“ANDwhat then do you and Harry think I should do? Where, I should rather say, do you think I should go, for I am sure you have thought of some plan?” asked Marion, later is the evening, as they still at together talking.
Mr. Baldwin looked at Harry, and Harry at Mr. Baldwin. This was the part of the whole they most dreaded telling her, being, as are all their sex, sad cowards when there was question breaking bad or disagreeable news.
“No permanent arrangement can be made till we hear from Mr. Framley, Vere,” began Mr. Baldwin, but Marion interrupted him.
“You need not, I assure you, take him into consideration with regard to my movements,” said she: “he is one of those old bachelors that think girls torments, and provided he is not asked to look out for a home for me himself, he will trouble himself very little as to what becomes of me. I daresay Harry may find him a sensible adviser and he may be a good man of business, but beyond that I am sure he won’t interfere.”
“The only plan that appears at all feasible to Harry and me,” resumed Mr. Baldwin, “is one which I fear will be very distasteful to you.” Again he stopped.
“Please tell me what it is,” urged Marion.
Mr. Baldwin looked at Harry beseechingly.
“It’s nothing so very dreadful,” said the boy, “all really for the present it’s the only thing to be done. It’s only Aunt Tremlett and Mallingford, May.” He spoke lightly, but in his heart he dreaded the effect of his announcement.
But to his amazement Marion took it philosophically in the extreme.
“I thought it was that,” she replied, “well, I daresay it will do very fairly, all things considered. Mallingford certainly is dull, and Aunt Tremlett duller; but I don’t mind. I shall get on comfortably enough, and I shall have you Harry, in the holidays. May I not?” she asked, appealing, to Mr. Baldwin.
“Most assuredly,” he answered warmly, “I was thinking of that. And if Miss Tremlett objects to the racket of a young gentleman in her house, Harry can come to me. It’s not two miles from my house to Mallingford, and I can lend you a horse, or two if you like,” he said, turning to Harry.
“That would be capital,” said the boy, “much more to my taste than Aunt Tremlett’s. Though I’ll stay there part of the time if shell have me,” he added quickly, seeing that his sister looked rather disappointed.
And so Marion’s future, for a time at least, was decided.
It all came to pass very soon. So soon, that ten days later she found herself, under the escort of Mrs. Evans and Brown (about to set up a joint establishment, after “keeping company” of many years’ standing), in the railway on her way to Mallingford, hardly able to realize that not yet a month had passed since the day when she saw those sad four lines in the ‘Times’—when for the first time the destroying angel had passed close by her, breaking the small circle of her immediate friends. And now already another place was vacant!
It was rather a long journey to Mallingford. A few years ago, when as children Marion and Harry used to spend the summer in the Brackley cottage, the railway only went about two-thirds of the way, and the last thirty miles were traversed in the coach. Now it was different. Mallingford had a station of its own, at which some half dozen trains stopped in the day, so the whole of the journey was performed on the railway; at which, had she been in the mood to observe or feel interested in outside things, Marion would have murmured; for long ago the stage coach part of the programme had been the children’s great delight: in fine weather at least, when they coaxed their attendants to allow them to mount up to the top of the vehicle, from whence they had a charming view of the country in general, and of the four dashing, smoking horses in particular.
But Marion was sad and listless, and so long as she was left at peace to pursue the wearying circle of her own thoughts, cared little for what might be her surroundings.
She had heard nothing from Ralph, received no sort of explanation of his strange conduct. And her hopes were sinking low. By Cissy’s last message she was now perfectly convinced that no sort of mistake was at the bottom of his incomprehensible silence. He must, by the last mail at latest, if not sooner, have received Mrs. Archer’s explanation of the whole from Marion’s side. That he still refrained from communicating with her must be owing to one of two causes: either his feelings to her were changed by the knowledge of the deception she had practised; or he himself had failed in the object of his visit to England, and was still fettered by the mysterious complications to which he had alluded. Complications in no way removed, as she had now and then begun to fancy might prove to be the case, by the fact of her being the daughter of the distinguished politician Hartford Vere, instead of Marion Freer, the little governess.
“Not that my position would have made any difference to him personally,” she always added; “he, I know, cared for Marion Freer as I shall never, never be cared for again. But it might have influenced his mother if the obstacle was in any way connected with her.”
Latterly she had said to herself somewhat bitterly, that so far as his advantage was concerned, there was nothing to regret.
My father dead, and a mere pittance all my portion! And the very little beauty I ever had fading already,” she thought, as she looked at herself in her old toilet glass for the last time, the morning she left London.
She was mistaken, however. But her beauty was not of a kind to be materially affected by such causes, and in this respect rose far superior to the more striking, but merely physical, loveliness of such women as Florence Vyse. The “sweet soul” that looked out of Marion Vere’s grey eyes would render them beautiful till old age; the delicate features and sensitive mouth drew their chief attraction from the truth of heart and refinement of mind of their owner. To my mind she was at all times a beautiful woman. Her nature, in spite of adverse circumstances, was sound and healthy, and in a sense, even strong; for after all it is the strongest who suffer the most, that bend only, where weaker ones would break.
