case, old Bowker took the palette and sheaf of brushes from the physician's hand and said, "I think we can help each other at this moment, doctor: go you and see the patient, and leave me to deal with this difficulty. You'll find me here when you come back, and you shall then look at your canvas."
But when Dr. Rollit, after a couple of hours' absence, returned, he did not look at his picture--at least on his first entry. He looked so grave and earnest that William Bowker, moving towards him to ask the result of his visit, was frightened, and stopped.
"What is the matter?" he asked; "you seem--"
"I'm a little taken aback--that's all, old friend," said the doctor; "you did not prepare me to find in my patient an old acquaintance--you did not know it, perhaps?"
"By Jove! I remember now: Charley Potts said--What an old ass I am!"
"I was called in by Potts and Ludlow, or rather called out of a gathering of the Titians, to attend Mrs. Lambert, as the landlady called her, nearly two years ago. She is not much altered--outwardly--since I left her convalescent."
"You lay a stress on 'outwardly'--what is the inner difference?"
"Simply that her health is gone, my good fellow; her whole constitution utterly shattered; her life not worth a week's purchase."
"Surely you're wrong, doctor. Up to within the last few weeks her health has been excellent."
"My dear William Bowker, I, as an amateur, meddle with your professional work; but what I do is on the surface, and the mistakes I make are so glaring, that they are recognisable instantly. You might meddle, as an amateur, with mine, and go pottering on until you'd killed half a parish, without any body suspecting you. The disease I attended Mrs.----- there! it's absurd our beating about the bush any longer--Mrs. Ludlow for was rheumatic fever, caught from exposure to cold and damp. The attack I now find left behind it, as it generally does, a strong predisposition to heart-disease, which, from what I learn from her, seems to have displayed itself in spasms and palpitations very shortly afterwards."
"From what you learn from her? She was sensible, then, when you saw her?"
"She was sensible before I left her; ay, and that's the deuce of it. Partly to deaden the pain of these attacks, partly, as she said herself just now, to escape from thought, she has had recourse to a sedative, morphia, which she has taken in large quantities. I smelt it the instant I entered her room, and found the bottle by her side. Under this influence she is deadened and comatose; but when the reaction comes--Poor creature! poor creature!" and the kind-hearted doctor shook his head sadly.
"Do you consider her in absolute danger?" asked Bowker, after a pause.
"My dear fellow it is impossible to say how long she may last; but--though I suppose that's out of the question now, eh?--people will talk, you know, and Ive heard rumours;--but if her husband wished to see her, I should say fetch him at once."
"If her husband wished to see her!" said old Bowker to himself, as he walked away towards his lodgings,--"if her husband wished to see her! He don't--at least the real one don't, I imagine; and Geoff mustn't; though, if he knew it, nothing would keep him away. But that other--Captain Brakespere--he ought to know the danger she's in; he ought to have the chance of saying a kind word to her before--He must be a damned villain!" said old William, stopping for an instant, and pondering over the heads of the story; "but he deserves that chance, and he shall have it."
Pursuant to his determination, Mr. Bowker presented himself the next day at Long's Hotel, where he recollected Mr. Blackett had informed him that Captain Brakespere was stopping. The porter, immediately divining from Mr. Bowker's outward appearance that he meditated a raid upon coats, hats, or any thing that might be lying about the coffee-room, barricaded the entrance with his waistcoat, and parleyed with the visitor in the hall. Inquiring for Captain Brakespere, Mr. Bowker was corrected by the porter, who opined "he meant Lord Catrum." The correction allowed and the inquiry repeated, the porter replied that his "lordship had leff," and referred the inquirer to St. Barnabas Square.
To St. Barnabas Square Mr. Bowker adjourned, but there learned that Lord Caterham had left town with Mr. Barford, and would not be back for some days.
And meanwhile the time was wearing by, and Margaret's hold on life was loosening day by day. Would it fail altogether before she saw the man who had deceived her so cruelly? would it fail altogether before she saw the man whom she had so cruelly deceived?
