ITwas not, certainly, a pleasant change from Altes to London, for poor Marion. For a day or two she was perfectly alone, her father, as she had expected, absent; and she herself too anxious and dispirited to care to announce her return to the few friends, so-called, with whom she was on anything like intimate terms.
On the third day Mr. Vere made his appearance. Marion was sitting alone, late in the afternoon, in the same room in which we first saw her, when he returned. She heard him enter the house, she heard his step on the stair, and rose, half trembling, to greet him. Oh, how she wished she could feel glad to see him! What she had of late gone through had both softened and widened her heart. She was very ready to love this father of hers, if only he would let her, but alas, it was too late in the day for anything of this kind!
He came in. A tall, slightly bent, grizzled man. Looking older, considerably so, than his age, and giving one, somehow, the impression that he must always have appeared so.
He shook hands with his daughter in what he intended for a cordial manner, and then in a jerky sort of way kissed her forehead, as if he were half ashamed of what he was doing.
Still, for him, this was a good deal, and Marion tried her best to respond to it heartily.
“So you’re back again, my dear,” he remarked by way of greeting.
“Yes, Papa,” she replied; “I arrived here on Tuesday morning. Poor Cissy went on to Cheltenham at once to begin her preparations. I have been so happy at Altes, dear Papa, so very happy. I shall always be so grateful to you for having allowed me to go with Cissy. And now that I have come back, I am so anxious to do what I can in return for your kindness. You must let me be of use to you, Papa—more than I have been hitherto.”
“Ah, yes, humph, just so!” half grunted, half muttered Mr. Vere. “Very glad you have enjoyed yourself. I wish I could get a holiday myself. I am more knocked up than I ever remember feeling before.”
This was wonderfully communicative and gracious! “I am so sorry. I thought you were not looking very well,” remarked Marion. But her father didn’t encourage any further expression of filial solicitude. His head already half hidden in a newspaper which he had brought into the room with him, he appeared lost to the world outside its folds.
Suddenly he startled Marion by speaking again.
“What’s all this nonsense about Cecilia Archer setting of to India just now?” he asked; “At this season it’s utter madness! She’ll kill herself before she gets there. I thought she had more sense.”
“The doctors have given her leave,” replied Marion: “I believe they thought the risk would be greater of detaining her at home, when she is in such anxiety. And besides, she is going to Simla, which is a very healthy place.”
“Anxiety, fiddlesticks!” growled Mr. Vere, “what good did anxiety ever do any one? Simla, humbug! To get there she must pass through the very worst and unhealthiest part of the whole continent—at this season, that’s to say; as you might know if you would speak less thoughtlessly.”
“I am very sorry,” began Marion, but the head had again retired behind the newspaper, and she said no more.
In another moment it appeared again.
“There have been a lot of invitations for you. I did not think it worth while to send them to Altes. You can look them over, and tell me if there are any you wish to accept. What gaiety you wish for, you must be content with early this year, for Lady Barnstaple is going abroad in a few weeks to some German baths, and I don’t care about your going out with any one else.”
“Thank you, Papa,” said Marion, really grateful for the unusual interest he expressed in her concerns, “I shall look over the invitations but I don’t think I care very much about going out this year. A very few times before Lady Barnstaple leaves town, will quite content me. I have a letter from Harry,” she went on, feeling unusually bold, “he wants to know if he may come up from Woolwich for next Saturday and Sunday to see me. It is so long since we have seen each other,” she added deprecatingly, for something in the way the newspaper rustled, frightened away her newly found audacity.
“Harry wants to know if he may come for next Saturday and Sunday, does he?” said Mr. Vere, very slowly, distinctly emphasizing each word of the sentence, “then, you will perhaps be so good as to tell him from me that most certainly he maynotcome here for Saturday, Sunday, or any other day, fill I see fit to send for him. Idle young idiot, that he is! I wonder he is not ashamed to propose such a thing. Had he worked as he should have done years ago, he might now have been at the head of the Woolwich academy, instead of being, at seventeen, obliged to cram at a tutor’s to obtain even a Line commission. And now, forsooth, he thinks he is to have it all his own way and run up and down to town, whenever the fancy seizes him! I tell you, Marion, you mean well, I believe, but if there is to be peace among us, you must be careful what sort of influence you exert over your brother. I give you fair warning of this. See that you attend to it.” And so saying, he marched out of the room, newspaper in hand, without giving his daughter time to reply.
It was well he did so, for the fast coming tears would have choked her voice. Though by no means a woman of the lachrymose order, Marion’s self-control had of late somewhat deserted her, and she had so longed to see Harry! Not only this, she had come home, though anxious and depressed, thoroughly determined to fulfil to the best of her power, her daughter’s duty. The hope that no very long time would elapse, before she might be taken to a more congenial home, naturally encouraged her to the better performance of her present duties, before they should be beyond her power—among the things of the past: and joined to this, was a half superstitious, hardly acknowledged belief, that according to her present earnestness in well-doing, would be the measure of her future happiness.
Was she more of a heathen, poor little soul, for so thinking, than many, in their own opinion, far wiser people? Doing good for good’s own sake is a doctrine not often inculcated, even by those who think themselves the most “orthodox” and spiritual-minded.
“Surely, surely,” cries the eager, anxious heart, “if I but bear this patiently, and to the best of my poor power perform these hard and uninviting duties, surely I shall at last meet with my reward? The Father above ‘is not a man that he should lie,’ and has he not promised ‘good things’ to the patient doer of present duty; ‘long days and blessedness to such as honour his commandments?”
Such is the unexpressed, unacknowledged hope of many an aching, longing heart. A hope which perhaps strengthens to do bravely, and bear uncomplainingly, at times when higher motives might be powerless.
Vain hopes, unwarranted expectations, are they? Nay, not so. The “good things” are no dream, the “blessedness” no delusion, though they may not indeed consist of the one thing craved for by the anguished heart, that one gift, whatever it be, which at such seasons seems to our dark and imperfect vision the only blessing worth having, without which existence itself were no boon!