As Geoffrey Baldwin handed her on to the little platform at Mallingford station, whither he had driven to meet her, he, at least, would have agreed with me. Likely enough, he would have been at a loss to define his sensations with regard to her. He was not a man who troubled himself much with definitions of any kind certainly, but it is curious to reflect on the peculiar attraction this girl had for him from the first. He had seen plenty of far handsomer women, he had known some few as sweet and good. Intellect he did not care for, did not understand. Yet as he looked at the slight figure in its heavy mourning dress, at the fair face and sad, gentle eyes that glanced up at him with their indescribable expression or mingled womanliness and childlike appeal, there came over his honest manhood the same yearning instinct of love and protection, the same wild longing to fold her then and there in his arms, which, before now, had stirred the innermost depths of Ralph Severn’s heart, had indeed cost him no slight struggle to resist. I make, no secret of it at all. Both these men fell love with her, as it is called, almost from the first. It was very strange. They were so utterly different, alike only in that they were brave and good and true. But as to tastes, shades of character, habits, ideas—all in short that goes to the formation of individuality, you might search high and low, far and wide, before you could find two men so radically dissimilar as the quiet, studious Sir Ralph Severn, and the high-spirited, open-hearted, life enjoying farmer, Geoffrey Baldwin.
Marion felt glad that her young guardian had come to meet her, and she told him so.
“It seems less desolate,” she said, “for I do not expect much of a welcome from Aunt Tremlett.” Which expectation, for all his wish to cheer her, Mr. Baldwin could not find it in his conscience to disagree with.
So in silence he put her and Evans into the fly he had stopped to order at the King’s Arms, on his way through Mallingford, he himself following in his dog-cart, “just to shake hands with Miss Tremlett,” he said to himself, though in reality to make sure that his charge should have what little additional comfort and support his presence might give her, on her first arrival at the not very cheerful dwelling, which, for some time to come, at least, was to be her home.
There was no mystery about Miss Tremlett. She was simply a narrow-minded hypochondriac, who, never having been accustomed in youth to live for any other object than her precious self, had in old age, naturally enough increased in devotion to this all-engrossing idol. She was what is called a woman of high principles and excellent judgement, meaning, I suppose that when she was young, pretty, and poor, she had refused to marry the only man she cared for because he was a struggling curate, and had done her best to secure a rich husband; failing which she had for years “devoted herself” to an odious old woman, her god-mother, in hopes of succeeding to her fortune, in which, strange to say, she had not been disappointed. And now that she was old (for the fortune did not come to her till she was fifty) she had not been guilty of any enormity, robbing a church, for instance, in consequence of whichandher large fortune, she was “greatly respected” in Mallingford, and at the various tea-tables always alluded to by the rector in the terms above mentioned.
It was a great feather in her cap, this taking her orphan grand-niece to live with her. Many of her acquaintances, in their secret hearts, wondered at it, especially when it oozed out, as such things always do, that the great Mr. Vere had not left his children “overly well provided for,” as Mrs. Jones, of the King’s Arms, expressed it to her crony, Miss Green, the milliner. Miss Green was better informed than Mrs. Jones, however, a few days later, for she had been working at “The Cross House,” Miss Tremlett’s residence, and had it from Mrs. Thomas, the housekeeper that Master and Miss Vere had been left “quite destitoot.”
“Not one brass farthing between them, Mrs. Jones, I do assure you,” she said, “and his debts, they do say, something awful.”
To which communication Mrs. Jones replied by an impressive “In-deed.”
Miss Tremlett had been influenced by various motives, when on hearing of her nephew’s death, she had authorized Geoffrey Baldwin to offer her house as a temporary home for Marion. For one thing, in her heart, as in most others, there was a soft spot, and in her way, she had loved and been proud of Hartford Vere. Then again, though to some extent grasping and money-loving, she was not on the whole ungenerous or stingy. There was one thing she loved better than money and that was herself and her own comfort, and it occurred to her that even if Marion should be left very scantily provided for, she would cause but little additional expense in her household, and would be all the more ready to repay her aunt’s kindness by making herself a useful and agreeable companion. The effect on her nerves of a cheerful young person about the house would, her medical man informed her, be decidedly beneficial. Any way, it would do no harm to try. She had been rather disagreeably well lately, and felt in want of a little excitement. And if Marion failed in all else, there was one point on which it was quite impossible she should disappoint her. The girl’s presence in her house would, at all events, give her something new to grumble about!
So much as to Aunt Tremlett. As to Mallingford itself there is not very much to say. It was (in those days at least, possibly the last few years may have improved it) an intensely stupid little town. Dull, with a dullness that to those fortunate people who have had no personal experience of small provincial town life, altogether baffles description. And worse than dull—spiteful, ill-naturedly gossiping, and conceited, with the utterly hopeless conceit, only seen to perfection in the stupidest or people and societies. Conservative of course, to the back-bone, in everything—the more objectionable and undesirable the object of its conservatism, the more stolidly, bull-doggishly tenacious grew Mallingford. Instance the long resistance to the introduction of gas lamps in the streets and public buildings, the still prevailing cobble stones in the market-place, the stiflingly high pews in the peculiarly hideous church, and, last not least, the universally signed petition against that most noisy and blustering of innovators—the railway.
The only liberals in Mallingford were its numerous young ladies, who, on the subject of the fashions, became positively rabid. Though their admirers of the opposite sex were few, for the census reported but one single gentleman to every eight or ten equally marriageable damsels, there were really few things a Mallingford girl would have hesitated to do, for the sake of being the first to be seen in the High Street with the latest fashion, whatever it might be, coal-scuttle bonnets or pork-pie hat, high-heeled hoots or Paris crinoline!
There were good gentle souls in Mallingford, too, of course, as, Heaven be praised, there are in most places in this wicked world; but the prevailing spirit of the little town, the placid stupidity, unrelieved, save by occasional snappish outbursts of party-spirit, the ludicrous pretension and would-be exclusiveness of its reigning families, the airs of the half-educated daughters of the same—these things and many other of a similar nature would need a keener pen than mine to do justice to them! Very laughable, very contemptible no doubt, were it not that from so surely passing away, is giving place, not merely to another, but to a better state of things.
