TO-MORROWthen, I suppose, will see us at the Manor Farm,” said Geoffrey the last evening of their travels.
Marion noticed he did not speak of his dwelling as “home,” and she looked up quickly, for she fancied there was a slight, a very slight quiver in his voice. But no, it must have been only fancy. He sat at the table arranging his fishing book, apparently engrossed in its contents.
“I suppose so,” she replied indifferently.
“I wanted to tell you,” he said, “that you will not find the house in particularly good order. That is to say it has not been ‘done up’ for ages. I meant to have had some of the rooms refurnished, but there was so little time before,” here he dropped a fly, and had to stoop down to look for it on the carpet, “before we were married,” he went on with a change in his voice, “that I deferred doing so, thinking you might like to choose the furniture yourself. So as soon as we are settled I hope you will order whatever you like for the rooms in which you will take an interest. The drawing-room and dining-room. There is a nice little room up stairs too which I think you might like as a sort of boudoir, or whatever it is called. It opens out of the pleasantest of the bedrooms, the one which I think you will probably choose for your own. I am very anxious that you should arrange all just as you wish, and of course I shall not in the least interfere with any of your plans. I shall keep my own old rooms just as they were; they will do very well without doing up. Indeed my old den would never be comfortable again if it were meddled with.”
This was a long speech for the present Geoffrey to make, for he had grown very silent of late. When alone with his wife, that is to say: outsiders would probably have perceived no change in him.
“Thank you,” said Marion in a tone that was meant to be cordial. “I am sure it will all be very nice. The house is very old, is it not?” she went on, wishing to show some interest in the subject.
“Yes,” he replied, “very old, some parts of it in particular. I wish it were my own—at least,” he went on, “I used to wish it. Now I don’t know that I care much to own it.”
“I always thought it was your own,” said Marion with some surprise. “I thought your father bought it long ago.”
“No,” answered Geoffrey, “he only got it on a long lease. It will be out in a few years now. I got a hint once that Lord Brackley would not object to selling it when the lease is out, but I don’t know that I should care to buy it. As likely as not I shall leave no—,” but the rest of his words were too low for Marion to catch.
“Then you have no land in Brentshire?” she enquired.
“Not a rood,” he replied, “nor anywhere else. The old place that belonged to my grandfather, for Ihada grandfather, though Miss Tremlett would probably tell you I hadn’t, was over at the other side of the country but neither my father nor I cared about it—it was ugly and unproductive—and before he died my father advised me to accept the first good offer I got for it. So I sold it last year very advantageously indeed. The purchase money is still in the old bank. I should invest it somehow I suppose, for it’s too large a sum to leave in a country bank. But all I have is there, and I really don’t know what else to do with it. I have always had a sort of idea I should buy another place. The bank is as safe as can be of course—I am actually a sleeping partner in it still. But I believe they don’t want to keep me. That new man they took in lately has such heaps of money, they say, and he’s making all sorts of changes.”
“Your father would not have liked that,” said Marion.
“No indeed,” replied Geoffrey. “Any sort of change, he always thought,mustbe for the worse.” He was talking more naturally and heartily than had been the case for some time, in the interest of the conversation, appearing temporarily to forget the sad change that had come over their relations. But suddenly he recollected himself. With an entire alteration of manner he went on. “I am forgetting that these personal matters can have no interest for you. I beg your pardon for troubling you with them. Still perhaps,” he added thoughtfully, “it is as well for you to understand these things, however uninteresting, they may be.”
Marion looked and felt hurt.
“Geoffrey,” she said reproachfully, “you go too far.”
He turned sharply and looked at her. But her face was bent over her book, and she did not see the wistful entreaty in his gaze. He said nothing aloud: but to himself he murmured. “Too far Ah, no! No more half gifts for me, which in the end are worse than none. But she did not mean it, poor child! Even now she understands me less than ever. As if her kindness, her pity, were not far harder to bear than her scorn.”
The next day they returned Brentshire.
Geoffrey as thankful when it was over; and they had settled down into a sort of commonplace routine, and to a great extent independence of each other in their daily lives. It was grievously hard upon him—this broken-spirited, heartless “coming home.” Harder to bear, I think, than if his joyous anticipations had been cut short by death itself. For had it been a dead bride he was thus bringing home, he would not have felt so far, so utterly separated from her, in all that constitutes the real bitterness of disunion, as he felt himself now from his living, unloving wife—the pale, cold Marion, whose terrible words still rang in his ears. “I did love him even then with all the love of my nature, and, oh, Geoffrey, I love him now.”
They both, though they did not allude to it, dreaded intensely the first visit to Miss Veronica. By tacit agreement they did not pay it together, by tacit agreement too, they decided that the secret of their fatal “mistake,” should, if possible, be concealed from the affectionate and unselfish friend, who, to some extent, was responsible for their having committed it. But they reckoned without their host! Veronica’s perceptions, naturally acute, and rendered still more so by her reflective life and in her present case by her loving anxiety, were not so easily to be deceived. Though no word of misgiving escaped her, she yet saw too clearly that Geoffrey’s gaiety was forced—that Marion’s expressions of content and satisfaction wore not genuine—that neither of the two confided in her as of old. She was the last person in the world to take offence or be hurt by their silence. That its motive was to spare her pain she divined by instinct. Still on the whole, I think it was a mistake. Poor Veronica suffered, I believe, more acutely from the mystery surrounding her friends’ evident alienation from each other, than would have been the case had they taken her into their confidence and related to her the whole of the strange and exceptional history. On their side both Geoffrey and Marion paid no light price for the reserve they thought it their duty to maintain. For the first time since childhood Geoffrey felt himself forced to shun the society of the friend to whom he had carried every grief and perplexity, every interest, every joy of his life. And to Marion likewise, it was no small trial to be deprived at this critical time, of the wisest woman friend she had ever known; of the gentle sympathy which during the many dreary months of her Mallingford life, had never failed her.