And now to poor Marion. Full, as I have said, of her ardent resolutions, her self-administered incentive to exertion, the thought that if she were not a good daughter at home, she would never deserve to be placed in a happier sphere, where duty, become so sweet and attractive, would no longer be a hard taskmaster, but a smiling handmaiden—now, full of all these earnest thoughts and aspirations, it was indeed hard upon her, very hard, to be thus chilled and repelled by her father.
And at first he had seemed so kind, so much gentler and less reserved than usual! There was certainly some change in him, which she could not understand. He was no longer so calm and unbending as he had been—more impulsive in both ways—kinder, and yet so much more irritable than she had ever known him. What could be the meaning of it? He looked ill too, and confessed to not feeling as well as usual. Marion felt anxious and concerned, and almost forgave him the harshness of that last speech, though her eyes filled with tears as she recalled it.
“Oh how sorry Ralph would be for me if he knew it!” she thought. “Oh, if only I could see him and tell him all my troubles, and ask him to take care of me for always!”
And she longed for him so intensely, that had he suddenly entered the room and stood beside her she would not have been surprised!
And had she only known it—ah! it tears me even to write it—after all these years since that dreary March afternoon; and though long since then, these hopes and sorrows of my poor child’s have faded and softened into the faint shadows of the past; all, even now, I can hardly bear to think of it—at that very moment Ralph was in a house on the opposite side of that very square, closeted with Sir Archibald Cunningham, while they discussed the business which had brought the younger man to England, and of which the successful conclusion was sending him back to Altes the next morning hopeful and elated, feeling strong enough to face all the world in general, and his mother in particular, now that no insurmountable obstacle stood between him and the only woman he had ever loved.
But this Marion did not, could not, know.
So she stood by the window in a half dream of vague hope and expectation. Something, she felt sure, was going to happen: a sensation often the result of over-strained nerves, or excited imagination, but for all that none the less consolatory in its way while it lasts.
What happened was a ring at the bell! It was almost too dark to distinguish the form of the visitor as he ran up the two or three steps that separated the hall door from the pavement; in vain Marion strained her eyes. She could perceive nothing clearly, so she took to listening breathlessly.
The door was opened, but shut quickly.
“No visitor, then,” thought Marion, and her heart sank. But another moment, and it rose again.
“Two letters for you, ma’am,” said the servant entering, but as hastily retreating in search of a light. Letters; ah, yes, good news often comes by the post, so what may not these contain?
One from Harry. A few rough, kindly words, begging her not to take it to heart if her request for his Saturday’s visit was refused by her father.
“He has been so queer lately,” wrote Harry, “so changeable and irritable, I am afraid of putting him out, and almost sorry I suggested it. “Never mind, if he won’t let me come. We are sure to meet before long. It is a comfort to know you are near at hand.”
So much from Harry. The other was from Cissy, but it felt thick—was there, could there be, an enclosure? Yes, sure enough, inside Cissy’s few loving words of last farewell, it lay. A foreign letter, in an unfamiliar hand, addressed to,
MISSFREER,care of Mrs. Archer,
23, West Parade,
Cheltenham.
She tore it open. What a disappointment! A large sheet of thin paper covered with the text-hand she knew so well. A child’s letter, from poor little Sybil in fact, folded and directed by the new governess already installed in place or her dear Miss Freer.
That was all! Ralph folded the letters. His own to Miss Fryer he destroyed.
“Miss Brown is very kind,” wrote Sybil, “but I cry for you when I am in bed. Uncle Ralph has not come home, but I think he will be very sorry you have gone away.”
That was all!
There was, however, a certain amount of satisfaction in the fact of the letter come safe to hand. It showed that she need fear no postal delay or miscarriage, owing to the roundabout manner in which her letters must come. For Cissy added in a postscript, “I forward the only letter for Miss Freer that has come, and I am leaving with my mother-in-law (a very careful and methodical person) most particular directions to forward at once to you all letters that may arrive to my care, for that same mysterious young lady.”
Marion would much have liked at once to reply to poor, affectionate, little Sybil; but as things were, she thought it better not.
This, and more important matters, would all be set straight soon—or never. In the latter case it was better for the child to forget her; in the former, a short delay in thanking her little friend would be immaterial.
For the next few weeks the soul of Marion’s day was the post-hour.
How she woke and rose early to be ready to hear the ring she came to know so well.
How she composed herself to sleep by the thought of whatmightbe coming in the morning!
But the weeks went on—the weeks, so easy to write of—but each, alas with its appalling list of days, and hours, and minutes! Looking back to the time of her return from Altes, six weeks later, Marion could hardly believe that mouths, if not years, had not passed since the evening she parted with Ralph. Her life at this time was strangely solitary. She saw little of her father, though she had forgotten none of her good resolutions, and in many hitherto neglected ways, endeavoured to show him her daughterly affection and anxiety for his comfort.
He was, on the whole, kinder in manner to her than had been his wont, but still strangely irritable and uncertain in temper. The change was remarked by others besides herself; and once or twice commented upon by some of the more intimate of Mr. Vere’s friends and allies, who now and then visited at his house.
“He is wearing himself out. Miss Vere,” said one or these gentlemen to her, “mind and body. The amount of work he has gone through in the last few years would have killed most men long ago. He is wearing himself out.”
Poor Marion thought it only too probable, and more than ever regretted the unnatural isolation from his children, in which her father had chosen to live, which now utterly precluded her from remonstrance or interference of any kind.
As the season advanced she went out a little more, under the chaperonage of her god-mother, Lady Barnstaple. But it was weary work—balls, concerts—whatever it was, weary and unenjoyable. She had not, naturally, enough of what are called “animal spirits” to throw off suffering, even temporarily, under excitement, as many, by no means heartless, women are able to do. Her indifferent, almost absent manner, came to be remarked by the few who knew her well enough to notice her; and more than one desirable “parti,” who had in former days been struck by the girl’s sweet brightness and gentle gaiety, was frightened away by the indefinable change that had come over her.