It may seem exaggerated to speak so gravely of the foibles and absurdities of county town society as it existed in Mallingford some few years ago, as possibly it still exists in other yet more “conservative” places of the kind. If it appear so I can only say that to me it comes naturally to speak seriously of things I have myself felt strongly—absurdities if you like, but worse than absurdities, for they have sprung from deep rooted error, and their influence, again, has, in its turn, been an evil one. Besides which, it is necessary to a right comprehension of my heroine’s life and character, that the nature of the social atmosphere into which at this critical period of her history she was thrown, should be, to some extent at least, understood and justly appreciated.
Over the cobble stones, in the fly from the King’s Arms, Marion was rattled to her destination. “The Cross House,” as it was called, its name from its vicinity to the old market place (now, wonderful to say, deserted in favour of a more convenient site), in the centre of which, though no longer surrounded by booths and stalls, still stood in respectable decay the pride of Mallingford, the venerable cross. Queer things that ancient monument must have seen in its day; strange sights if all be true that is to be read concerning it, in the “Guide to Mallingford and its neighbourhood,” changes many and marvellous even in this sturdy little stronghold of conservatism! Of its antiquity, there can be no doubt, for it was already aged in 1641, when by some special good luck, or over-sight on the part of the fanatic destroyers, it escaped the fate of its fellow monuments.
To Marion in her childhood it had not been without appalling associations, for besides whispers of a heretic or two burnt to death at its base, there was a more ghastly legend of a modern Sapphira struck dead on the spot by what some good people used to call “a special dispensation of providence,” as an awful warning to succeeding generations. Marion’s nurse told her this pretty little story one day when the perfectly truthful child persisted in refusing to confess to a sin she had not committed; but it had an opposite effect to that anticipated. “If, then, I say I broke the jug, nurse, when I know I did not, God would perhaps kill me like the woman. Which way of putting it was rather beyond the nurse’s logical powers. Fortunately the real delinquent was afterwards discovered, and the little girl came off with flying colours!
As the fly stopped at the door of the Cross House, Geoffrey’s bright face appeared. He rang the bell, and notwithstanding the forbidding frowns of the prim, crabbed looking maid-servant, who answered the summons, stood his ground bravely, and carried out his intention of assisting at the first meeting of aunt and niece. They were almost strangers to each other, for the years during which they had not met had changed the girl from a child to a woman, and had nearly effaced from her recollection the personal appearance of her aunt, who had done little to attract of attach her young relative to herself.
Marion and Mr. Baldwin were shown into a room at the back of the house, on the first floor. A pleasant bright room it might have been, had its owner been a pleasant or bright person, for it looked out on an old-fashioned walled-in garden, which too, might easily have been rendered pretty and attractive, instead of formal and bare. An untidy, neglected garden is an unpleasant sight, but hardly less so to my mind is a faultlessly neat one, if stiff, ungraceful and prim—the one might quite as justly as the other be described as “uncared for.” No person who cares for a garden as it should be cared for, would be content with doling out to it the minimum of unlovely, unloving attention, necessary to keeping it merely in order—that particular kind of lifeless, stunted order which is one of the ugliest things I know.
So, as might be expected from the glance at the garden on entering, the room was very dreary, uninviting and colourless. The dingy library in the London house where we first met Marion was charming in comparison, for it, though dull and gloomy, always looked warm and comfortable, which was far from being the case with Miss Tremlett’s drawing-room. In the literal sense it was not cold, for winter and summer, spring and autumn, it was kept at an equal temperature by all means of tiresome inventions—patents most of them—self-adjusting ventilators and equalising stoves, pipes with hot air and pipes with cold, on which the credulous lady spent a small fortune in the course of each year. Still it always looked cold. It was so oppressively grey—drab rather. So obtrusively neutral, if such an expression be permissible; that one almost felt as if the most glaring mixture of colours would be preferable! I wonder, by the way, whence has arisen the notion so common to people of very small taste or no taste at all, that so long as they stick to greys and drabs and slate colour, they are perfectly unimpregnable, however terribly they may mingle the shades, or, which is almost as bad, distress more sensitive organizations by unbroken monotony of dingy gloom.
“I must say I like quiet colours,” you will hear said with a self-satisfied smile by the most hopelessly commonplace and least educated of your acquaintance.
“Quiet colours!” Just as well, my dear Madam, might you be proud of being stone deaf or lame of one leg, as of your incapability of admiring one of the most exquisite of our material gifts, that of colour. A pity truly that you and others of your refined tastes had not a hand in the arrangement of things in general; this world for instance, how very much more tasteful and less “vulgar” it would have been, had it been left to your unexceptionable greys and drabs! Not that greys and drabs are not good in their place, beautiful even, as a background to more vivid hues, a repose to the eye after the luxury of greens and blues and scarlets, which nature has the bad taste to love and cherish so fondly. But only fancy a whole world of greys and drabs! Oh, intensity of blue sky; oh, fields of emerald green; flowers of every conceivable perfection of colour; from deepest, richest, crimson, through golden gleams, to faintest blush of rose; oh, beautiful bright radiant things, what a dreary, ugly world this would be without you! But we, being more refined, in our tastes, some of us, prefer “quiet colours” as we call them. Rather I think, would I endure the agony of Mrs. Butcher’s Sunday bonnet before me in church, a perfect mass of utterly unassorted reds and greens and yellows, but in its way an innocent, “vulgar” barbaric expression of delight, untutored and, spontaneous, in the colour-beauty so profusely bestowed; rather I think this, than the other extreme, of cold, presumptuous scorn of this great gift, which results—In what? In a dungeon of a drawing-room like that of the unlovable Miss Tremlett at Mallingford! From which by-the-by we have wandered an inexcusably long way.
