“CHATEAUMORNIER
“VEVEY
“JUNE 3rd, 18—
“MYDEARMRS.ARCHER,
“Before this you may have received a letter I sent to your Cheltenham address, trusting it might reach you before you left. As, however, I have received no answer to it, I suppose it must have been too late. It will, therefore, probably be sent after you. It consisted merely of a few lines, begging you at once to send me the address of your friend, Miss Freer, to whom, on the chance of her being there, even had you left, I wrote at the same time. To that letter neither have I received any answer. Only to-day have I learned the reason—that she accompanied you to India last April. This news was a great shock to me. Still greater the information that accompanied it—that Miss Freer went out to India the betrothed wife of a gentleman to whom she was to be married very shortly after her arrival! The person who told me this, mentioned having heard it directly from yourself at Altes, some months ago. I may as well tell you that my informant was Sophy Berwick. She had no reason for telling me. She did incidentally. Nor can I see that it is likely she was mistaken. Certain words and allusions of Marion’s own confirm me in believing it. Still there is a chance—a mere chance—that it may not be so; and on this I now write to you, begging you as speedily as possible to tell me the truth. At the time Marion, under pressure of strong excitement, let fall the hints I refer to, she evidently did not consider herself irrevocably bound. She alluded to some concealment concerning herself, some obstacle connected with her father’s wishes. Had I only then dared to speak more openly of my own hopes and intentions all might have been well. But I thought it right not to do so; and since I have been free to speak, a series of cross-purposes, beginning with your sudden flight from Altes, and ending with my last letters missing you (previous ones having shared the same fate through an incorrect address), has, I fear, separated us—for ever. It is very terrible to me to realise that it probably is so. As toher, I must try to be unselfish enough to hope that all this may have fallen more lightly on her younger and more elastic nature. I do not know if you ever guessed this secret of mine? I almost wish now that I had confided it to you. The enclosed letter contains a full explanation of all in my conduct, that to my poor darling must have seemed mysterious and inexplicable. If, when you receive this, she be yet by any blessed chancefree, give it to her. All then will, I feel assured, be well. If, on the other hand, as is more probable, she be already bound to another, even perhaps by this time married,return it to me as it is; and never, I beseech you, mention my name to her. Better far she should forget me, despise me even; than that, by learning that I, alas, have not ceased, never can cease to care for her, her married life with another should be embittered by vain regret. And in no case, mind you, do I blame her. I am ignorant of the circumstances which must have compelled her to agree to a marriage, into which she could not enter with her heart. Whatever they may have been, she, I am sure, is to be excused. Her youth and unselfishness of disposition would render her easy to persuade to such a sacrifice. I have said more than I intended. Selfishly too I have omitted to express my hopes that you found Colonel Archer in a fair way to complete recovery. I do not send any message to him, as I must beg you, on every account, to consider this letter and all it contains as strictly private. I shall be very grateful to you if you will answer this as soon as possible. Believe me,
“Yours faithfully,
“RALPHM. SEVERN.
“P.S. I am forgetting to mention that if the letter I sent to Cheltenham to Miss Freer, has, with yours, been forwarded to India, it is not either way of much consequence. Fearing it might not reach her directly, I purposely made it short and formal. Merely expressing my regret at not having seen her again, and asking for her address that I might send her some books, &c. This (and everything else) is fully explained in the enclosed.”
“The enclosed” was three times the length of the foregoing. It contained, as Ralph said, a full explanation of all that had occurred since the last evening at Altes, when they parted, as they thought, for the fortnight merely of Ralph’s visit to England.
Now began again for Ralph a period of weary waiting, till the answer, or answers, to his letters might be expected. It was a long time to wait—four months or thereabouts! He grew sick of the summer, the constant sunshine and brightness, and longed for the time when he should see the leaves beginning to turn, when among the trees he should perceive the first whisper of autumn. “For by then,” he thought, “this suspense at least will be over. And at the worst I shall be free to begin to live down my disappointment.”
So it came to pass that at the very same time both Marion and he were waiting with anxious hearts for news from the far-off East. Whereas, had they only known it, but a few days’ journey and a few words of explanation, would have sufficed again, and for life, to unite them.