“Miss Vere looks as if she were going into a decline,” was murmured on more than one occasion, when her slender figure and pale, grave face were discerned among the crowd.
“Such a pity, is it not? And she promised to be so pretty last year. Do you remember her mother—oh, no, it was long before your time, of course—Constantia Percy, she was, the Merivale Percies, you know, and such a lovely creature! They do say Mr. Vere bullied her to death. I could believe it of him. Those very clever, ambitious men, my dear, are not the best husbands. Have you heard that a baronetcy is spoken of for him? No? Ah, then it may be mere gossip,” and so on.
Not till May did Marion get a glimpse of Harry, and then but a hurried one. Mr. Vere graciously permitted him to come up to town on his sister’s birthday, which fell in “the pleasant month.”
His visit was really the first bright spot in her life since her return to England. How well and happy he looked! And how sweet it was to be thanked by his own lips for what she had done for him—done, though she knew it not, at a priced that had cost her dear!
For she was still as far as ever from guessing the real nature of the difficulty that Ralph had alluded to.
Still she imagined it to be connected with Florence Vyse, and in this found the only reasonable solution of his continued silence—a silence, she now began to fear, never likely to be broken or explained.
A little incident led her to do at last what she had not hitherto felt fit for,—to write to Cissy a full account of the whole from beginning to end, and to ask her advice as to the propriety of disclosing to Sir Ralph the secret of her assumed name and position while at Altes. A disclosure which, were it to be made, could be done by no one so well as by Cissy, and which, were it once clearly explained to Sir Ralph, would satisfy her; even if the result destroyed her last lingering hope that after all some mistake through her change of namehadoccurred, that in some way the mysterious obstacle in the way of his marrying Miss Freer, might be removed by her appearing in her true colours as Marion Vere.
If indeed he could forgive the deception!
It was a few chance words overheard at a dinner party, that led to her taking this step.
She had accompanied her father to one or the rare entertainments he honoured with his presence, and finding herself at dinner very “stupidly” placed—her neighbour on the right being a discontented gourmand, (terrible conjunction! agood-naturedgourmand being barely endurable), and he on the left a “highest” church curate, a class with whom she could never, unlike most young ladies, succeed in “getting on” as it is called—she gave them both up in despair, and amused herself by listening to the snatches of conversation that reached her ears.
Suddenly a name caught her attention.
“Severn, did you say? Oh yes, I know whom you mean. He was out there before; at A——, I mean. A peculiar person, is he not? A great linguist, or philologist, I should say. So he is going out again, you say?”
“So Sir Archibald told me just before he left. ‘I expect to have my old vice out again in a few months, when Cameron returns,’ was what he said. I take some interest in it, as my son and his wife are thinking of spending next winter out there, for her health.”
“Oh, indeed!” was the reply in the first voice, and then the conversation diverged to other topics.
It was very strange! What could be the meaning of it? It must be the same “Severn” they spoke of; the description suited, exactly. This did not look like marrying Florence Vyse! Marion thought it over till her brain was weary, looked at it first in one light, then in another; the final result of her cogitations being the letter to Cissy alluded to above. It was now about the middle of June. By the end of the month she was hoping to hear of Cissy’s arrival in India; by the end of September, at latest, she calculated she might receive an answer to her present letter.
This done, she felt more at rest than had been the case with her for many a day. It seemed to her she had acted wisely in allowing no false dignity to stand between her and the man she loved and trusted so entirely, and on the other hand the step she had taken in no way infringed the delicate boundary of her maidenly reserve, in after life need cause her no blush to look back upon.
Harry’s vacation was at hand, and he was looking forward with eager delight to spending it in her society. Marion resolved that he should not be disappointed of his anticipated pleasure. “The end of September,” she set before herself as a sort of goal, till then resolving to the utmost of her power to set aside her personal anxieties, and enjoy the present. Nor were her endeavours vain. Harry and she had never been happier together than during these holidays, and she herself unconsciously regained much of her usual health and elasticity both of mind and body.
A fortnight, by their father’s orders, was spent at Brighton. Here, one day, Altes and its precious associations were suddenly brought to her mind. Harry and she were strolling on the sands, when a voice beside her made her start.
“Could it be, is it then posseeble that I have the plaisir to look at Mees Feere?” It could be none other than Monsieur de l’Orme. He indeed it was, as large, or rather as small as life, got up in what he considered a perfectly unexceptionable English costume, the details of which can be better imagined than described. Poor little man! He was so inexpressibly delighted with himself and every one else, that his gaiety was infectious.
Marion greeted him cordially.
“For it is just possible,” thought she, “that through him I may hear something, however little, of him who is never really absent from my thoughts.”
But it was not so. The little Frenchman had left Altes soon after Mrs. Archer’s departure, and since then had been wandering to and fro, now at last finding himself at the summit or his desires, a visitor in “le pays charmant d’Angleterre.”
His account of his travels was very amusing, only he was so dreadfully polite about everything.
London he had found “manifique, tout ce qu’il y a de plus beau,” but “triste,vaireetriste, surtout le Dimanche.” “Laysteer Squarr,” had not, he confessed,quitecome up to his ideal of the much vauntedcomfort Anglais, and the cab fares had struck him as slightly exorbitant, not being accustomed in France to pay something extra to the driver over and above the five itself, as he found was always expected by London cabbies.
“But my dear Monsieur,” broke in Harry at this point, “you must have been regularly done. I declare it’s a national disgrace to treat strangers so!”
M. de l’Orme looked puzzled.
“Pardon,” he exclaimed, “I do not quite at all onderstand. Monsieur say, I have been ‘donne.’ Donne? I request tousand forgives. That I am then beast!Mais ‘donne.’ C’est bien ‘fini,’ ‘achevé,’ que Monsieur veut dire?”
“Oh, no,” said Harry bluntly, “not that at all. Done means cheated, taken in. You understand now? I meant that the cabbies had been cheating you, in other words ‘doing you,’ and uncommonly brown too,” he added in a lower voice.
“Harry!” said Marion in a tone of remonstrance.