The Manor Farm was one of those rather anomalous habitations, half farm, half gentleman’s house, of which in some of the agricultural counties one sees so many. With no special characteristics of its own, save perhaps that it was somewhat quaint, and decidedly old fashioned: hardly picturesque and not exactly ugly; it was the sort or house that takes its colouring mainly from the lives of its inhabitants. All dwellings are not of this description: there are venerable walls which we cannot but associate with gloom and solemnity, however merry may have been the voices, however ringing the laughter which there we may have heard resound; there are “rose-clad” cottages, which our memory refuses to depict save as smiling in the sunshine, though our sojourn therein may have been of the most sorrowful, and the brightness without seemed but to mock the aching hearts and tear-laden eyes within. But the Manor Farm was by no means an impressive abode. It was comfortable already, and with a little trouble might have been made pretty: but alas, at this time there was no grace or sweetness in the heart of the young girl who came with reluctant steps to be its mistress, whose youth and brightness had been swamped in the deep waters through which she had passed.
Unconsciously she was entering on a new phase in her experience. The first effect of her again meeting with Ralph had been to revive in her the consciousness of his irresistibly strong personal influence. For a time she felt very near to him; as if indeed she only lived in the immaterial union with him which she had before imagined was at an end. This did not surprise her. It seemed to her that the bar on her side of a loveless marriage was in point of fact no bar at all: whereas so long as she had believed in his union to another, she had felt herself more utterly divided from him than by death itself. Woman’s indefensible logic, no doubt, but so she felt, and so she expressed it to herself. She was wrong—mistaken to a great extent—shehadbeen drifting away from Ralph. Only his actual presence, his personal influence had recalled her: of which he himself was conscious when he deliberately resolved utterly to sever himself from her life; by no species of intercourse or communication, however apparently innocent or irreproachable, to keep alive in her the consciousness of an influence so fatal to her prospects of peace as the wife of another man.
I hardly think thisfirstphase of her suffering, though acute almost to agony, was after all the worst. There is a great compensatory power in strong excitement—the after days of grey depression are to my thinking the most to be dreaded. On these she was now entering; for though she knew it not, the full strength of his immediate influence was already beginning to fade. The entering on a new life, the return to scenes with which he was in no wise associated, had much to do with this. Still, at times the first sharp agony returned to her; but generally when roused by some external agency. The sight of any silly trifling thing associated with him—a book out of which he had read to her, hand-writing resembling his, even little details of dress recalling him—all had power to stab her. Ah, yes! Even to the day of her death she felt that the scent of honeysuckle would be to her unendurable, for that fatal day in his excitement Ralph had plucked a spray off the luxuriant branches overhanging the old arbour, and ruthlessly crushing it in his hands, the strong, almost too sweet perfume had reached her as she sat before him.
But these acute sensations gradually grew to be of rarer occurrence; very possibly, had her new life at the Manor Farm been fuller and more congenial, had Geoffrey been more experienced, less humble, and perhaps less unselfish, at this crisis things might have mend. By allowing her to see that, notwithstanding all that had passed he yet loved her as fervently as before, that yet she was to him a very necessity of his being; the husband might gradually have drawn her out of herself and eventually led her at once to cling to and support, the man who truly, as he had once said, found “life without her” a very mockery of the word.
But Geoffrey could not do this. He pitied her too much; he hated himself for what he had brought upon her. He went to the extreme of fancying himself actually repulsive to her. He guarded himself from the slightest word or sign of familiarity or affection, imagining that the revulsion these would engender would drive them yet further and more hopelessly apart.
“At least,” he thought, “she shall live in peace. All I can now do to please her is to keep out of her way and not disgust her by constantly reminding her of her bondage.” So, though his whole existence was full of her, though her slightest wish was immediately, though unobtrusively, attended to, he yet left her to herself, maintaining an appearance of such indifference to her and adsorption in his independent pursuits, that the girl was almost to be excused for imagining that Geoffrey was “more of a farmer than a man,” incapable of very refined or long-lived affection, and that, after all, so far as he was concerned, what had happened did not so much matter. “He would have been pretty sure to get tired of me before long in any case,” was the reflection with which she threw off all sense of responsibility with respect to him, and stifled for the time the pangs of reproach for the blight which through her had fallen on his sunny life.
There was little society of any desirable kind in the neighbourhood of the Manor Farm. The other side of the county was much more sociable, but about Brackley there were few resident county families—the great man of the place a permanent absentee. Besides which the Baldwins’ position had been a somewhat anomalous one, lying rather on the border lands, for the father’s status as banker in Mallingford naturally connected him with the little town, while at the same time it induced a species of acquaintance with the out-lying districts. Geoffrey’s rooted aversion from earliest childhood to anything in the shape of office or desk, or indeed to indoor occupation of any kind, had led to the removal to the Manor Farm some time before the old man’s death. Hunting, shooting, and so on, with the sons of the few squires in the neighbourhood, had brought about the sort of bachelor friendliness between him and these families which was pleasant enough so far as it went, but committed the other side to nothing in respect of the future Mrs. Baldwin. Had he married quite in his own sphere, or slightly beneath him, he would have sunk, as a Benedick, into peaceful obscurity. But when it was known that his bride, though poor, was a daughter of the well-known Hartford Vere, himself a cadet of one of the “best” Brentshire families, mammas began to think they must really call at the Farm, and “show a little attention to her, poor young thing!” To which disinterested amiability on the part of their spouses, papas, being in general more liberal-minded in such matters, made, of course, no objection.
So Marion received some visitors, of whom the Copleys of the Wood were the only ones in whom she felt the slightest interest. A moderate amount of invitations to dreary dinner-parties, or still more trying “candle visits,” followed. Geoffrey thought it right to accept them, so, feeling that to her, change of scene was but the replacing of one kind of dulness by another, Marion agreed to his decision, and they went.
It was really not lively work, but the dreariness no doubt lay chiefly in herself. For after all there were sensible, kindly people among their entertainers, and though the world “is not all champagne, table-beer is not to be despised.” Not certainly when we are young and fresh, and vigorous; inclined, as youthshouldbe, to the use of rose-coloured spectacles, and to mistaking electro-plate for the genuine article. But young Mrs. Baldwin was censorious because unhappy, difficult to please because dissatisfied with herself. People were kindly inclined to her. They knew she had long been motherless, and of late fatherless as well, her only brother separated from her by half the world, her present position, though the wife of “as fine a fellow as ever breathed,” far lower, socially speaking, than originally she might have aspired to. Altogether a good deal of kindness, really genuine so far as it went, might have been received by her, had she encouraged it. But she did not, “could not,” she told herself. So her new acquaintances felt repelled, naturally enough, and she, sensitive to a fault, felt she was not liked, and drew back still further into her shell of cold reserve. “Pride,” of course, it was called. And “what has she to be proud of?” next came to be asked, when the poor girl’s name was brought on thetapis.