“Here there was but sorry going, for the way was very wearisome.”
PILGRIMSPROGRESS.
THEautumn days were already beginning to draw in, and it was growing late in the afternoon when Marion and her guardian entered Miss Tremlett’s presence; so the light was dim; and at first it was difficult to distinguish the owner of the sharp, somewhat querulous voice which greeted them from the opposite corner or the room.
“So you have got here at last, Miss Vere, Marion, I suppose I may still say? Excuse my rising. At this hour I always am obliged to rest the sofa till tea time. How did you get here? Oh,” as she for the first time perceived her niece’s companion. “Soyou’rethere, Geoffrey Baldwin! Quite unnecessary. My niece could perfectly have walked up from the station alone.” And with the last few words the voice increased in acrimony.
Instinctively Marion crept a little closer to the tall form beside her. He felt her shiver slightly and—instinctively too—groped with his great strong hand for the little cold one hidden under her cloak, and gave it a reassuring pressure. She took it quite naturally, and for a moment or so allowed her hand to remain in his grasp. But she could not brace herself up to reply to her aunt’s greeting. Geoffrey did so for her, ignoring altogether the latter part of the speech.
“Yes,” he replied cheerfully, “here we are, Miss Tremlett, Miss Vere, I am sure is glad to be at her journey’s end. But it is so dark, I can hardly see. Take care, Miss Vere,” as Marion made a movement in the direction of the sofa, “there’s a footstool in the way. Perhaps Miss Tremlett will allow me to lights?”
“I never have lights between my afternoon luncheon and tea time, Geoffrey Baldwin. I am sure you might know that by now,” replied the old lady snappishly. “My head would never stand it However for once in a way—Oh, Martha is that you? You certainly need not have brought the lamp till I did ring.”
But Martha deposited the lamp and quietly retired. Now, Marion could see her aunt plainly. There was not very much to see. A withered face with some remains of former good looks, but none of the more lasting loveliness of sweet expression; or the rare but unsurpassed beauty of a tender, loving old age. A graceful figure had in her young days been one of Miss Tremlett’s attractions, and this she still imagined that she possessed. In consequence of which somewhat mistaken notion, for the former sylph-like slightness was now rather to be described as scragginess and angularity, she was fussy to a degree about the make and fit of her dresses. A wrinkle drove her frantic, and though her days were principally spent on the sofa, the slightest crease or rumple in her attire altogether upset her never-very-firmly-established equanimity. She wore a light brown “front” surmounted by a cap of marvellous construction, so precise and stiff in its appearance that till you touched it you could hardly believe it to consist of anything so soft and ethereal as lace. Miss Tremlett had one art in perfection altogether peculiar to herself that of lying on a sofa without the slightest appearance of ease or repose: she made you feel somehow as if, all the time instead of reclining on a couch, she was sitting bolt upright on the stiffest of high backed chairs.
As Marion drew near her, she held out her hand, and permitted, rather than invited, her to kiss her cheek. Geoffrey wished he could have bitten her, instead.
“Your cloak is not damp, I hope?” she exclaimed; and as Marion was about to express her thanks for the unexpected anxiety on her behalf, she went on, “if it is the least damp, you had better not stand so near me, I am so sensitive to the slightest damp or cold.” On which Marion timidly suggested that perhaps she had better change it at once, if Miss Tremlett would be so good as tell her which was to be her room.
“Evans, our housekeeper, is with me,” she added, more and more timidly, as she observed the expression of her aunt’s face, “but only for one night. She is going on tomorrow to visit her mother before her marriage.”
“You don’t mean to say that old woman is going to be married!” exclaimed Miss Tremlett, in a less unpleasant tone than Marion had yet heard.
“Evansis, not her mother,” replied the girl.
“Of course I never supposed you meant the mother,” said she elder lady snappishly. “The mother is eighty, and paralysed. I call Evans herself an old woman, and a very silly old woman too, by what you tell me. I really don’t know where she can sleep. I had no idea of you bringing any one with you. You must speak to Martha; she will show you your own room. It will be tea time in an hour, till then I must rest. Good evening. Mr. Baldwin,” as Geoffrey showed symptoms of retiring, “I should besomuch obliged to you if you would remember to shut the door.”
“Hateful old woman!” thought Geoffrey, as he obeyed, resisting the boyish inclination to slam it loudly, by way of soothing Miss Tremlett’s nerves. He had time for a word to Marion, whom he found outside on the landing, disconsolately eyeing the staircase, and apparently at a loss as to her next proceedings. He began to speak to her jestingly,—something he said in ridicule of her aunt’s fears,—but he stopped suddenly when she turned towards him, and he saw that her eyes were full of tears.
“Oh, Mr. Baldwin,” she exclaimed passionately, don’t leave here. I had no idea my aunt was so utterly selfish and heartless. Not a word about poor Papa, whom she professed to care for! Oh, Ican’tstay in this dreadful house.”
And in her distress she caught hold of his arm with both her hands. It was rare that Marion so lost her self-control, and therefore the more impressive. Geoffrey was terribly grieved.