But M. de l’Orme was really too irresistible, and Harry after all only a schoolboy.
They took the little man a walk (Harry worse confounding his confusion by offering to put him in the way of “doing” Brighton), exhibiting to him the beauties of this London-super-mare, with which kind attention he was so charmed, as to be rather at a loss for sufficiently effusive expressions in English, and obliged consequently to fall back upon his native tongue.
Then Harry took upon himself to invite him to dine with them, a proposal which Marion could not but second; aghast though she was at her brother’s audacity; for at no hour of the day, and on no day of the week, were they secure from their father’s swooping down upon them. Fortunately, however, M. de l’Orme was obliged to leave Brighton at once, and could not therefore accept their invitation, much to Marion’s relief, for besides her fear of Mr. Vere’s appearance, she had been every moment in terror of the little Frenchman coming, out with some allusion to her pupils at Altes.
But the Severn family was not mentioned till the last moment, when M. de l’Orme observed casually that several of their Altes acquaintances were spending the summer in Switzerland. The Berwicks, he said, were a Lausanne, and “Miladi Sevèrne” had taken amaison de champaigneat Vevey.
“All’s well that ends well,” and Marion was thankful when their friend had bidden them an overflowing farewell, and taken himself off in an opposite direction.
By the middle of August Harry was off again, for what he trusted would be his last half-year at the Woolwich tutor’s; and Marion returned to her lonely life, brightened only by the hope that the end of the following month would bring her an answer from Cissy.
No letter from her cousin had yet reached her; but from the elder Mrs. Archer at Cheltenham she had heard of the traveller’s safe arrival at their destination. These few weeks were not so bad as those immediately succeeding her return home. To certain people, weak-minded ones perhaps, in such circumstances, the looking forward to a distinct goal is a great help! But still it was weary work. All sorts of torturing fears would now and then rush into her mind—that Ralph would have left for the East before any communication from Cissy could reach him—that he would never forgive her deception—that he was already married to Miss Vyse; these and a hundred other “thick coming fancies” from time to time came to torment her; above all, in the middle of the night, would they crowd upon her, ten-fold deepened and magnified, by the strange power of the all-surrounding darkness and silence.
It sometimes struck her as curious that she neverdreamtof Ralph; for naturally she was a great dreamer, and since infancy had been accustomed to live over again in “mid-night fantasy,” the pleasures and sorrows, the hopes and disappointments of the day.
The end of September came at last. The Indian mail was in, but as yet no letters for her. Still she was not disheartened. Not improbably Cissy might have enclosed hers in a budget to her mother-in-law; or even supposing the worst, that her cousin had been prevented writing at once, she must just extend a little further her laboriously acquired patience, and hope for what the next mail might bring.
She rose early on the morning of the 30th, and sat at the dining room window, watching for the postman, as had come to be a habit with her. He came at last. Brown, the discreet, seemed to guess she was eager to hear what he had brought. For before she asked any question, he announced, “No letters for you, ma’am—all for my master.”
She thought she had not expected any, but still ——. In another minute a second ring at the front bell was explained by Brown’s re-appearance, with theTimes, which she took up, though hardly caring to see it, and amused herself in the listless way people often do, when perhaps their hears are well-nigh bursting with anxiety, by glancing over the advertisement sheet.
“Births. No, no one that I care about I’m sure. I wonder what people do with all these hosts of children! There are some names—the wife of a somebody James., Esq., Notting Hill; and another, the better half of a Rev. Mr. Watson, in the midland counties, who, I really do believe, make their appearance here at least once a mouth!
“Marriages. Yes, I may happen to see some I know of. Ah, I declare! Well I need not waste any more pity onyou, my dear sir.”
“ ‘At Calcutta, on the so-and-so, by the Reverend, &c., Francis Hunter Berwick, Captain 81st Bengal Native Infantry, and Acting Commissioner in Oude, to Dora Isabella, eldest daughter of R. D. Bailey, Esq., M. D.’ Poor little thing! I daresay she’ll be very happy! But how strange it seems. So soon alter. Well, never mind. I’m very glad.”
So Marion soliloquised. Having gone through the marriages, she was on the point of throwing the paper aside, when it occurred to her to look if among the deaths was announced that of a very old gentleman, their next door neighbour, whose funeral had taken place the previous day. A moment, and the paper fell from her hands, to be clutched at again, and glared at by the stony, unbelieving eyes, which one would hardly have recognised as the sweet, tender Marion’s! Then a burst of wild, bitter sobbing—an abandonment of grief, very piteous to see. Poor girl, poor solitary child! This was the first timeithad come so near her, the first time she had felt that agonising grief—the wild cry of revolt against the awful law of our nature, which, at such seasons, rends us with despair. God be thanked, He Himself hears that terrible cry, “and pitieth.” His poor children! This was what Marion saw in the death column of theTimes.
“On the 10th of August, at Landour, North West Provinces, suddenly, Cecilia May Vere, aged 28, the beloved wife of Lieut.-Colonel Archer, H.M.’s 101st Regiment, and only daughter of the late Charles Hope-Lacy, Esq. of Wyesham, ——shire.”
“Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it.”
MACBETH.
“L’incertitude est vraiment le pire de tous les maux parcequ’il est le seul qui suspend nécessairement les ressorts de l’âme, et qui ajourue le courage.”
OCTAVEFEUILLET.
MR. VEREbreakfasted alone that morning. He was surprised at his daughter’s absence, more particularly as he was considerably later than usual, having had a sleepless night. In spite of himself he was beginning insensibly to feel pleasure in Marion’s society. Of late he had felt strangely weakened and unhinged, and when obliged by utter weariness to rest from his usual occupations, he found it soothing and refreshing to watch his gentle little daughter. She was just the sort of woman one could imagine at home in a sick room. Calm, cheerful, and with immense “tact” of the very best kind—that which springs from no worldly notions of policy or expediency, but from the habit of consideration for others—the quick instinctive sympathy which may be cultivated, but hardly, I think, acquired.