After one of these visits she was invariably more depressed than before. She was not hardened to feeling herself disliked, nor callous to the womanly mortification of knowing she had not been seen to advantage. She fancied she was growing ugly; she knew she had grown unamiable, and she was angry with herself, while yet she was bitter at others. Geoffrey above all. When in company, he looked so well and in such good spirits, that at times Marion thought she almost hated him. Truly she was hard to please! Had he allowed himself to appear depressed, or in any way different from his former well-known joyous self, she would in her heart have accused him of indelicacy, of obtruding upon her regardless of her feelings, the pain she had brought upon him, the wreck she had made of his life.
And the season too was against her. Autumn again, nature’s dying hour, when all around was but too much in harmony with her desolate life, but too apt to foster the morbid unhealthiness which was fast enveloping her whole existence.
The jog-trot dullness of her daily life came to have a strange fascination for her. Its regularity seemed to be beating time to some approaching change, some crisis in her fate. For that some such was at hand, she felt convinced. The present wastoounendurable, too essentially unnatural to be long, continuance.
So, in the intervals of her irritation at her husband, she lived, to all appearance, contentedly enough, in the death-in-life monotony so fatal to all growth and healthy development. Geoffrey had no ideahowbad things were with her. He thought he was giving her all she would accept, undisturbed peace and perfect independence. Yet his very heart bled for her, often, very often when she little suspected it. He made one grand mistake; he gave her no responsibilities, no necessary duties. Her time was her own; the housekeeping was all attended to by a confidential and efficient servant, whose accounts even were overlooked by the master instead of by the mistress of the establishment.
Money Marion had in plenty, more than she knew what to do with; for she had never been “fanatica” on the subject of dress, and even her old love of books and music seemed to be deserting her. She would not ride. The horse destined for her use stood idle in the stable; and more than once Geoffrey so nearly lost heart that he was on the point of selling it. He had one great advantage over Marion. He was the possessor of that mysterious, and to mere spectators, somewhat irritating gift, known as “animal spirits.” There were times when, in spite of all, his unspeakable disappointment, his bitter self-reproach, the young man could not help feeling happy. An exciting run, a bracing frosty morning in his fields, filled him for the time with his old joyousness, the exhilaration of life in itself, apart from all modifying circumstances. Poor fellow! She need not have grudged him, what afterwards on looking back through a clearer atmosphere, she believed to have been the only compensatory influence in the lonely, unsympathised-with existence, to one so frank and affectionate, more trying even than she, with her greater powers of reserve and self-reliance, could altogether realize.
Now and then, though rarely, the cloudy gloom of mutual reserve and apparent indifference, into which day by day they were drifting further, was broken, painfully enough, by stormy flashes of outspoken recrimination and wounding reproach. Naturally, they were both sweet-tempered, but this wretched state of things was fast souring them. Scenes miserable to witness, had any friend been by, lowering in the extreme to reflect upon in calmer moments, from time to time occurred. In these it is but justice to Geoffrey to say that he was rarely, if ever, the aggressor.
One dull, foggy morning, a “by-day,” unfortunately, for Marion, yielding to atmospheric influences, was in a mood at once captious and gloomy, little disposed to take interest in anything—least of all in her husband’s stable—on this uninviting morning, she was sitting, discontented and unoccupied, in the little boudoir she had not yet found heart to re-furnish, when the door opened suddenly and Geoffrey appeared. He burst in, looking eager and happy. Like his old self, for the time at least.
“Oh, Marion,” he exclaimed, “do put on your hat and come round with me for a moment to the stables. That new mare I bought last week has just come. She is such a perfect beauty. Do come.”
But Marion did not move, but sat there, her face turned from him, affecting to warm her hands at the fire. Then she glanced at the door which Geoffrey had left open, and said peevishly:
“I wish you would remember that other people feel the cold if you don’t. The draught along the passage makes this room almost uninhabitable.
Geoffrey closed the door gently, with a ready apology for his carelessness. Then he returned to the charge.
“You will come out though, won’t you? I am really so anxious to show you my new purchase. She is rather young to do much work this year, but by another, she will be all I could wish. I really never saw a more beautiful creature.”
“I am glad you are pleased,” said Marion, coldly, “but you must excuse my joining in the chorus of admiration which I have no doubt is going on in the stable-yard. I should I only disappoint you, for I really could not get up the proper amount of ecstasy.”
Geoffrey’s face fell.
“You used to take some interest in my horses, Marion,” he said, deprecatingly.
“Very possibly,” she replied, in a somewhat sneering tone. “Barley-sugar isn’t a bad thing in its place. But as for living on it altogether, that’s a different matter. Long ago I could afford to be amused by your stable ‘fureur,’ now and then. But it never seem to occur to you that it’s possible to have too much even of the charms of bay mares and such-like! You must excuse my bad taste.”
“I don’t understand you,” replied Geoffrey. “I cannot feel that I deserve to be taunted with having bored you with anything that interested me.”
“I don’t suppose you do understand me,” she answered, in the same contemptuous manner. “You made one grand mistake, for which we are both suffering—that of imagining you evercoulddo so. Go back to your hones, with whom, I can assure you, you have more in common than you could ever have with me. Only do not, I beg of you, delude yourself with the idea that a being who has the misfortune to possess something in the way of mind and soul, is the right person to apply to for sympathy in the only interestsyouseem capable of.”
The extreme contempt, the insulting scorn of her words and manner stung him to the quick. With a muttered expression of some kind, of which she could not catch the words, he turned from her sharply, and for once in his life slammed the door behind him violently, as, half mad with misery, he rushed away from the sound of her cold, mocking words.
When he had gone, Marion rose from her seat and sauntered to the window. She stood there gazing out at the dreary garden, desolate and bare, save for the leaves thickly strewing the paths and beds. Already her heart was reproaching her for her cruelty; already her conscience was bitterly accusing her. She had done very wrong; she knew, she owned it to herself. But she could not feel responsible, even for her own misdeeds.
“They are all a part of the whole,” she cried, “all a part of the wretched, miserable whole.”