“I am so sorry, so very sorry,” he said, “that you feel it so painfully. I would give all I have in the world to spare you an hour in this place, but truly my—truly, Miss Vere, there is at present no help for it. Anything I can do in the way of cheering your stay here, softening its disagreeables, you have only to ask me, and I shall be so pleased, so delighted, to do it.” And half timidly he laid his hand on those still grasping his arm. His touch seemed to recall her to herself. She drew her hands away gently, and said penitently:
“You are too good to me, Mr. Baldwin, and I am very self and ungrateful. I will try to be sensible and make the best of things so long as I stay here.”
“Which shall not be an hour longer thanIcan prevent, you may be very sure,” said Geoffrey fervently.
“Thank you,” she replied sadly, “but I am afraid there is not much in your power, dear Mr. Baldwin; you could not help me in the—the only way,”—and then she stopped suddenly. Geoffrey had not caught her last words clearly. Had he done so, ten to one, she might have been led on to say more, and to yield to the impulse which came over her to take her young guardian into her confidence, to trust him, at this time almost her only friend, with the sad little story of her life. A good impulse it was, a good and wise one. Ah, Marion, why did you not yield to it? Why, m y heart’s darling, if not for your own, then for the sake of honest, chivalrous Geoffrey? What might it not have saved him—him and you, and yet another! If only the child had been a little more conceited, a trifle more like other women, she would have seen the dangers before her, the sharpness of the tools with which, in all innocence, she was playing. What a strange thing it is that of the many times in their lives in which conscientious people refrain from yielding to an impulse, so large a proportion would, viewed in the light of after events, have been wise and expedient! Whereas, if ever such personsdoact upon the moment’s inclination, they are almost sure hereafter to repent it! It is everywhere the same—in trifles as in important matters, nothing but the old rule of contrary; which rule, nevertheless, may some day be seen to contain more things, by a great many, than are at present dreamt of in our philosophy.
So unfortunately it came to pass that Geoffrey did not hear Marion’s half-whispered words.
Satisfied, so far, with seeing her calm and gentle as usual, he bade her good night and left her, promising to look in in the course of a day or two, to see how she got on with “the old cat,” as he mentally apostrophised her.
Marion succeeded in finding Martha, whom she was glad to discover much more hospitably inclined than her mistress. So Evans was comfortably entertained for the one night she spent at the Cross House, and I doubt not spent a much more agreeable evening below stairs, than did Marion in the drab drawing-room with her aunt. It really was terribly hard work. Miss Tremlett evidently expected to be entertained, a state of mind always liable to exert a peculiarly depressing influence on the second member of a tête-à-tête, even when there are no saddening or dulling thoughts and anxieties already at work on heart and brain. For the life of her, Marion could not rouse herself to make small talk for the tiresome old lady; nor could she bring herself to express the profound interest evidently expected of her, in the painfully minute account of all her aunt’s maladies, with which in the course of the evening she was favoured. At last Miss Tremlett lost patience, and waxed very cross indeed.
“Are you always so stupid and sulky, Marion?” she inquired. “If so, the sooner you make some other arrangement for yourself, the better. I am not strong enough to support the depressing effect of a companion in low spirits. Nor can I understand why you should look so gloomy. It is not as if your poor father had been so much attached to you, or you to him, when he was alive. In that case it would be very different indeed. But all the world knows he cared very little for his children, though, all things considered, I don’t blame him.”
“What do you mean, Aunt Tremlett?” said Marion, fiercely almost, for she felt roused to sudden passion. “What do you mean by speaking so of my dear father? Hedidlove us, more than anybody knows, and no one has any right to say he did not.”
“A pity he did not leave you some more substantial proof of his affection,” said Miss Tremlett, sneeringly. “I am not blaming him, however. Considering all, as I said, it is no wonder he took but little interest in you.”
“What do you mean by that?” repeated Marion, in the same fierce tone. (Miss Tremlett rather enjoyed her excitement. She had roused her at last.) “Considering all what? I am not a child now, Aunt Tremlett, and I will allow no one, not even you, to say, or infer, anything disrespectful to the memory of either of my parents.”
“ ‘Will not allow.’ Indeed! Very pretty language for a young lady. Upon my word I little knew what I was about when I invited you to my house, Marion Vere. Though for all your grand heroics, I see you have some notion of what I refer to. ‘Either’ of your parents, you said. So, then, you do allow it is possible there might be something to be said against one of them after all! On the whole, I think, with your permission or course, Miss Vere, after what I have seen of your very amiable tempo, it will be as well to drop the subject. In plain words, I will not tell you what I mean; and you will I oblige me by leaving me for the night and retiring to your own room. You have upset me quite enough for one evening. It will be days before I recover from the nervous prostration always brought on by excitement. Go; and if you wish to remain my guest, learn to behave like a reasonable being instead of making such an exhibition of temper without any provocation whatever.”
Miss Tremlett always took the injured innocent tone when she had succeeded in goading any one else to fury.
Without a word Marion left the room. Her self-control only lasted till she was safely ensconced in her own little bedroom, and then, poor child, after her usual fashion when in sore distress, she threw herself on the bed and hid her face on the pillows, sobbing with excitement and weeping the hot, quick rushing tears that came more from anger than grief.
She felt very much ashamed of herself. This was, indeed, a sad beginning of her Mallingford experiences. How foolish she had been to take fire at the old lady’s sneers! She knew of old that there had been bitter feud between her silly, pretty young mother and her father’s family, and it was worse than foolish to rake up these old sores. Now, when the two principals in the melancholy story of mistake and disappointment were laid to rest, passed away into the silent land where to us, at least, it is not given to judge them, how much better to let the whole fade gently out of mind! Her aunt was old, and old age should be sacred.Shehad no right to resent her crabbedness of temper, her self-absorption, her ungenial asperity, and small snappishness.