In the presence of the double sorrow which had fallen upon her, Annie Maurice's girlhood died out. Arthur was gone, and Geoffrey in so suffering a condition of body and mind that it would have been easier to the tender-hearted girl to know that he was at rest, even though she had to face all the loneliness which would then have been her lot. Her position was very trying in all its aspects at this time; for there was little sympathy with her new sorrow at the great house which she still called home, and where she was regarded as decidedly "odd." Lady Beauport considered that Caterham had infected her with some of his strange notions, and that her fancy for associating with "queer" people, removed from her own sphere not more by her heiress-ship than by her residence in an earl's house and her recognition as a member of a noble family, was chargeable to the eccentric notions of her son. Annie came and went as she pleased, free from comment, though not from observation; but she was of a sensitive nature; she could not assert herself; and she suffered from the consciousness that her grief, her anxiety, and her constant visits to Lowbar were regarded with mingled censure and contempt. Her pre-occupation of mind prevented her noticing many things which otherwise could not have escaped her attention; but when Geoffrey's illness ceased to be actively dangerous, and the bulletin brought her each morning from Til by the hands of the faithful Charley contained more tranquillising but still sad accounts of the patient, she began to observe an air of mystery and preparation in the household. The few hours which she forced herself to pass daily in the society of Lady Beauport had been very irksome to her since Arthur died, and she had been glad when they were curtailed by Lady Beauport's frequent plea of "business" in the evenings, and her leaving the drawing-room for her own apartments. Every afternoon she went to Elm Lodge, and her presence was eagerly hailed by Mrs. Ludlow and Til. She had seen Geoffrey frequently during the height of the fever; but since the letter she had kept in such faithful custody had reached his hands she had not seen him. Though far from even the vaguest conjecture of the nature of its contents, she had dreaded the effect of receiving a communication from his dead friend on Geoffrey Ludlow, and had been much relieved when his mother told her, on the following day, that he was very calm and quiet, but did not wish to see any one for a few days. Bowker and he had fully felt the embarrassment of the position in which Lord Caterham's revelation had placed Geoffrey with regard to Annie Maurice, and the difficulties which the complications produced by Margaret's identity with Lionel Brakespere's wife added to Ludlow's fulfilment of Caterham's trust. They had agreed--or rather Bowker had suggested, and Geoffrey had acquiesced, with the languid assent of a mind too much enfeebled by illness and sorrow to be capable of facing any difficulty but the inevitable, immediate, and pressing--that Annie need know nothing for the present.
"She could hardly come here from the Beauports, Geoff," Bowker had said; "it's all nonsense, of course, to men like you and me, who look at the real, and know how its bitterness takes all the meaning out of the rubbish they call rules of society; but the strongest woman is no freer than Gulliver in his fetters of packthread, in the conventional world she lives in. We need not fret her sooner than it must be done, and you had better not see her for the present."
So Annie came and went for two or three days and did not see Geoffrey. Mrs. Ludlow, having recovered from the sudden shock of her son's illness and the protracted terror of his danger, had leisure to feel a little affronted at his desire for seclusion, and to wonder audibly whysheshould be supposed to do him more harm than Mr. Bowker.
"A big blundering fellow like that, Til," she said; "and I do assure you, Miss Maurice, he quite forgot the time for the draught when he was shut up there with him the other day--and talk ofhe'sdoing Geoffrey no harm! All I can say is, if Geoffrey had not been crying when I went into his room, and wasn't trembling all over in his bed, I never was so mistaken before."
Then Til and Annie looked blankly at each other, in mute wonder at this incomprehensible sorrow--for the women knew nothing but that Margaret had fled with a former lover--so much had been necessarily told them, under Bowker's instructions, by Charley Potts; and Annie, after a little, went sorrowfully away.
That day at dinner Lord Beauport was more than usually kind in his manner to her; and Annie considered it due to him, and a fitting return for some inquiries he had made for "her friend," which had more of warmth and less of condescension than usual in their tone, to rouse herself into greater cheerfulness than she had yet been able to assume. Lady Beauport rose sooner than usual; and the two ladies had hardly seated themselves in the dreary drawing-room when the Earl joined them. There was an air of preparation in Lord Beauport's manner, and Annie felt that something had happened.