She “could not help it!” “It was not in her nature to be good when she was miserable.” “And I am no more to blame,” she thought, defiantly, “for being wicked than a flower for not blooming without sunshine.”
But does the poor flower resolutely turn from the light? Does it not rather welcome eagerly each narrow ray that penetrates to its dark dwelling, and with humble gratitude make the most of the sunshine vouchsafed to it?
Half-an-hour later Marion heard a clatter in the direction of the stables, voices eager and excited—more clatter, the dogs barking. Then the sound of a horse’s feet gradually sobering down into a steady pace, as they were lost in the distance. Geoffrey had gone out riding. And on the new mare, the footman told her, when she rang for coals, and made some indirect enquiry.
“Very handsome she is, ma’am,” added he, “but very awkward at starting. My master had some trouble to get her out of the yard. She took fright at a heap of bricks lying there for repairs. Perhaps you heard the noise, ma’am?”
“Yes,” said Marion, indifferently, “I thought I heard the dogs barking.”
In her heart she felt rather uneasy. She wished she had gone out with her husband to admire his favourite; she wished they had not separated with such angry feelings; she wished he had not chosen to-day for trying the new mare!
She put on her hat, and, with a book in her hand, ensconced herself in a sheltered nook, which after some difficulty she succeeded in finding. Out of doors it felt less chilly than in the house, and gradually she grew soothed and calm. She thought to herself she would stay out them for some hours; the day was, after all, mild and pleasant, and the perfect quiet would do her good. But her anticipations were doomed to be disappointed. In less than an hour she heard from her retreat the sound of approaching carriage-wheels, then ladies’ voices at the hall door; and in a few minutes James appeared, breathless in hunting for her in all her usual haunts.
“The Misses Copley, if you please ma’am, in the drawing-room.”
“Very well,” she replied, half provoked, and yet not altogether sorry for the interruption, “I will be with them directly. The young ladies, you said?”
“Yes, ma’am, Miss Copley and Miss Georgie.”
They were about the only people she ever cared to see. Really amiable and affectionate; happy-hearted, and yet gentle, and perfectly unacquainted with her previous history; with them she felt on safe ground. They liked, and in a measure understood her. Their perceptions were not of the quickest; they had no idea that all was not satisfactory between her and Geoffrey, and her quiet manner did not to appear either cold or proud, for they had known her since her first coming to Mallingford, when there had been reason enough for her depression—and so, as it were, they had grown accustomed to what struck strangers as chilling and repellent. Besides, she liked them, and felt really grateful for their consistent kindness. So of course they saw her to advantage.
This morning they were the bearers of an invitation—“We want you and Geoffrey to come and dine with us to-day, and stay over to-morrow,” began Georgie, eagerly; and then Margaret took up the strain—
“Yes, you must come. I’ll tell you the great reason. Georgie’s ‘young man’ is coming tonight, and we do so want you to see him. He has not been here for some months; not since the time you were so ill. Then, too, Papa has some draining on hand he wants Geoffrey’s opinion about. You will come, won’t you?”
“I should like it exceedingly,” said Marion, cordially; but as to Geoffrey, I can’t say. He has gone out, and I don’t know when he will be in.”
“Of course,” exclaimed Georgie, stupid of us not to have told you. We met him on our way—(by-the-by, what a beautiful mare that is he has got, but what a vixen!)— and he said he would certainly come if you would. I was to ask you to order his man to put up what clothes he will want, as he said he would not return here, unless he hears at the Wood that you are not coming. So it’s all right, isn’t it? Bring your habit, do; it’s an age since we’ve had a ride together.”
“I have not ridden for months,” said Marion. “Hardly since I was ill. I don’t think I care about it, and I don’t think the horse Geoffrey intended for me is in riding condition.”
“You could ride one of ours,” suggested Margaret. But, “No, thank you,” said Marion, resolutely.
She agreed, however, to all the rest of their proposals, and in an hour or two’s time found herself with her friends in their comfortable carriage, bowling briskly along the high-road to Copley Wood, in far better spirits than early that morning she would have believed she could possibly attain to.
Geoffrey met them at the hall door, and handed them out of the carriage. Marion fancied he looked pale; though he began talking to her young friends as brightly as usual. She felt grateful for their presence, as otherwise their meeting after the scene in the morning could not but have been uncomfortable for both. As it was, however, it was easy to avoid any approach to a tête-à-tête.
“I am glad you have come,” he said, rather stiffly. This was the only approach to a reconciliation that took place between them.
Then followed a hearty welcome from kindly, cheery Lady Anne and the old Squire. It was impossible to resist altogether the genial influence of the whole family, the pleasant atmosphere of goodwill and cordiality pervading the dwelling. Yet even with this, there was mingled for Marion much bitterness.
“Why can’t I be happy and comfortable, like these kind, good people?” she asked herself, as she stood by the bright fire in the pretty morning-room, and, glancing round, took in all the details of the pleasant, home-like scene. The old portraits on the walls, the bookcases with their tempting contents, the furniture with a general air of warmth and colour about it, though sobered down by time and use to the quiet hue which in dull houses looks dingy, in cheerful ones comfortable. The bits of work and newspapers lying about, the fresh, brightly-tinted flowers on the table—the two pretty girls flitting about—all made an attractive picture. Geoffrey seemed to enjoy the pleasant influence: he lay back lazily in his chair, looking up laughingly in Georgie’s face as she passed him, his gold-brown hair and contrasting charm-blue “well-opened” eyes, contrasting charmingly with the little brunette’s darker locks, and quick, sparkling glances. She wasonlya pretty girl, little Georgie Copley, a merry, robin redbreast sort of a creature, who by no imagination could be idealised into a beautiful or stately woman; yet for one little moment Marion felt a passing pang of jealousy of the happy child.
“Why didn’t he marryher?” she thought to herself; “she would have suited him, and in their commonplace way they would have been happy. I am too old for him, as well as too everything else.”
And with a slight shiver she turned round to the fire. She felt herself like a skeleton at the feast, as her eyes caught the reflection of her face in the mirror above the mantelpiece. Thin and pale and shadowy she looked to herself, with large, unhappy-looking eyes, from which all the lustre and richness seemed to have departed, closely bound round the small, drooping head. “Showy,” in her best days, she never had been; nor had she ever been inclined to do justice to her own personal charms. “I am not ugly,” she had said to herself as a young girl, “but that is about all there is to be said.”Nowshe would have hesitated to say even as much.