A loveless life, with few exceptions, had been Miss Tremlett’s. “Heaven only knows,” thought poor Marion, “if in similar circumstances my nature would prove any more amiable! Certainly, I am not at present going the way to make it so.”
And with a sore heart, sore, but gentle and humble, the orphan fell asleep, in the strange, unloving home, which was the only shelter at present open to her.
Morning, somehow, made things look brighter. For one thing, there was the tantalising post-hour to watch for; Marion not having yet given up hopes of “some day” bringing the long-looked-for explanation of Ralph’s mysterious silence. The whole affair changed its aspect to her constantly, according to the mood she was in. She had taken good care that there should be no miscarriage of letters owing to her change of residence, and so here at Mallingford, as in London, the arrival of the letters became the great interest of her day. Truly, there was little else to distract or occupy her! She determined, however, from this first morning to profit by her disagreeable experience of the preceding evening, and, at all costs, avoid any sort of word-warfare with her aunt. Miss Tremlett, at the bottom of her heart, was not a little disappointed when, on her making her appearance for the day, in the drawing-room about noon, her niece, instead of receiving her with sulky silence or indignant remonstrance, greeted her with a few gentle words of apology for her want of self-control the previous night, and offers of her ready services in any way the old lady might wish to make her useful.
“Would you like me to read aloud sometimes, Aunt?” said she. “I think I can do so pleasantly. Or is there any work I can do for you?”
“I am glad, Marion, to see that you have come back to your senses this morning,” was all the thanks she got. But she did not care. All she asked was peace and quiet; in which to muse over her own secret hopes and fears, to perplex herself endlessly with vain guesses to what was beyond her power to fathom. And for some little time she felt almost contented. The perfect monotony of her life did not pall upon her just at first. It seemed rather a sort of rest to her after the violent excitement through which she had lately passed. But it was not a healthy state of things.
Her days were very like each other. The morning hours were the pleasantest, for Miss Tremlett always breakfasted in her bedroom, and till noon Marion was her own mistress. After that her aunt expected her to be in attendance upon her till the hour of her after noon siesta, which came to be the girl’s favourite time for a stroll. Even in the dull autumn days she felt it a relief to get out into the open air by herself and ramble along the country roads leading out of Mallingford—thinking of what? Of “this time last year.” How much is told by those few commonplace words!
Now and then her aunt had visitors. Very uninteresting people they seemed to Marion. Mostly elderly, still, and formal, of her aunt’s own standing. Not many of the younger denizens of the little town found their way to the Cross House. Had they done so, I question if they would have been much to my heroine’s taste! Her deep mourning, of course, put her partaking in any Mallingford festivities quite out of the question at present. They were not of an attractive kind, and even had she been in perfect health and spirits she would have cared little about them.
Still, after a time, there came a sort of reaction. A protest of youth against the unnatural torpidity of her present life. Her only friend, Geoffrey Baldwin, she saw but once during the first two months of her Mallingford life, for, much to his regret, within a week of Miss Vere’s arrival in the neighbourhood, he was called away on business connected with his own affairs—the disposal of a small property of his father’s in a distant county—and it was late in November before he found himself free to return home.
It was very provoking! Just when he had hoped to be of some use to her, to cheer her a little in her present gloomy life. Geoffrey had never before in his life thought so much, or so continuously, on any subject, as during the dull autumn weeks he thought of his poor little ward at the Cross House. He wrote to her once or twice, though he was by no means a great hand at letter writing; and was immensely delighted with the answers he duly received. At last, by the beginning of December, he found himself on his way home; much to his satisfaction, for not only was he anxious to see Marion again, but was also in a great state of fidget about his hunters. The season had opened most favourably, no signs of frost to speak of, and already he had missed some capital days. It was really too provoking, thought Geoffrey to himself, as comfortably ensconced in the railway carriage, he lit his last pipe before entering Mallingford station.
The next day he rode over to see Marion. Being well acquainted with the Cross House hours, he took care to be there early, and the great clock in the Market Place was only just striking eleven as he stood on the door steps. Miss Tremlett was not yet visible, he was informed by the sour-faced Martha (who, however, as we have seen, was more amiable than she looked), Miss Vere was up-stairs, but if Mr. Baldwin would step into the drawing-room, the young lady should be told he was there.
So into the grim drawing-room Geoffrey stepped. Grimmer than ever it looked at this season; when truly it takes an extra amount of bright colours and cheerful faces inside, to balance the dismalness of all things out-of-doors. And this winter was what they called an open season. Damp and dank and foggy. Above all—for a flat unpicturesque county like Brentshire, whose only beauty consisted in the freshness and luxuriance of its vegetation, this “grim December” was not the time to see it to advantage.
Geoffrey shivered slightly as he entered the uninviting room. From physical causes only; he was not particularly sensitive to more recondite influences. The fire was only just lighted and was smouldering and sputtering with that irritating air of feeling offended at having been lighted at all, peculiar to inartistically built fires on a damp winter’s morning. Mr. Baldwin strolled to the window and stood biting the end of his riding whip, staring out on the ugly, dreary plot of ground misnamed a garden.
“It’s not a pleasant place for her to be in, certainly,” thought he, “My little breakfast-room at the Manor Farm, notwithstanding all the litter of guns and fishing-rods and pipes, is a much more inviting room than this. To my mind at least—I wonder if she would think so!” And then he fell to wondering which of his horses would carry him best to cover on the morrow, considering the direction which was likely to be taken, the nature of the ground &c. “By-the-bye,” he thought suddenly, “I wonder if Miss Vere has ever been at a meet. I’ll ask her. Bessie, I’m certain, would carry a lady, only then who would be with her? If Harry were here it would be all right. There are those Copley girls, they are very good-natured, and might ask her to join them. I’ll see if I can’t manage it.”