The thing which had happened was this--Lady Beauport had not miscalculated her experienced power of managing her husband. She had skilfully availed herself of an admission made by him that Lionel's absence, at so great a distance just then was an unfortunate complication; that the necessary communications were rendered difficult and tedious; and that he wished his "rustication" had been nearer home. The Countess caught at the word 'rustication:' then not expulsion, not banishment, was in her husband's mind. Here was a commutation of her darling's sentence; a free pardon would follow, if she only set about procuring it in the right way. So she resorted to several little expedients by which the inconvenience of the heir's absence was made more and more apparent: having once mentioned his name, Lord Beauport continued to do so;--perhaps he was in his secret heart as much relieved by the breaking of the ban as the mother herself;--and at length, on the same day which witnessed William Bowker's visit to Lionel Brakespere's deserted wife, Lady Beauport acknowledged to her husband that their son was then in London, and that she had seen him. The Earl received her communication in frowning silence; but she affected not to observe his manner, and expatiated, with volubility very unusual to her, upon the fortunate concurrence of circumstances which had brought Lionel to England just as his improved position made it more than ever probable he would be perfectly well received.
"That dear Mr. Barford," she said--and her face never changed at the name of the man in whose arms her son had died so short a time before--"assures me that every one is delighted to see him. And really, George, he mustn't stay at Long's, you know--it looks so bad--for every one knows he's in town; and if we don't receive him properly, that will be just the way to rake up old stories. I'm sure they're old enough to be forgotten; and many a young man has done worse than Lionel, and--"
"Stop, Gertrude," said Lord Beauport sternly; "stick to the truth, if you please. I hope very few young men in our son's position have disgraced it and themselves as he has done. The truth is, that we have to make the best of a misfortune. He has returned; and by so doing has added to the rest a fresh rascality by breaking his pledged word. Circumstances oblige me to acquiesce,--luck is on his side,--his brother's death--" Lord Beauport paused for a moment, and an expression, hitherto unfamiliar, but which his wife frequently saw in the future, flitted over his face--"his brother's death leaves me no choice. Let us say as little as possible on this subject. He had better come here, for every reason. For appearances' sake it is well; and he will probably be under some restraint in this house." Here the Earl turned to leave the room, and said slowly as he walked towards the door, "Something tells me, Gertrude, that in Arthur's death, which we dreaded too little and mourn too lightly, we have seen only the beginning of evils."
Lady Beauport sat very still and felt very cold after he left her. Conscience smote her dumbly,--in days to come it would find a voice in which to speak,--and fear fell upon her. "I will never say any thing to him about Annie Maurice," she said to herself, as the first effect of her husband's words began to pass away; "I do believe he would be as hard on Lionel as poor Arthur himself, and warn the girl against him."
How relieved she felt as she despatched a note to Lionel Brakespere, telling him she had fulfilled her task, and inviting him to return to his father's house when he pleased!
Assuredly the star of the new heir was in the ascendant; his brother was dead, his place restored to him, and society ready to condone all his "follies,"--which is the fashionable synonym for the crimes of the rich and the great. If Lionel Brakespere could have seen "that cursed woman"--as in his brutal anger he called his wife a hundred times over, as he fretted and fumed over the remembrance of their interview--as William Bowker saw her that day,--he would have esteemed himself a luckier fellow still than he did when he lighted his cigar with his mother's note, and thought how soon he would change that "infernal dull old hole" from what it was in Caterham's time, and how he would have every thing his own way now.
Such, as far as his knowledge of them extended, and without any comment or expression of opinion of his own, were the circumstances which Lord Beauport narrated to Annie. She received his information with an indescribable pang, compounded of a thousand loving remembrances of Arthur and a keen resuscitation by her memory of the scene of Lionel's disgrace, to which she and her lost friend had been witnesses. She could hardly believe, hardly understand it all; and the clearest thought which arose above the surging troubled sea within her breast was, that the place which knew Arthur no more would be doubly empty and desolate when Lionel should fill it.
The tone in which Lord Beauport had spoken was grave and sad, and he had confined himself to the barest announcement. Annie had listened in respectful silence; but though she had not looked directly at her, she was conscious of Lady Beauport's reproachful glances, addressed to her husband, as he concluded by saying coldly,
"You were present, Annie, by my desire, when I declared that that which is now about to happen should never be, and I have thought it necessary to explain to you a course of conduct on my part which without explanation would have appeared very weak and inconsistent. As a member ofmyfamily you are entitled to such an explanation; and indeed, as an inmate of this house, you are entitled to an apology."
"Thank you, my lord," said Annie, in a voice which, though lower than usual, was very firm.