Some one else was watching her just then, as she stood quiet and apart by the fire. Someone who she little thought was thinking of her at all. Some one who, as he chattered merrily to Georgie, was hardly conscious of any other presence than that of the slight, drooping figure at the other end of the room, whose bitter sneering words of the morning were already forgiven, and, if not forgotten, remembered only to add intensity to his yearning tenderness of pity, his deep, enduring, ill-requited love.
Then came the announcement of luncheon, and a general move to the well-covered table in the dining-room.
During the meal, plans for the disposal of the remainder of the day were discussed.
“Captain Ferndale can’t be here much before dinner-time, Georgie,” said her sister. “You don’t intend to stay in all the afternoon, I hope?”
“Oh dear no,” replied the sensible little woman, “I intend to ride with you and Geoffrey. Unless Mrs. Baldwin will change her mind, and ride my horse instead of me. Will you, Marion?” And “Oh do,” added Margaret; “I’m quite sure it would do you good. Do help us to persuade her, Geoffrey. I am sure I have a habit that will fit you.”
But Geoffrey only glanced at his wife, and, seeing the slight annoyance in her face, said nothing.
“Now, girls, don’t tease,” said Lady Anne, as notwithstanding Marion’s evident disinclination to make one of the riding party, her young friends still attempted to persuade her to change her mind. “You really must let Mrs. Baldwin decide for herself.” And with these words she rose and led the way back to the morning-room. Reluctantly Margaret and Georgie gave up the endeavour and went to dress for riding. Geoffrey strolled to the stables to give some directions respecting the saddling of his beautiful “Coquette,” whose behaviour in the morning had decided him that she would be none the worse for a little more exercise.
“You’ll have some trouble to get her sobered down a bit, Sir,” said the old coachman. “I’m a little afraid Miss Georgie’s ‘Prince’ will set her off. Prince is fidgety like now and then, though he never does no mischief when Miss Georgie’s riding him. But it wouldn’t take much to upset this ’ere mare, Sir. She’s young and flighty, though handsome as a pictur’.”
“I’ll be careful, Jackson, no fear but what I’ll take it out of her,” said Geoffrey. “If she’s tiresome beside the young ladies, I’ll give her a gallop across country to settle her down.”
Evidently some sedative of the kind was likely to be required! Coquette showed the greatest reluctance to start in a becoming and ladylike manner. True to her name she eyed Georgie’s Prince with evidently mischievous intentions, and the very eccentric manner in which the little party set out on their expedition was such as slightly to upset even Lady Anne’s well seasoned nerves.
Marion watched the departure from the window. She had not yet exchanged a word with her husband since the painful scene of the morning; and very unreasonably she felt inclined to be angry withhim, for having, as she thought, given her no opportunity of showing that she regretted the unkindly and undignified temper to which she had given way.
She felt somewhat uneasy as she watched the peculiar behaviour of the new mare; but this feeling too she disguised from herself by turning it in the direction of annoyance at Geoffrey.
“It is exceedingly inconsiderate, indelicate almost of him,” she said to herself, “to parade in this way his complete independence of any sort of wifely anxiety. I believe he chooses these vicious creatures on purpose. And of course if I made the slightest remonstrance he would turn on me with taunts thatIhad no right to interfere, that to me his personal safety must be a matter of utter indifference. Evidently he now despises what, if he had acted differently, might still have been his—my friendship and regard. But he really need not go out of his way to exhibit to strangers the state of things between us.” And with a hard look on her face, she turned to Lady Anne, who now entered the room.
“Where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear,Where little fears grow great, great love grows there.”
SHAKESPEARE.
“IDON’Tmuch like that horse your husband is riding to-day, my dear,” said Lady Anne, as she sat down to her knitting beside the fire-place. “It’s all very well young men riding these high-spirited animals, breaking them in and so on, but Geoffrey is no longer a young man in that sense of the word. His neck is no longer his own property. He has you to think of and—and—I think you must scold him a little and make him be more cautious.”
“I fear I could do little good, my dear Lady Anne,” said Marion, as lightly as she could. “You see bachelor habits are not so easily broken through! It will take some time to teach Geoffrey the double value attached to his neck.”
“Ah well,” said the elder lady. “I suppose itwouldbe rather hard on a man to give up what has always been his great amusement. You may be thankful, my dear, that rash riding is the worst ‘bachelor habit’ that you will ever discover inyourhusband. Except perhaps smoking. Geoffrey does smoke rather too much, I think. Don’t think me impertinent—though I have no boys at home now, I take a great interest in young men, and for years Geoffrey has been like one of our own. As to riding yourself you are very wise to have given it up, my dear. The girls don’t understand, you see. Of course, poor dears, it would not occur to them, or they would not have teased you so. But you are very wise, my dear, very wise indeed to run no risk—not that it might notperhapsdo no harm, but it is better not, much better,” she repeated, with sundry grandmotherly nods expressive of the utmost sagacity.
Marion looked up with extreme mystification.
“I don’t quite understand you, Lady Anne,” she said. “I am not the least nervous about riding, or afraid of its doing me harm in any way. Last year it did me a great deal of good. It is only that just lately I haven’t felt quite in spirits for it.”
“Of course not, my dear. It is quite natural you should not feel so. You must not mind me, my dear, but look upon me in the light of a mother. If I can be of use to you in any way you must not hesitate to ask me. It will be quite a pleasure in a year or two to see little people trotting about the Manor Farm—it will brighten up the old place, and Geoffrey issofond of children.”
Marion’s face flushed. Now she understood the good lady’s mysterious allusions. Considerably annoyed, and yet anxious to conceal that she felt so, she replied rather stiffly: “You are very kind, Lady Anne, but I assure you you are quite mistaken. There is no reason of the kind for my giving up riding.”
Lady Anne looked incredulous, and before Marion felt sure that she had succeeded in convincing her of the truth of what she had said, their tête-à-tête was interrupted.