But his further reflections were interrupted by the opening of the door, and the entrance of Marion herself. She knew who was there, and her pale face was slightly flushed with pleasure as she came in; but for all that, Geoffrey was not a little startled by her appearance. She looked painfully fragile. The cold weather and her black dress increased the extreme delicacy of her complexion, and the almost attenuated look of her slight, tall figure. Strangely enough, at that moment there thrilled through Geoffrey the same foreboding, the same acute misgiving as had tortured the heart of Ralph Severn that last evening at Altes. And in the present instance it acted to some extent as a revelation. As his gaze rested on Marion, a tremor seized the strong man. Horses, hunting, all he had been thinking of with so much interest but a moment before, faded from his mind, and in perfect silence he touched the hand so cordially extended to him, and mechanically drew nearer the fire a chair on which Marion seated herself. She did not observe his agitation, and began to talk brightly and heartily.
“I am so glad, so very glad, to see you again, Mr. Baldwin,” she said, “I really began to think you were never coming back. And I wanted to tell you that I have, really and truly, been doing my very best to be good and patient—but really, Mr. Baldwin, it is drearily, inexpressibly dull here.”
Geoffrey’s only answer was a glance of sympathy, enough however to encourage her to proceed.
“It did not seem so bad at first,” she went on, “it was more like a rest to me; but now it is getting very bad. There are days on which I can hardly bear the terrible monotony and loneliness. I have not told Harry so for fear of disturbing him; but I have wished very much to see you and tell you, Mr. Baldwin. I really would rather be a servant,” (a governess she was going to have said, but the association was too painful), “or anything in the world than live on here like this always. You are not angry with me for saying this, Mr. Baldwin? I know it seems childish and selfish, but today I was feeling so—I don’t know what to call it—homesick expresses it best; and I thought it would be such a relief to tell you about it; but I hope you are not vexed with me?” she repeated, looking up at his face beseechingly.
“Vexed with you! My dear Miss Vere,” exclaimed Geoffrey. “How can you use such expressions? As if, even if I had a right to be vexed with you, which I have not, anything you could by any possibility say or do, could ever seem to me anything—I am stupid—I can’t make pretty speeches, least of all when I most mean them. Only don’t ever speak as if I could be vexed with you. I am sorry, terribly sorry to see you looking so pale and thin, and to hear how this wretched life is trying you. But what is to be done? There is the difficulty. As I said to you before, I see present no help for it, unless——.” But here he stopped abruptly, his fair face suddenly flushing crimson.
“Unless what Mr. Baldwin,” said Marion innocently. “Don’t be afraid to tell me the alternative, however disagreeable. Is there any fresh trouble about our money matters?”
“Oh dear no,” replied the young man, thankful that he had not, on the impulse of the moment, wrecked all by a premature betrayal of his hardly-as-yet-to-himself-acknowledged hopes, and eager to distract her attention. “Oh dear no, don’t get anything of that sort into your head. It is true I fear some little time must pass before your affairs are thoroughly settled; but by the spring, at latest, I hope we may hit on some better arrangement.”
“By the spring,” repeated Marion, dolefully; “ah, well, it does not much matter. After all, I daresay a good deal of the dullness is in myself. But tell me, Mr. Baldwin, what were you going to say? ‘Unless,’ you began,—unless what?”
“Nothing, Miss Vere—nothing, truly,” replied Geoffrey, rather awkwardly; “it was only an idea that struck me, but at present impossible to carry out. Please don’t speak about it.”
“Very well,” answered Marion, looking rather puzzled; “I won’t ask you about it if you would rather I did not. I am afraid the truth is I am very difficult to please. I fear in my present mood I should not be happy anywhere, except—”
“Except where, Miss Vere?” said Geoffrey, lightly; but Marion looked painfully embarrassed and made no reply. A curious misgiving shot through Mr. Baldwin’s heart; but he did not persist in his inquiry, and turned it off with a jest.
“We have both our secrets, you see,” he said, laughingly; my ‘unless,’ and your ‘except.’ Well, supposing we put both aside for the present, and consider things as they are. Can nothing be done to make your stay here pleasanter, so long as it lasts?”
“Nothing,” said Marion, sadly. “Don’t trouble yourself so much about me, Mr. Baldwin; it is only a fit of low spirits. I shall be better again in a day or two. It is an immense comfort to me to grumble a little. I can’t tell you how much good it does me.”
“But you are not looking well,” he persisted, “and you know it is my duty to look after you. This life is killing you. Have you made no acquaintances here at all, Miss Vere?”
“None whatever. My aunt’s friends are all old, like herself; and somehow I don’t fancy I should get on very well with other girls, Mr. Baldwin. I have grown so dull and stupid; and from what I have seen of the Mallingford girls at church, and some few who call here with their mothers, I am sure they would not take to me, nor I to them. No, just leave me alone. I shall do very well. There is only one thing I wanted to ask you: can you ask leave for me to go to see Miss Veronica Temple? She is the only one of my friends that I remember as a child, still here, and I should so like to see her, particularly as she can’t come to see me. I spoke of it to my aunt one day, but to my surprise she got into such a rage I was glad to change the subject. Why does she dislike Miss Temple so, Mr. Baldwin?”