This was more than Lady Beauport's pride could bear. She began, fiercely enough,
"Really, Lord Beauport, I cannot see--"
But at that moment a servant opened the door and announced
"Lord Caterham."
The group by the fireside stood motionless for a moment, as Lionel, dressed in deep mourning, advanced towards them with well-bred ease and perfect unconcern. Then Lady Beauport threw herself into his arms; and Annie, hardly noticing that Lord Beauport had by an almost involuntary movement stretched out his hand to the handsome prodigal, glided past the three, hurried to her own room, and, having locked the door, sank down on her knees beside her bed in an agony of grief.
Three days elapsed, during which events marched with a steady pace at Elm Lodge and at the lodging were the woman who had brought such wreck and ruin within that tranquil-looking abode was lying contending with grief and disease, dying the death of despair and exhaustion. When Bowker returned from his unsuccessful quest for Lionel Brakespere, he found that she had passed into another phase of her malady,--was quiet, dreamy, and apparently forgetful of the excitement she had undergone. She was lying quite still on her bed, her eyes half closed, and a faint unmeaning smile was on her lips.
"I have seen her so for hours and hours, sir," said the gentle little landlady; "and it's my belief it's what she takes as does it."
So Bowker concluded that Margaret had found means to avail herself of the fatal drug from which she had sought relief so often and so long, in the interval of depression which had succeeded the delirium he had witnessed. He was much embarrassed now to know how to proceed. She required better accommodation and careful nursing, and he was determined she should have both,--but how that was to be managed was the question; and Bowker, the most helpless man in the world in such matters, was powerless to answer it. He had never imagined, as he had turned the probabilities over and over in his mind, that such a complication as severe physical illness would arise; and it routed all his plans, besides engaging all his most active sympathies. William Bowker had an extreme dread, indeed a positive terror, of witnessing bodily suffering in women and children; and had his anger and repulsion towards Margaret been far greater than they were, they would have yielded to pain and pity as he gazed upon the rigid lines of the pale weary face, from which the beauty was beginning to fade and drop away in some mysterious manner of vanishing, terrible to see and feel, but impossible to describe. He made the best provisional arrangements within his power, and went away, promising Mrs. Chapman that he would return on the following day to meet the doctor, and turned his steps in much mental bewilderment towards the abode of Charley Potts, purposing to consult him in the emergency, previous to their proceeding together to Lowbar.
"I can't help it now," he thought; "the women cannot possibly be kept out of the business any longer. If she were let to want any thing, and had not every care taken of her, dear old Geoff would never forgive any of us; and it could not be hidden from him. I am sure she's dying; and--I'm glad of it: glad for her sake, poor wretched creature; and O so glad for his! He will recover her death--hemust; but I doubt whether he would recover her life. He would be for ever hankering after her, for ever remembering the past, and throwing away the remainder of his life, as he has thrown away too much of it already. No, no, dear old Geoff, this shall not be, if your William can save you. I know what a wasted life means; and you shall put yours out at good interest, Geoff, please God."
Charley was at home; and he received Mr. Bowker's communication with uncommon gravity, and immediately bestowed his best attention upon considering what was to be done. He was not in the least offended by discovering that it had not been his William's intention to tell him any thing about it. "Quite right too," he observed. "I should have been of no use, if every thing had not been capsized by her illness; and I don't like to know any thing I'm not to tell to Til. Not that she's in the least inquisitive, you know,--don't make any mistake about that,--but things are in such an infernally mysterious mess; and then they only know enough to make them want to know more; and I shouldn't like, under these circumstances--it would seem hypocritical, don't you see--and every thing must come out sometime, eh?"
"O yes, I see," said Bowker drily; "but I have to tell younow, Charley; for what the devil's to be done? You can't bring her here and nurse her; and I can't bring her to my place and nurse her,--yet she must be taken somewhere and nursed; and we must be prepared with a satisfactory account of every thing we have done, when Geoff gets well; and what are we to do?"
Mr. Potts did not answer for a few moments, but handed over the beer in an absent manner to Mr. Bowker; then, starting up from the table on which he had been sitting, he exclaimed,
"I have it, William. Let's tell the women--Til, I mean, and Miss Maurice. They'll know all about it, bless you," said Charley, whose confidence in female resources was unbounded. "It's all nonsense trying to keep things dark, when theyve got to such a pass as this. If Mrs. Ludlow's in the state you say, she will not live long; and then Geoff's difficulty, if not his trouble, will be over. Her illness alters every thing. Come on, Bowker; let's get on to Elm Lodge; tell Til, and Miss Maurice, if she's there; and let them make proper arrangements."