But it had given a new turn to Marion’s thoughts. Never before in the few unhappy months of her married life had it occurred to her to think of the possibility of her at some future time occupying a new relation, the sweetest, the tenderest of all—that of a mother. And to Geoffrey’s children! Poor Geoffrey, he was “so fond of children,” Lady Anne said. The few simple words softened her to him marvellously. She began to wonder if such a tie might perhaps draw them together, if little arms and innocent baby lips might have power to achieve what at present seemed a hopeless task. Or was it already too late? She did not blame him; in her gentle, womanly mood she blamed no one but herself. It was her own doing; if indeed, as she feared, it was the case, that her husband no longer loved her. These reflections engrossed her during the quiet afternoon, which otherwise she might have found dull and wearisome. She felt surprised when the servant appeared with afternoon tea, and Lady Anne, waking from her peaceful slumber in her arm-chair, began to remark how suddenly it had got dark, and to wonder why the riding party had not yet returned.
“Captain Ferndale will be arriving immediately,” she said, “and it will looksoawkward if Georgie is not at home.”
Marion looked out. Dark, as yet, it was hardly, but dusk decidedly. Much such an afternoon as the one on which, now more than a year ago, Geoffrey had first ventured to tell her of his feelings towards her, which confession she had so ungraciously received.
“Why did I not keep to what I said then?” she asked herself. “How much better for both of us had I done so! Poor Geoffrey, he thought me cruel then, how much more reason has he to reproach me now!”
She was recalled to the present by Lady Anne’s voice.
“Do you see anything of them, my dear?” she asked.
“No,” said Marion, listeningly. But almost as she spoke the faint, far-off clatter of approaching horses’ feet became audible. “There they are,” she exclaimed, and a certain feeling of welcome stole into her heart. Somehow she felt anxious to be “good” to Geoffrey; to make up to him, for the morning’s hard, sneering words. With which wish she ran out into the hall to receive her husband and the two girls. They were dismounting as she reached the door. Outside it looked foggy and chilly. She could not clearly distinguish either horses or riders.
“You are rather late,” she exclaimed. “Isn’t it very cold? How has Coquette been behaving?”
It was Georgie’s voice that replied.
“Oh, is that you, Marion? We’ve had such a gallop home. The fog came on so suddenly. Geoffrey is back, of course?”
“Geoffrey!” said Marion in surprise. “Why should he be back before you? No, he has not come. I was asking you how his new purchase had been behaving.”
“She’s a vixen,” replied Georgie; if I were a gentleman I would call her something worse. Prince and she teazed each other so, that we separated. Geoffrey said he would come home by the fields and take it out of her. We came home by the road; but it is ever so long ago since we separated, and he said he would be home long before us. What can he be about?”
A strange sensation crept over Marion. Hardly anxiety, hardly apprehension. Rather a sort of standing still of her whole being with sudden awe, sudden terror of what for the first time darted into her imagination as the possible end of the whole, the solution of the problem of her life-mistake. Like a picture she saw it all before her as if by magic. There been an accident; Geoffrey was killed! She, his wife no longer, but freed by this awful cutting of the knot from the bonds which had galled her so sorely, against which she had murmured so ceaselessly. But was it a feeling of relief which accompanied the vision, which for the moment she believed to be prophetic? Was it not rather a sensation compared to which all her past sufferings seemed trivial and childish—a draught of that bitterest of cups of which it is given to us poor mortals to drink, unavailing, “too late,” self-reproach? If Geoffrey were dead, it seemed to her, his wife, standing there and remembering all, that she and she alone, had killed him. She said not a word. In perfect silence she watched Margaret and Georgie gather up their long muddy skirts and hasten across the hall, peeping in as they passed the open door of the morning-room to reassure their mother’s anxiety. She followed them mechanically; heard, as if in a dream, Lady Anne’s exclamations of concern on hearing that Mr. Baldwin was not with them; and while the good lady trotted off to share her motherly uneasiness with the Squire, at this time of day always ensconced in his private den, Marion crept upstairs to the room in which but a few hours before she had carelessly thrown off her hat and hurried below to risk no chance of a tête-à-tête with her husband! Her evening dress lay on the bed—through the open door into the dressing-room she saw by the firelight Geoffrey’s as yet unopened portmanteau. She shuddered as it caught her eye. Would he ever open it again? Would she ever again hear his voice, see his stalwart figure and fair sunny face? Or how might shenotsee him? Would they bring him home pale and stiff, stretched out in thatlong, dreadful way she had once or twice in her London life seen a something that had been a man, carried by to the hospital after some fatal accident? Or, worse still, would his fair hair perhaps be dabbled with blood, his blue eyes distorted with agony, his beautiful face all crushed and disfigured?
Ah! It was too horrible.
“Forgive me, dear Geoffrey, forgive me,” she said in her remorse, as if her words could reach him. “Oh, God, forgive me for my wickedness, and do not punish me so fearfully. For how can I live, how endure the light of day with the remembrance of what I have done?”
Crouched by the fire, she remained thus for some time. Then hearing a slight bustle down-stairs in the hall, she rose and went out into the vestibule, looking over the staircase to see what was taking place below. It was an arrival, but not Geoffrey. Captain Ferndale evidently. She saw little Georgie fly across the hall, followed more deliberately by Margaret and her mother.
How happy they all seemed! Had they forgotten all about her, and Geoffrey, out in the fog, alive or dead, nobody seemed to care! But she wronged them. Captain Ferndale was hardly welcomed, before they all began telling him of their anxiety.
“Papa has sent out men in all directions,” said Georgie, “I am perfectly certain something must have happened. The horse he was on is a most vicious creature. I was frightened out of my wits when he was riding beside me, though of course I didn’t say so to poor Marion, Mrs. Baldwin, you know, Fred. By-the-by, Maggie, where is she?”
“In her room, I think,” said Margaret. “I’ll go and see. We have put back dinner half-an-hour in hopes Geoffrey may come back safe and sound by then. But I confess I am very uneasy.”
Marion stole back to her room, and was sitting there quietly when in a minute or two Margaret joined her.
“Geoffrey has not come in yet,” said the girl cheerfully as she entered, “but we are not surprised. It is so foggy, Fred. Ferndale says he had hard work to get here from the station.”
Marion did not answer. Margaret put her arm round her affectionately; but Marion shrank back, and Margaret felt a little chilled.
“You are not uneasy, Mrs. Baldwin?” she said kindly, but a little more stiffly than her wont. “You know your husband is so perfectly to be depended on as a rider. He is sure to be all right.”