So, as the breakfast was getting cold and no Marion appeared, Mr. Vere fidgeted and fussed, and ended by ringing the bell, and desiring Brown to enquire the reason of Miss Vere’s absence.
The servant soon reappeared.
“Mrs. Evans wished me to say, sir, that Miss Vere is rather upset this morning. Indeed she thinks Miss Vere must have had some bad news, and she would be glad, if so be as you could step up to her room, sir, as before you go out.”
“Bad news!” exclaimed Mr. Vere, “nonsense. If there had been any bad news I should have heard it.”
But his hand shook as he hastily emptied his coffee-cup; and without further delay he hastened up to his daughter’s room. It was the first time for years that he had been in it, and, as he entered, he was struck by its plainness and simplicity. It was the same room she had had as a child, and her innocent girl life might almost have been read in a glance at its arrangements and contents. There were the book-shelves on the wall, the upper ones filled with the child’s treasures she had not liked to set aside; the lower ones with the favourites of her later years. There were the plaster casts she had saved her pence to buy many years ago, now somewhat yellowed and disfigured by London fogs and smoke. The framed photograph of Harry over the mantel-piece, and a little water-colour sketch of the dear old cottage at Brackley, the only pictures on the walls.
Somehow it all came home to the father’s heart, and for almost the first time a strange misgiving seized him. Had he after all done wisely in the life he had marked out for himself? Had he not deliberately put away from him treasures near at hand, which, now that failing health of mind and body was creeping upon him, might have been to him the sweetest of consolations—strength to his weakness, comfort in his need?
Nor were his misgivings merely from this selfish point of view. Something of fatherly yearning towards his child, pity for her loneliness and admiration of the gentle, uncomplaining patience with which, of late especially, she had borne his coldness and irritability, caused him to speak very kindly, and touch her very softly, as he stood beside the bed on which, in her paroxysm of grief, she had thrown herself, her face buried in the pillows.
“Marion, my dear,” he said, “you alarm me. What can be the matter, my poor child? Surely, surely,” he went on hurriedly, as for the first time a dreadful possibility occurred to him, “there can be nothing wrong with Harry?”
She sat up, mechanically pushing back from her temples the hair, usually so neat and smooth, which had fallen loose as she lay. Her father caught her upraised hand, and held it gently in his. But she seemed hardly conscious of the unusual kindness of his manner.
“No, not Harry,” she replied, “but, oh, Papa, look here,” and as she spoke, with her other hand she pointed to those dreadful four lines in the newspaper lying on the pillow beside her, “it is Cissy, my dear Cissy—the only sister I ever had—my own dear, kind Cissy.” And the sobs burst out again as violently as at first. Mr. Vere, hardly understanding what she said, stared at the place she pointed out, but for a minute or two could not decipher the words.
When their meaning at last broke upon him, he staggered and almost fell.
“This is very dreadful,” he said, “very sad and dreadful. So young and bright and happy! My poor little Cissy! It is like her mother over again. Marion, my dearest child, you can hardly feel this more than I do. You don’t know all it brings back to me.”
And Marion, now glancing at her father, saw his face pale with deep emotion, while one or two large tears gathered in his eyes.
It was the best thing to bring her back to herself.
“My poor father,” she thought, “how I have misjudged you!” And with a sudden loving impulse, she threw her arms round his neck, and clung to him as she had hardly, even in her confiding infancy, ever clung to him before. Nor was she repulsed.
In a little while her father spoke to her; kindly and gently, in a way she would hardly have believed it possible for him to speak; he, in general, so cold and satirical, so unbending and severe.
He left her in a short time, promising to write at once to Cheltenham for details of this sad news; and volunteering also to send for Harry for a day or two, that she might feel less solitary in her grief.
This kindness soothed and calmed her, and in an hour or two she crept down stairs, and tried to employ herself as usual. But it would not do. Ever and anon it rushed upon her with overwhelming force, the remembrance of those dreadful printed words:—
“On the 10th of August, Cecilia Mary Vere.”
“The 10th of August,” that was the time she and Harry were at Brighton, possibly the very day they were talking and laughing with M. de l’Orme!
And then another thought, of aggravating misery, occurred to her. With Cissy had gone the last, the very last link between herself and Ralph! Ralph, whom more than ever in this her time of sorrow, she hungered for; Ralph, whom shecouldnot live without.
“If only he were here,” she thought, “merely to sit beside me and hold my hand, even though I knew he was never to be more to me afterwards! Oh, if only,only, he knew of my bitter grief, he would, I know, find some way to comfort me. But he will never, never know it, never hear of me again. For most likely my poor Cissy never got my letter at all. Oh, why are things so cruel upon me? Why may I not be happy? Why could not my one, only woman friend have been left me? It is more than I can bear, this losing Ralph again. For I had been counting so on Cissy.
And the sad, weary day went by, followed by others as sad and weary, and Marion thought she had drained sorrow to its dregs. She had only one comfort—her father’s continued kindness and gentleness. She clung to him wonderfully, poor child, in those days; but more was before her that she little thought of. In her absorption she did not observe Mr. Vere’s increasing illness; but when Harry me home on the following Saturday he was much startled by it, and amazed, too, at the strange, unwonted softness and tenderness almost, of his father’s manner to both his sister and himself, though especially to the former.
Before leaving Marion on the Monday the boy debated with himself whether he should confide his misgivings to her. But he decided that it was better not to do so.
“It is not as if she could do any good,” thought he, “and after all I may be exaggerating the change in my father. I think it is as much his unusual kindness as his looking ill that has struck me so. May has trouble enough already.”
Still it was with a strange feeling of anxiety and impending sorrow, that he shook hands with his father and kissed his sister that Monday morning, when he left them to return to his tutor’s.
His presentiments were realized only too correctly. On the following Friday he was telegraphed for, and arrived at home to find his father alreadydead, and Marion sitting by his bedside in speechless, tearless sorrow.
“Just as he was beginning to care for is a little,” she said, in a dull, husky voice, that did not sound the least like her own. “Oh, Harry, I am so lonely, so miserable! I have only you, and soon you will be going away. Except for you I wish I might die.”