"But, Charley," said Bowker, much relieved, in spite of his misgivings, by the suggestion, "you forget one important point. Miss Maurice is Brakespere's cousin, and she lives in his father's house. It won't do to bring her in."
"Never you mind that, William," replied the impetuous Charley. "Til can't act alone; and old Mrs. Ludlow is nervous, and would not know what to do, and must not be told; and I am sure Miss Maurice doesn't care a rap about her cousin--the ruffian--why should she? And I know she would do any thing in the world, no matter how painful to herself, and no matter whether he ever came to know it or not, that would serve or please Geoff."
"Indeed!" said Bowker, in a tone half of inquiry, half of surprise, and looking very hard at Charley; "and how do you know that, eh, Charley?"
"O, bother," answered that gentleman, "I don't know how I know it; but I do know it; and I am sure the sooner we act on my knowledge the better. So come along."
So saying, Mr. Potts made his simple outdoor toilet; and the two gentlemen went out, and took their way towards the resort of omnibuses, eagerly discussing the matter in hand as they went, and Mr. Bowker finding himself unexpectedly transformed from the active into the passive party.
It was agreed between them that Geoffrey should not be informed of Bowker's presence in the house, as he would naturally be impatient to learn the result of the mission with which he had intrusted him; and that result it was their present object to conceal.
Fortune favoured the wishes of Bowker and Charley. Mrs. Ludlow was with her son; and in the drawing-room, which was resuming somewhat of its former orderly and pleasant appearance, they found Miss Maurice and Til. The two girls were looking sad and weary, and Til was hardly brightened up by Charley's entrance, for he looked so much more grave than usual, that she guessed at once he had heard something new and important. The little party were too vitally interested in Geoffrey and his fortunes, and the occasion was too solemn for any thing of ceremony; and when Charley Potts had briefly introduced Bowker to Annie Maurice, he took Til's hand in his, and said,
"Til, Geoffrey's wife has been found--alone, and very ill--dying, as we believe!"
"You are quite sure, William?"
"I am quite sure, Geoffrey. Do you think I would deceive you, or take any thing for granted myself, without seeing and hearing what is so important to you? She is well cared for in every respect. Your own care, when she needed it before, was not more tender or more effective. Be satisfied, dear old Geoff; be content."
"You saw her--you really saw her; and she spoke kindly of me?" asked Geoffrey with a pitiable eagerness which pained Bowker to witness.
"I did. Yes, have I not told you again and again--" Then there was a moment's silence and Bowker thought, if she were not dying, how terrible this tenderness towards her would be, how inexplicable to all the world but him, how ruinous to Geoffrey; but as it was, it did not matter: it would soon be only the tenderness of memory, the pardon of the grave.
Geoffrey was sitting in an arm-chair by the bedroom window which overlooked the pretty flower-garden and the lawn. He was very weak still, but health was returning, and with it the power of acute mental suffering, which severe bodily illness mercifully deadens. This had been a dreadful day to him. When he was able to sit up and look around the room from which all the graceful suggestive traces of a woman's presence had been carefully removed; when he saw the old home look upon every thing before his eyes (for whom the idea of home was for ever desecrated and destroyed), the truth presented itself to him as it had never before done, in equal horror and intensity, since the day the woman he loved had struck him a blow by her words which had nearly proved mortal. Would it had been so! he thought, as his large brown eyes gazed wearily out upon the lawn and the flower-beds, and then were turned upon the familiar objects in the chamber, and closed with a shudder. His large frame look gaunt and worn, and his hands rested listlessly upon the sides of his chair. He had requested them to leave him alone for a little, that he might rest previous to seeing Bowker.
From the window at which Geoffrey sat he could see the nurse walking monotonously up and down the gravel-walk which bounded his little demesne with the child in her arms. Sometimes she stopped to pluck a flower and give it to the baby, who would laugh with delight and then throw it from him. Geoffrey watched the pair for a little, and then turned his head wearily away and put his question to Bowker, who was seated beside him, and who looked at him furtively with glances of the deepest concern.