Marion looked up at her appealingly.
“Don’t think me cross or cold, Margaret, and don’t call me Mrs. Baldwin. I amveryunhappy.”
The expression was a curious one. “Very uneasy;” “dreadfully alarmed,” or some such phrase, would have seemed more suited to the circumstances. Margaret Copley felt puzzled. After all there was something very peculiar about Marion Baldwin; she could not make her out. There she sat staring into the fire, pale but perfectly calm. Not a tear, not a symptom of nervousness; only saying in that quiet, deliberate way that she was “very unhappy.” Margaret was too young, too inexperienced, and too practically ignorant of sorrow to detect the undertone of anguish, of bitter, remorseful misery in the few cold words—“I am very unhappy.”
Marion said no more, and Margaret did not disturb her. At last the dinner gong sounded. Marion started: she had not changed her dress.
“Never mind,” said Margaret, “come down as you are. Unless you would prefer staying up here.”
“Oh, no,” said Marion, “I shall dress very quickly. I shall be ready in five minutes.”
She had a morbid horror of appearing affected or exaggerated; and an instinctive determination to keep her feelings to herself. Naturally, she made the mistake of overdoing her part.
She dressed quickly, went downstairs and sat through the long, weary dinner; to all appearance the calmest and least uneasy of the party. One after another of the grooms and gardeners, despatched with lanterns in various directions to seek the truant, returned after a fruitless search.
The Squire grew more and more fidgety. Lady Anne was all but in tears—Margaret and Georgie unable to eat any dinner. Marion seemed to herself to be standing on the edge of a fearful precipice, down which she dared not look; but she said nothing, and no stranger entering the company would have imagined that she, of all the party, was the one most chiefly concerned in the fate of Geoffrey Baldwin.
Dinner over, the ladies mechanically adjourned as usual to the drawing-room. Lady Anne and Margaret sat together by the fire, talking in a low voice. Marion stayed near them for a moment, but Lady Anne’s sort of sick-room tone and half-pitying glances in her direction, irritated her. So she got a book, and seated herself by a little reading-table in the further corner of the room. Georgie ran in and out: every five minutes braving the cold and fog at the hall-door to peep out to see, or hear rather, “if any one was coming,” like sister Anne in the grim old story.
For more than half-an-hour they sat thus in almost unbroken silence. The Squire and Captain Ferndale, with the usual manly horror of an impending “scene,” lingered longer than usual in the dining-room.
Suddenly Georgie darting back from one of her voyages of discovery to the hall-door, flew into the drawing-room exclaiming excitedly.
“Mamma, Maggie, I hear a horse!”
In an instant they all jumped up, and followed her into the hall. The door was wide open, the horse’s feet were heard plainly, steadily approaching, nearer and nearer.
Marion remained in the drawing-room, only creeping close to the doorway, whence she could both hear and see all that took place.
“I do hope it is all right,” said Lady Anne, earnestly. “Girls, Fred,” (for by this time the gentlemen had joined them,) “do you think it is he?”
How could they tell, poor people? They only strained their eyes, vainly endeavouring to pierce the darkness, thick enough, as the country folks say, to be cut with a knife. A few servants’ heads appeared at the doors leading to the back regions; without which, of course, no domestic event can take place with correct decorum. The scene was really an effective one! The horse’s feet coming nearer and, nearer, the little group in the old oak-wainscoted hall, the pale face of the poor girl peeping out from the drawing-room doorway, thinking and feeling so much that none of those about her had the slightest conception of! What was to be the end of it? What was she about to hear? Five minutes more suspense, it seemed to her she could not have endured.
There is but a step, according to a well-known adage, between the sublime and the ridiculous. Thus almost could Marion have expressed her feelings, when, as at last the horse drew near enough, for the rider to distinguish the anxious faces at the door, a voice out of the darkness reached them. It was Geoffrey’s. Loud and cheery it sounded.
“Here I am, safe and sound! A nice adventure I’ve had. Imagine me, Brentshire born and bred, having lost my way in this horrible fog.”
“Oh, I amsoglad you’re all right,” cried Georgie, clapping her hands.
And “We’ve beensofrightened about you,” chimed in Margaret and her mother.
The Squire too, and Captain Ferndale were most hearty in their congratulations. Likewise several members of the servants’ hall, and a few grooms and stable-boys who started up as if by magic, to lead away the naughty Coquette who stood there in the fog humble and subdued enough, with but small traces of the mischievous spirit which had distinguished her departure some seven hours previously.
For the moment Mr. Baldwin was made quite a hero of, as he stood in the midst of the group, damp and muddy, but his fair face flushed and eager, as he related all that had fallen him and the beauty that had led him such a dance. Everyone was intensely relieved at the comfortably commonplace end to the adventure which had caused so much anxiety: everyone was most sincere and hearty in their congratulations. All but one. The voice which alone he cared to hear was silent. He looked round eagerly and enquiringly.
“My wife, Marion,” he said, “is still here? I had better go to tell her I am all right.”
“Oh, yes,” said Margaret, rather awkwardly, “I will go and tell her; but we have not let her know how uneasy we have been. She has not therefore been alarmed.”
“Thank you,” said Geoffrey. But on his heart the girl’s words fell with a strange chill. “She had not been alarmed,” this wife of his. It had been then so easy to prevent her feeling anxiety about him, that even this girl, a stranger almost to her, felt instinctively that the extreme coolness of the young wife at such a time, called loudly for some sort of excuse, some palliation of what to those about her had evidently looked very like utter heartlessness and indifference to his fate.
“If only they knew the whole,” he said to himself, “they would not wonder at her unnatural behaviour. ‘Alarmed’ about me! No indeed! The saddest sight that can meet her eyes will be my returning alive and well.” And with this bitterness in his heart, he followed Margaret to the drawing-room in quest of Marion.
What evil spirit of pride and unlovely perversity had been whispering to her? And why, oh! why had she listened to its voice, wilfully stifling the pleadings of her gentle woman’s heart, and deliberately destroying what might have been the happy, softening influences of the day’s occurrences? Much doubtless of the miserable state of things between these two, bound together by the closest, most sacred of ties, they—she—was not to be blamed for. “Circumstances”—the only name we, in our ignorance, can find for the mysterious combinations which destroy the lives of so many—“circumstances” in great part, were the scape-goat in the case of the great mistake of Marion’s life. She had meant to do right, poor child, and had tried her best to execute her intention. Terriblemistakeswe are all apt to make, the wisest of us perhaps more than the humbler and less confident. But for such, though the temporal punishment is often disproportionately heavy, in higher tribunals we are leniently judged. Not so with deliberate acts of cruelty and unkindness to each other, such as Marion Baldwin was this evening guilty of.