“Some old quarrel—what, I can’t exactly say—with Mrs. Temple,” replied Geoffrey. “Of late years, you know, Miss Tremlett has taken it into her head to become very Low Church, and she insulted the widow, Mrs. Temple, very much one day, by drawing a comparison between the state of Church matters in her husband’s day, when his daughters played the organ and dressed up the altar—did just as they, chose, in fact, for he was the easiest of good old easy-going parsons—and the present condition of things under that very vigorous and vulgar Irishman, Mr. Magee, who toadies Miss Tremlett tremendously, as you may have seen for yourself.”
“Yes, indeed,” replied Marion; “horrid man he is,Ithink! And I am sure the Temples were the best and most charitable of people. How long has Miss Veronica been crippled, Mr. Baldwin? I remember running up and down that steep stair leading to the organ loft with Harry in her arms when we were quite little children. Such a bright, active creature, I always imagined her. It seems so sad to come back to find her so changed.”
“But bright and active still, though she never leaves her sofa,” said Geoffrey; “she is one of the sweetest women I ever knew. You must certainly go to see her. She will be delighted, I know. I shall call and ask her about it on my way home.”
“Thank you very much,” said Marion, earnestly. “I should like to see her again,” she added softly. And then she sat, leaning her cheek on her hand, gazing silently into the fire.
It was burning more cheerfully by this time, and the flickering light danced fitfully on Marion’s pale face; for it was a very gloomy day outside, and the dingy room was in a sort of twilight. Geoffrey looked at her anxiously. Suddenly he spoke again:
“Do you ride, Miss Vere” he asked.
She started; for her thoughts had been far away, and he had to repeat the words before she caught their sense. When she did so, she answered carelessly:
“A little. That is to say, I have ridden, and I am not nervous. I liked it very much.”
Geoffrey’s face brightened.
“I have a mare that I’m certain would carry you beautifully,” he said, “I’ll have her tried. I was thinking, if you were to make acquaintance with some of the girls about here who ride, you might come to a meet now and then. There are the Copleys of Copley Wood. They’re really not bad girls, and I know they would be delighted to make friends with you.”
But Marion laid her hand on his arm.
“I should like to ride with you Mr. Baldwin, very much, if you will be troubled with me. But I don’t want to make any new acquaintances. I know it seems very fanciful and unreasonable, but I don’t feel as if I had spirits for it. Let me ride alone with you, please.”
“You shall if you like, Miss Vere,” he replied, “but you couldn’t very well come to a meet unless you knew some of the other ladies. It wouldn’t be comfortable for you. I’ll tell you how we’ll do. I’ll have Bessie tried for you, and you shall have a few rides quietly me first, and then, if you like it, I’ll arrange for the Copley girls to ask you to join their party to the next meet at a convenient distance. You won’t object to this? Riding will do you good, I know, and if you ride I shall not be satisfied unless you come to see the meets. What do you say to this?”
“That you are too good to me, Mr. Baldwin, and I should be shamefully ungrateful if I did not do whatever you wish. I shall look out my habit today. I expect it will be much too big for me, I have got so thin,” she said lightly. Geoffrey looked at the hand she had laid in his. It was indeed white and wasted.
“My darling!” he whispered under his breath, so low that she had no suspicion of the inaudible words.
Then he dropped it gently, and looking up, said cheerfully,
“All right then. You may expect to see me some day with Bessie all ready for you. Goodbye, and do try to get some more colour in your cheeks by the next time I see you. Guardians are allowed to make rude remarks, you know,” he added, laughingly; “it’s it all for their wards’ good.”
And with another shake of her hand he left her.
“How very kind he is,” thought Marion. “I wonder—I wonder, if it could possibly do any good for me to tell him all about it. But no,” she decided, on thinking it over. She had done as much as seemed to her right and fitting. More would be undignified and unmaidenly. And then she was so utterly in the dark. What might not have occurred since she left Altes? Ralph could not bedead; of that she was certain. Hecouldnot have died without her knowing it. But a worse thing might have come to pass. At this very moment, for all she knew to the contrary, he might be already the husband of another woman.
“Though not in heart,” she said to herself. “He was not the man to love twice. Not at least so quickly. And never while he lives will he love another as he loved me. In this at least he is mine.”
Thus she felt in certain moods. There were others, however, in which her faith was less undoubting, in which she almost questioned if she had not exaggerated what he had said; whether after all it had not been with Ralph a much less serious affair than, to her cost, it had been with her? Then again she seemed drawn the other way. His was no slight or shallow nature. Were his depth and earnestness to be doubted, in what could she ever allow herself to believe? And so the poor child was tossed and torn. Still, it came to pass, thanks to Geoffrey Baldwin, that a little more brightness and enjoyment were at this time infused into her daily life. The riding proved a success, and, as her young guardian observed with self-congratulation, “really did bring some colour to her cheeks.”
The Copley girls came up to Mr. Baldwin’s favourable account of them, and did their best in the way of showing kindness to “that pretty, pale Miss Vere, that Geoffrey Baldwin is so taken up about.” They were hearty, healthy girls, and both engaged to be married to the most satisfactorypartis. Possibly this last had something to say to their cordial reception of their old friend’s interesting ward.
The renewal of her acquaintance with the invalid Miss Temple, was also in a different way a source of great pleasure to Marion. Trifling incidents both—her introduction to the Copley girls, and her meeting again with the kind Veronica—but they both influenced her indirectly in the great decision of her life, towards which, though she knew it not, the tide of affairs was rapidly drawing her.
“Learn by a mortal yearning to ascendSeeking a higher object.”—LAODAMIA.
“For love and beauty and delightThere is no death nor change; their mightExceeds our organs, which endureNo light, being themselves obscure.”
THESENSITIVEPLANT.