"You shall hear how she is, Geoff,--how circumstanced, how cared for, and by whom, from one who can tell you the story better than I can. Your confidence has not been misplaced." Geoffrey turned upon him the nervous anxious gaze which is so touching to see in the eyes of one who has lately neared the grave, and still seems to hover about its brink. William Bowker proceeded: "You have not asked for Miss Maurice lately. I daresay you felt too much oppressed by the information in Lord Caterham's letter, too uncertain of the future, too completely unable to make up your mind what was to be done about her, to care or wish to see her. She has been here as usual, making herself as useful as possible, and helping your mother and sister in every conceivable way. But she has done more for you than that, Geoff; and if you are able to see her now, I think you had better hear it all from herself."
With these words Bowker hurried out of the room; and in a few minutes Annie Maurice, pale, quiet, and self-possessed, came in, and took her seat beside Geoffrey.
What had she come to tell him? What had she been doing for the help and service of her early friend,--she, this young girl so unskilled in the world's ways, so lonely, so dependent hitherto,--who now looked so womanly and sedate,--in whose brown eyes he saw such serious thought, such infinite sweetness and pity,--whose deep mourning dress clothed her slender figure with a sombre dignity new to it, and on whom a nameless change had passed, which Geoffrey had eyes to see now, and recognised even in that moment of painful emotion with wonder.
Calmly, carefully subduing every trace of embarrassment for his sake, and in a business-like tone which precluded the necessity for any preliminary explanation, Annie told Geoffrey Ludlow that she had been made aware of the circumstances which had preceded and caused his illness. She touched lightly upon her sorrow and her sympathy, but passed on to the subject of Caterham's letter. Geoffrey listened to her in silence, his head turned away and his eyes covered with his hand. Annie went on:
"I little thought, Geoffrey, when I was so glad to find that you were well enough to read Arthur's letter, and when I only thought of fulfilling so urgent a request as soon as I could, and perhaps diverting your mind into thoughts of our dear dead friend, that I was to be the means of making all this misery plain and intelligible. But it was so, Geoffrey; and I now see that it was well. Why Arthur should have selected you to take up the search after his death I cannot tell,--I suppose he knew instinctively your fidelity and trueheartedness; but the accident was very fortunate, for it identified your interests and mine, it made the fulfilment of his trust a sacred duty to me, and enabled me to do with propriety what no one else could have done, and what she--what Margaret--would not have accepted from another."
Geoffrey started, let his hand fall from his face, and caught hers. "Is it you, then, Annie?"
"Yes, yes," she said, "it is I, Geoffrey; do not agitate yourself, but listen to me. When Mr. Bowker found Margaret, as you know he did, she was very ill, and--she had no protector and no money. What could he do? He did the best thing; he told me, to whom Arthur's wishes were sacred, who would have done the same had you never existed--you know I am rich and free; and I made all the needful arrangements for her at once. When all was ready for her reception--it is a pretty house at Sydenham, Geoffrey, and she is as well cared for as any one can be--I went to her, and told her I was come to take her home."
"And she--Margaret--did she consent? Did she think it was I who--"
"Who sent me?" interrupted Annie. "No,--she would not have consented; for her feeling is that she has so wronged you that she must owe nothing to you any more. In this I know she is quite wrong; for to know that she was in any want or suffering would be still worse grief to you,--but that can never be,--and I did not need to contradict her. I told her I came to her in a double character that of her own friend--though she had not had much friendship for me, Geoffrey; but that is beside the question--and--and--" here she hesitated for a moment, but then took courage and went on, "that of her husband's cousin." Geoffrey ground his teeth, but said never a word. She continued, with deepening light in her eyes and growing tenderness in her voice, "I told her how Arthur, whom I loved, had sought for her,--how a strange fatality had brought them in contact, neither knowing how near an interest each had in the other. She knew it the day she fainted in his room, but he died without knowing it, and so dying left her, as I told her I felt she was, a legacy to me. She softened then, Geoffrey, and she came with me."
Here Annie paused, as if expecting he would speak, but he did not. She glanced at him, but his face was set and rigid, and his eyes were fixed upon the walk, where the nurse and child still were.