It was very pitiful. These two solitary children clinging to each other in their great desolation, as, long ago, they had clung to each other for comfort in their little trifling child!
“It,” Marion whispered to her brother, “had been very sudden, dreadfully sudden.” Mr. Vere had been presiding at a large public meeting the day before that or his death, and had come home late, saying he felt tired.
“But I never thought he was really ill, Harry,” said Marion; “I had no idea of it. At breakfast yesterday morning he seemed very well. He got several letters, and read them while he eat his breakfast.”
“Could there have been anything in his letters to startle or annoy him?” suggested Harry.
“No, I think not. I have them all here. Among them was one from young Mr. Baldwin—Geoffrey Baldwin, you remember, Harry?—saying that he would come to see him, as he wished, ‘to-morrow or Monday.’ Papa seemed pleased at this, and gave me the letter to read. He began to speak about Mr. Baldwin, and told him he had appointed him our guardian, or trustee, in his will. It surprised me a little his talking this way to me. He has generally been so reserved about these sort of things.”
“He must have known he was very ill,” said Harry. “He said something to me about his will last Sunday. He told me that he wished to give a little more attention to his private affairs than he had found time for, for some years past. Indeed, Marion, I may be mistaken, but I have a sort of idea that though every one has seemed to consider my father a rich man, he was not really so. He has spent an immense deal of money on public matters one way and another. That contested election two years ago, and lots of subscriptions and things always going on. It’s always the way with ‘public men,’ they neglect their own affairs to look after everybody else’s. I hope I may be mistaken, but I have my fears that we shall not be rich by any means.”
“I don’t care,” said Marion; “I would be just as miserable if we had millions. I don’t care for money. But I wish you would not talk about money, Harry. It seems too horrible—so soon—only yesterday!”
“Don’t think me heartless, dear May,” said the boy. “For myself I truly don’t care. I could go to India. It was only for you. Did my father say nothing more to you?”
“No,” replied his sister; “at least only a word or two almost at the last, before he became unconscious. He went up to his room after breakfast, and about half-an-hour after, Brown heard a heavy fall. He ran upstairs and found him, as he told you, in a sort of fit. I don’t understand what it was exactly. He lifted him on to his bed and sent for a doctor before telling me. Poor Brown, he was very kind and thoughtful! A little after the doctor came Papa grew slightly better, and asked for me. I was beside him. He signed for me to kiss him, and whispered to me: ‘You have been my dear little daughter. It was a great mistake, but you will forgive me. Poor Harry too.’ Then he grew uneasy, and muttered something about ‘sending for Baldwin, hoping it would be all right for them, poor children.’ I bent down and said, ‘Yes, clear Papa, it will be all right.’ He seemed pleased and smiled at me, but he did not speak again to me. Only I heard him whisper to himself very, very low—no one else heard it—the prayer of the poor publican, Harry: ‘Lord, be merciful to me a sinner.’ Then he lay quite still, seeming not to suffer at all. I had laid my head down for a minute when the doctor spoke to me. Then l knew, Harry. Oh, poor papa! Poor Papa! We did not think we cared so much for him, did we, Harry?”
“No,” said the boy, “nor that he cared for us.”
There was no exaggeration about their grief. Mr. Vere had not been an affectionate father, and his death was far from being to them the overwhelming, utterly prostrating blow, that the loss of a parent is felt to be in some happier families. Nevertheless it was, more especially from its suddenness, a very terrible shock, to Marion, in particular, whose life for several months had been one of constant suspense and disappointment, culminating in the great grief of her cousin’s death. And young natures after all, with rare exceptions, are sweet and generous, ready to forgive and forget, not backward to give their love on slight enough encouragement.
Mr. Baldwin came late on Monday evening. Harry received him, but Marion was tired, and begged not to be asked to see him, or any one, till after the funeral was over. Mr. Vere had left directions that this should take place very quietly; in consequence of which only a few of his most intimate friends were present. It was evident that he had for some time past suspected the state of his own health. Only two days before he had called on his lawyer about some slight addition to his will, which however there had not been time to execute; and had left with him a letter of directions; as to the arrangements of his funeral, in case of his death occurring suddenly, as he had been warned might possibly be the case.
So though the papers were full of the sudden death of the great man, each vying with the others as to the extent and accuracy of their biographical notices, the actual mourners were few; and with but little of outward parade or ostentation, the mortal remains of Hartford Vere were carried to the grave.
Ralph Severn, sitting at breakfast that morning in his mother’s villa at Vevey, observed casually that the Member for —— was dead.
“A useful man he was a very useful man. His party will miss him exceedingly. There are rumours, I see, that his private affairs are in some confusion. Always the case with these public men. I hope, however, it may not be true.”
“Was he a friend of yours, then?” asked Florence.
“O dear, no,” replied he, “I have seen him, of course, and heard him speak. But I never spoke to him. I am far too small a person to be hand in glove with the leading politicians of the day. But I should be sorry to think that a man who had spent his life, as he believed, for the good of his country, should leave his family unprovided for.”
“Has he left a large family?” asked Lady Severn.
“No,” said Ralph, consulting the paper; “a son and a daughter, I think it said somewhere. His wife died many years ago. By the bye, she was one of those beautiful Miss Percies of Merivale, mother. You remember Merivale, of course? That queer old place near my Uncle Brackley’s. It is sold now, but the last time I was in Brentshire I went to see it. The Veres were Brentshire people, too, were they not?”
“Oh dear, yes, one of the oldest families there,” said Lady Severn, who prided herself on her genealogical accuracy, and was supposed to be particularly well up in Brentshire family lore, Lord Brackley, the great man of the county, being her step-brother. “I remember them well long ago. But the present head of the family, this Mr. Vere’s uncle or cousin, I forget which, married a great heiress, and emigrated to some other country.”