She knew what she was about; she knew, though possibly she would not have owned it to herself, that shewishedto wound Geoffrey, deliberately meant and intended to punish for some offence towards herself which she would have found it difficult to define, the heart whose only blame, if blame it were, was its too great devotion to her.
She was angry with herself for having been frightened about him, mortified, though yet her relief was real, at the matter-of-fact conclusion of what she had been picturing to herself as a crisis in her fate. So, after the manner of people when angry with themselves, she did her best to make another as unhappy as herself.
When Geoffrey entered the drawing-room, and Margaret Copley with instinctive delicacy withdrew, he did not at first perceive that his wife was present. In another moment, however, he caught sight of her, seated at the little table in the furthest corner of the room, apparently engrossed in a book. His heart throbbed with disappointment, wounded feeling, and even some mixture of indignation; but he controlled himself, and determined to give her a chance.
“Marion,” he said, “I am going to take off my wet things, but I have just looked in to tell you I am all right. You heard me come just now, I suppose? Lady Anne and all the others were at the door to meet me. I’m afraid I have given you all a very uncomfortable evening, but it was Coquette’s fault, not mine. However, all’s well that ends well, and I flatter myself the beauty has had a lesson that she won’t forget in a hurry.”
He went on speaking in a half nervous manner, for Marion did not appear at first to hear him. When he left off she raised her eyes from her book, and said, in the provokingly indifferent, half-awake tone of a person still engrossed in the pages from which the attention is hardly withdrawn:
“I beg your pardon, Geoffrey. I did not hear you come into the room. Was it I you were speaking to? Yes, I heard your horse come up to the door. What a fuss Lady Anne gets into for nothing at all! Hadn’t you better go and change your things?”
And without giving him time to reply, her eyes were again bent on her book. Geoffrey looked at her for a moment without speaking. She felt his gaze fixed on her, she felt, though he could not see, the expression of his face. Almost she felt inclined to spring up and run towards him to ask his forgiveness, to tell him of the anxiety she had endured, the genuine relief she had experienced when she heard of his safe return.
“But he would not believe you,” whispered the evil spirit she had been listening to. “Why lower yourself thus unnecessarily to one who no longer cares for you?”
And Marion gave heed to the specious suggestion, and the opportunity faded away into the mournful crowd of things that might have been—good deeds never done, loving words never spoken.
The remainder of their visit at Copley Wood passed quietly and uneventfully, but Marion was glad when it came to an end. She felt that she had fallen back in her friends’ good opinion; evidently they too thought her heartless and disagreeable, cold and selfish, reserved to an unwomanly degree.
All these epithets she piled on herself. In reality, the Copleys, Margaret especially, thought of her much more kindly than she imagined. They did not, could not, indeed, understand her; few things are more hopeless than any approach to mutual comprehension between the happy and the miserable. The happy, that is to say in the sense in which these inexperienced girls may be called so, happy in utter unconsciousness of the reverse of the picture, thoughtless in the innocent war in which birds and lambs and flowers are thoughtless. But still they were gentle judging, and what in Marion’s character and behaviour they could not understand, they pitied and treated tenderly.
The depth of feeling in the few words Geoffrey’s wife had addressed to Margaret that evening by the fire, “I amveryunhappy,” rang in the young girl’s ears, and emboldened her to speak kindly in her defence, when, as was often the case (for in country society peoplemusttalk about their neighbours or else be altogether silent), young Mrs. Baldwin’s peculiarities were discussed, and that, not in the most amiable of terms.
From this time Geoffrey and his wife lived yet more independently of each other than before. One improvement took place in their relations; though after all I hardly know that it merits to be thus described. There was an end henceforth of all stormy scenes between them. So much Marion had resolved upon; coldness and mutual indifference were evidently to be the order of their lives. Let it be so, she decided, it was to the full as much Geoffrey’s doing as hers. But at least she would show herself his equal in the tacit compact: she would not again lower herself by losing her temper and condescending to such aggressive weapons as sarcasm or recrimination. To the letter of the law, she determined in her pride, she would do her duty by him, so that in after days come what might, she need never reproach herself with any short-coming onherside; and Geoffrey for his part, if she should be so fortunate as die and leave him free to choose a more congenial help-meet, might at least remember her with respect, if with no warmer feeling. Foolish, presumptuous child! In the terrible “too late” days—of which the slight experience she had had the evening of Geoffrey’s misadventure in the fog had profited her so little—in those days “the letter of the law,” fulfilled as no fallible mortal yet fulfilled it, would bring with its remembrance sorry comfort. Very “husks that the swine do eat,” nay worse, mocking, gibbering fiends to torment us, are in those days the memories of “duties,” proudly and perfectly but unlovingly performed; acts of obedience, submission, self-denial even, however outwardly flaw-less, without thespiritwhich alone gives them value.
Doubtless we all fall short in our relations taken to each other. Never yet was the coffin lid closed on the dead face of a human being, but what in the hearts of those who had taken their last look, pressed their last kiss on the pale forehead—it might be the smooth, fair brow of a child, it might be the withered, furrowed face of a world-weary man or woman—there rose reproachful, sad-eyed ghosts of things they might have done for the dead, or, more grievous still, others they would now give much to have left undone.
But it is not at such times the thought of sharp, hasty words repented of as soon as spoken, or of unkind deeds done in the heat of passion and in saner moments atoned for with all the earnestness we can command; it is not the recollection of such things as these that stings us the most deeply. Far more terrible and overwhelming, when we gaze on the dead face in its silent reproach, is the memory of deliberate unkindness—the long course of studied, repellent coldness; wrongs fancied or real, cherished and brooded over instead of forgiven and forgotten; duties even, performed, while yet love was withheld.
“I will be quiet and talk with you,And reason why you are wrong:You wanted my love—is that much true?And no I did love, so I do:What has come of it all along.”
R. BROWNING.