"She is very ill, Geoffrey," Annie went on; "very weak and worn, and weary of life. I am constantly with her, but sometimes she is unable or unwilling to speak to me. She is gloomy and reserved, and suffers as much in mind as in body, I am sure."
Geoffrey said slowly, "Does she ever speak to you of me?"
Annie replied, "Not often. When she does, it is always with the greatest sorrow for your sorrow, and the deepest sense of the injury she has done you. I am going to her to-day, Geoffrey, and I should like to take to her an assurance of your forgiveness. May I tell Margaret that you forgive her?"
He turned hastily, and said with a great gasp, "O Annie, tell her that I love her!"
"I will tell her that," the girl said gently and sadly, and an expression of pain crossed her face. She thought of the love that had been wasted, and the life that had been blighted.
"What is she going to do?" asked Geoffrey; "how is it to be in the future?" This was a difficult question for Annie to answer: she knew well what lay in the future; but she dreaded to tell Geoffrey, even while she felt that the wisest, the easiest, the best, and the most merciful solution of the terrible dilemma in which a woman's ungoverned passion had placed so many innocent persons was surely and not slowly approaching.
"I don't know, Geoffrey," she said; "I cannot tell you. Nothing can be decided upon until she is better, and you are well enough to advise and direct us. Try and rest satisfied for the present. She is safe, no harm can come to her; and I am able and willing to befriend her now as you did before. Take comfort, Geoffrey; it is all dreadful; but if we had not found her, how much worse it would have been!"
At this moment the nurse carried her charge out of their sight, as she came towards the house, and Annie, thinking of the more than motherless child, wondered at the no-meaning of her own words, and how any thing could have been worse than what had occurred.
She and Geoffrey had spoken very calmly to each other, and there had been no demonstration of gratitude to her on his part; but it would be impossible to tell the thankfulness which filled his heart. It was a feeling of respite which possessed him. The dreadful misfortune which had fallen upon him was as real and as great as ever; but he could rest from the thought of it, from its constant torture, now that he knew that she was safe from actual physical harm; now that no awful vision of a repetition of the destitution and misery from which he had once rescued her, could come to appal him. Like a man who, knowing that the morrow will bring him a laborious task to do, straining his powers to the utmost, inexorable and inevitable in its claims, covets the deep rest of the hours which intervene between the present and the hour which must summon him to his toil, Geoffrey, in the lassitude of recent illness, in the weakness of early convalescence, rested from the contemplation of his misery. He had taken Annie's communication very quietly; he had a sort of feeling that it ought to surprise him very much, that the circumstances were extraordinary, that the chain of events was a strangely-wrought one--but he felt little surprise; it was lurking somewhere in his mind, he would feel it all by and by, no doubt; but nothing beyond relief was very evident to him in his present state. He wondered, indeed, how it was with Annie herself; how the brave, devoted, and unselfish girl had been able, trammelled as she was by the rules and restrictions of a great house, to carry out her benevolent designs, and dispose of her own time after her own fashion. There was another part of the subject which Geoffrey did not approach even in his thoughts. Bowker had not told him of Margaret's entreaties that she might see Lionel Brakespere; he had not told him that the young man had returned to his father's house; and he made no reference to him in his consideration of Annie's position. He had no notion that the circumstances in which Lord Caterham had entreated his protection for Annie had already arisen.
"How is it that you can do all this unquestioned, Annie?" he asked; "how can you be so much away from home?"
She answered him with some embarrassment. "It was difficult--a little--but I knew I was right, and I did not suffer interference. When you are quite well, Geoffrey, I want your advice for myself. I have none else, you know, since Arthur died."
"He knew that, Annie; and the purport of the letter which told me such a terrible story was to ask me in all things to protect and guide you. He little knew that he had the most effectual safeguard in his own hands; for, Annie, the danger he most dreaded for you was association with his brother."
"That can never be," she said vehemently. "No matter what your future course of action may be, Geoffrey, whether you expose him or not--in which, of course, you will consider Margaret only--I will never live under the same roof with him. I must find another home, Geoffrey, let what will come of it, and let them say what they will."
"Caterham would have been much easier in his mind, Annie," said Geoffrey, with a sad smile, "if he had known how baseless were his fears that his brother would one day win your heart."
"There never could have been any danger of that, Geoffrey," said Annie, with a crimson blush, which had not subsided when she took her leave of him.