“Ah, indeed!” replied Sir Ralph, for whom these details possessed no peculiar interest, and whose thoughts were just then painfully engrossed by private troubles of his own, complicated of late in an altogether unexpected way. “Ah, indeed!” said he, and straightway forgot all about the death of Mr. Vere, and fell to thinking of very different matters.
To return, however, to our poor little Marion.
On the morning of the funeral she received at last what she had so long been looking for—an Indian letter! Not, alas! in the familiar hand that was wont to cause her such pleasure; for in all the seven years of her married life in the East, Mrs. Archer had seldom allowed a mail to pass without writing to her little cousin—that dear handwriting she would never, never see again. This letter had a deep black border, and the address was written in a firm, large hand, very different from Cissy’s characteristic scratch. It was from Colonel Archer.
Some few, sad details, it gave of Cissy’s last illness and death (the first Marion had received, for the elder Mrs. Archer had been ill, and unable to reply to Mr. Vere’s enquiries), the suddenness of which had been its most distressing feature, for she had suffered little, poor Cissy. Some blunt, strong words of his own agony, at losing, her, which told that poor George Archer’s heart was all but broken. And then her last message to Marion, when too nearly gone almost to speak. George had written them down, he said, at once, for fear of possible mistake—the faint, fluttering words of the tender, affectionate heart. “Tell dear May,” she had said, “I have done what she wished, and I hope they will be very happy.”
That was all—the message, and a little lock of the bright fair hair Marion knew so well, cut off, gently and reverently, from his dead wife’s head, by the husband she had loved so devotedly.
All, but how much! Enough to turn the grey world rosy again, to bathe all around her in golden light, to fill her heart with joy and thankfulness, which she tried in vain to banish by the recollection that today her father was to be buried.
“Oh, am I wicked, am I heartless?” she asked herself. “God forgive me if I am. But I was so broken down, so hopeless, and now all seems so different! By now even, this very day perhaps, Ralph will know it all, will have received Cissy’s letter, explaining away all the trouble, so far, at least, as I was concerned. Sooner even than to-day, for Cissy must have written before her illness began. Yes, sooner, surely. Any day I may look for a letter from him if, as I feel convinced, some mistake or misapprehension has been at the root of his strange silence.”
And in proportion to her previous hopelessness and despair, was her present sanguine belief that all would soon be well.
In the afternoon of that day, when “all was over,” as people say, the will read, and the few guests departed, Harry ran upstairs to beg Marion to come down to see Mr. Baldwin, who was going to remain with them for a day or two. Her presence at the reading of the will had been suggested, but not after all considered advisable; for as Harry, poor boy, had feared, the will itself, and still more Mr. Crooke the lawyer’s comments thereupon, had revealed that the state of the dead man’s affairs was the reverse of satisfactory, and it was thought well that Marion should be spared the shock to her feelings of such a disclosure in public.
Some hint of this Harry gave to his sister as they went downstairs together. He was somewhat disappointed that she did not say again, as she had said the other day, “I don’t care about money, Harry, truly I don’t.”
“After all, I fear she does care,” thought her brother. Mr. Baldwin was in the library, Harry said, and thither they went.
When they entered the room he was standing with his back to the door, looking out of the window. A tall, powerful figure, hands in pockets, clad in tweed and velvet shooting coat, for which, by his young host’s permission, he had already exchanged the uncongenial black, in which he had performed his part as second chief mourner in the morning. But he started when Harry’s voice reached him; he had not known that the boy had gone to fetch his sister.
“I have persuaded May to come down to make tea for us, Baldwin,” said Harry.
Geoffrey Baldwin wheeled round suddenly, and his handsome face flushed.
“Miss Vere,” he exclaimed, almost before he saw her; “that’s too bad of you, Harry—not to have warned me, I mean. I thought we were to be alone. Miss Vere, you must excuse me, really. I had no business to change my clothes, but I didn’t know I should see you to-day.”
Even as he finished the words he had begun, a curious expression came over his face, and seemed to affect the tone of his voice. Marion hardly at first understood it.
“Never mind,” she said quietly, “I am sure people’s clothes have nothing to do with their feelings.”
Mr. Baldwin did not reply. He stood staring at her, regularly staring, in a way that in any one else would have been offensive and rude. But he did it so simply, so unconsciously almost, that the only feeling it aroused in Marion was an extreme, almost nervous wish to laugh. Then it flashed upon her.
“I know why you look so amazed, Mr. Baldwin,” she exclaimed. “You can’t remember where you saw me before. I can tell you. It was at the railway station, nearly a year ago,” she added, with an imperceptible sob in her voice.
A look of extreme satisfaction overspread his face.
“Thank you for reminding me. I am so very glad. Yes, it was just then. You had a little boy with you?”
“Yes,” she replied, “little Charlie Archer. I was on my way abroad with his mother. Harry!” she turned to him appealingly. It was too fresh yet for her to tell it herself. But he understood her, and in a few words explained to Mr. Baldwin what Marion could not find voice to tell.
The fair face before her was softened by a look of almost womanly commiseration, though all he said was the commonplace phrase,
“I am very sorry to hear it.”
He was wonderfully good-looking, and of a thoroughly manly type of beauty. Tall, as I have said, but firm and compact, the features almost perfect of their kind, and the colouring unusually rich and mellow, if such a word can be applied to a human face. The hair was of that bright, sunny hue, on which, however in the shade, some light always seems to linger; the eyes unmistakeably blue, honest, laughing, what I have heard called “well opened eyes,” set round by thick, soft fringes, curling like a girl’s. A pleasant mouth too, lips closed in repose, though usually open enough to show the clear, even, white teeth within. But nothing in the mouth or lower jaw to spoil the beautiful whole, as is not unfrequently the case in such great physical perfection, by its confession of spiritual weakness, undue preponderance of the lower part of our nature over the higher. No, if Geoffrey Baldwin’s mouth told tales at all, they were of too great sensitiveness, too quick a sympathy, too impulsive a heart, to be altogether well managed and directed by the intellectual powers with which nature had gifted him. For although of average ability and intelligence, he was certainly not a clever man, in the ordinary sense of the word. “An illiterate clod-hopper,” he called himself, but that was far too severe. Feel deeply, very deeply, he could, and often, perhaps on the whole too often, did. But as for thinking deeply! It made his head ache, he said, and after all what was the good of it?
He knew well and thoroughly all required of him in his daily life, which was that of a gentleman farmer, and so long as that was the case, he couldn’t for the life of him see what more learning he wanted.
But honest as the day, brave as a lion, and tender as a lamb, chivalrous, with a chivalry that is fast going out of fashion, generous and unsuspicious to a fault—though he went to sleep over Tennyson, and preferred a ride across country to the most exquisite music ever heard—after all, the world would not be the worse of a few more like you, Geoffrey Baldwin.
Then they talked a little of old days, and Geoffrey blushed more than Marion, when some of their escapades were referred to—their tumbling into the brook and his fishing them out; their “hare and hounds,” when the hare, and she, perched on Geoffrey’s shoulder, the terrible horseman pursuit. And another remembrance came to Geoffrey’s mind, though this he kept to himself. Of a day when, in return for some special act of kindness, little May had clambered on to his knee and kissed and bugged him right honestly, while she promised, voluntarily too, that if only “Jeff” would wait till she was big she would marry him, she would indeed, really and truly, or “in truality,” which was her childish mode of asseveration.
“What a little tomboy I must have been,” said Marion, and then she added dreamily, “I wonder if I shall ever see that Brackley cottage again!”
“I hope so,” said Harry cheerfully, but he looked uncomfortable, and glanced appealingly at Geoffrey, who in turn frowned slightly, and seemed at a loss. So Harry spoke.
“May, dear,” he said, “I must go back to Woolwich so soon, and Mr. Baldwin too has little time to spare, that if you don’t mind, I think we had better explain to you a little how things are. It won’t take long. We need not go into details with you, but you see we shall not have much time to consult together.”
“No,” said Marion, “we shall not. I am quite ready to listen. I don’t understand business matters much, but you won’t mind?” she added, half appealingly, to Mr. Baldwin; “I know Papa told me he had asked you to take charge of things for us. I am very glad. It is so much nicer than a stranger.”
She spoke quietly, but with a slight sinking at her heart, why, she could hardly have told. Was some fresh trouble before her? Some new obstacle in her path, just as she fancied it was going to be made clear? Supposing she were utterly penniless. What then? She might be obliged to become a governess in reality. How might not this affect her possible relations to Ralph? Would it be right for her, in that case, to think of him, or rather, to allow him to think of her? All this flashed through her mind in a bewildering, perplexing whirl. She had time to think a little, for Mr. Baldwin appeared to hesitate somewhat to begin his statement.
“Please tell me,” she said at last. “Never mind how bad it is. I would so much rather know. Have we nothing at all to live on? Is that it?”
“No, no, May!” said Harry, eagerly.
And “Oh, no, Miss Vere! Indeed, no!” exclaimed Mr. Baldwin. But her thus fearing the worst made it easier to tell the whole.
Of their father’s large property, but a comparatively small portion, after all liabilities were cleared off, remained to them. For many years, it was evident that Mr. Vere must have lived beyond his income, though he himself, not improbably, had been unaware of the fact. Then, when this state of things had been suddenly brought before him, how or when, no one knew, it appeared that by hasty, ill-considered speculation, he had endeavoured to retrieve himself. In vain; more and yet more had been sunk, and still he had persisted in more deeply involving himself, till at last all was gone, save some few thousands of ready money, originally intended as a settlement on his wife, but of which the deed had never been executed. So, in all probability, had his life been extended, this would have gone the way of the rest, and his children might have been left beggars.
“I see,” said Marion, “but I am sure Papa did it for the best. Don’t say any more about it, but just tell me how much there is left. How much we shall have to live on, I mean.”
“I can’t tell you quite exactly,” said Mr. Baldwin, “till we decide what to do with this house, the furniture, &c. There is a long lease to dispose of and the furniture, I suppose, is valuable. But to give you a rough idea,” he went on, consulting a note book in his hand. “I should think, after all is cleared, you and Harry will have about—mind I only say about—four hundred a year between you. The ready money is at present in the Mallingford hank, the bank of which my father used to be the head, you know, Miss Vere. If the other trustee, a cousin of your father’s, who is at present abroad, wishes to put it anywhere else, I shall have no objection, though for my own part I think it may as well stay where it is. The old bank’s as safe as can be. All my own money is there, which shows what I think of it. Still I don’t profess to be much of a man of business and I should like to have Mr. Framley Vere’s opinion. I am sadly afraid I shall make a very poor trustee! I don’t like to say “guardian,” to such wards, for I honestly believe you are both much wiser than I. I fear your poor father must have credited me with some of my own father’s long-headedness as to money matters, and if so the result will prove he was mistaken. I however can only do my best. Only pray don’t ever ask me anything I should not consent to, for I could not possibly refuse you.”
He spoke lightly, and as if to both, but his eyes rested on Marion. She was touched by his frankness and simplicity, his kindness of voice and manner, and, in all innocence and child-like confidence, she held out her hand to him, saying warmly, “Thank you, Mr. Baldwin for explaining it to me so kindly. I am quite sureIshall never wish for another guardian any way.”
Geoffrey took the little hand, softly, reverently almost, in his own great strong one. A deep flush spread over his face, for though sunburnt, he was naturally so fair that as a boy at school his quickly changing colour had procured for him many undesirable epithets; and there came a grave, earnest look into his eyes, which added to their depth, without diminishing their softness. Without speaking, he pressed gently the hand that lay in his, held it for a moment, as if mentally sealing a vow.
Harry had turned away before this little scene occurred, and all that Marion thought of it was, “How kind and brotherly Mr. Baldwin is! Were it necessary I almost think I could take him into my confidence.”
“Non illum nostri passunt labores,Non si frigoribus mediis Hebrumque libamusSithoniasque nives hiemis subeamus aquosæ—Omnia vincit amor.”
VIRGIL.