What, for two or three weeks, Ralph thought was to be his only answer, came to him, as to Marion, in the advertisement sheet of the “Times;” where one morning early in October, he saw the announcement of poor Cissy’s death. It shocked him greatly.
For a week or two he knew not what to think or do. Then one morning, as he was all but losing hope of any further or more satisfactory reply, he received an Indian letter. A bulky letter with a deep black border round the envelope, and addressed in an unfamiliar hand. He turned it about, as people always do when particularly anxious to learn the contents of a letter, stared at the address, the stamps, and the black seal, as if they could reveal the secret of the inside!
At last he opened it, and drew out a second envelope likewise addressed to himself, but in a different hand, and with no black edge. This again he opened, and out fell, on to the floor at his feet, a letter that was no stranger to him. His own letter to Miss Freer, somewhat crushed and worn-looking from its much travelling, but otherwise exactly as it had left, him, the seal unbroken, the whole evidently untampered with. And his own words to Cissy recurred to him,—“If on the other hand she be already bound to another, even perhaps by this time married,return it to me as it is, and never, I beseech you, mention my name to her.
He understood it. Poor Cissy had obeyed him, and no fear that now she would betray his confidence. But looking again at the black-bordered outside envelope, he saw that it still contained something. A short letter only, written almost immediately after his wife’s death by George Archer, whose was the writing which Ralph, not having seen for many years, had failed to recognize. It ran thus,
“LANDOUR,N.W. PROVINCES.
“AUGUST 20TH, 18—
“MYDEARSEVERN,—
“Already you may have chanced to hear of my great loss. Considering all the aggravations; our long separation; her hastening out to nurse me at risk to herself; my inexcusable selfishness in having suggesting it; I think you will not despise me for confessing to you that I am perfectly prostrated, utterly heart-broken; even though yet at times unable to realize it. One of her last requests to me was that I would, without delay, forward to you a letter which would find in her desk—‘written,’ she said, and ‘ready to be addressed.’ She was very ill at the time and must have been confused in what she said, for the enclosed I found as I send it, all ready, save the stamps, to be posted. I need hardly tell you that I am in entire ignorance of it contents, and perfectly satisfied to remain so always. My poor child told me it related to some private matters of your own, as to which you had consulted her. She was evidently anxious about the matter, so whatever it be, I trust it may end well. You will forgive my not writing more just now. Remember me to Lady Severn, and thank her for the kindness she showed to my wife and child last winter.
“Yours most truly,
“GEORGEARCHER.”
That was all! Ralph folded the letters. His own to Miss Fryer he destroyed.
“And so,” he said to himself, “my story is ended.”
He wrote at once to Sir Archibald, declining the appointment at A——, which till now, his old chief had with some trouble kept open for him.
He remained at the Château Mornier with his mother till in the autumn she left it for a more genial climate. And one day soon after receiving Colonel Archer’s letter, he read, in the newspaper, of the death of the well-known and distinguished Member for ——, Hartford Vere, and bestowed a moment’s passing pity on the scantily provided for orphan children of the great man!
The Severns did not winter at. Altes. That was spared him. He persuaded his mother to try Italy for a change. Yet more, he obtained from her a promise that should all be well, the following spring should see the family re-established at Medhurst. Once there, he felt he should be more free to leave them; and travel by himself where the fancy seized him, or rather, wherever he saw the most encouraging prospect for the furtherance of the special studies which he was now determined to resume in earnest, and in which he hoped to find sufficient interest to prevent his life from becoming altogether a blank. His mother was ready enough now-a-days to agree to his wishes, even, when possible, to forestall them. Since Sybil’s illness at Lusac, there had been a great change in Lady Severn. She had learned to cling much to her hitherto little valued son. And something had reached her, in some subtle, impalpable way, of the sorrow, of the bitterness of disappointment through which this summer had seen him pass. She knew no particulars, her private suspicions even, were wide of the mark; but she could see that he had aged strangely of late. Always grave, he had grown more so, and it was long since any of the bright, sudden flashes of humour had been heard, which of old relieved by their sparkle, his usual quiet seriousness.
Something of her anxiety about him, she one day endeavoured to express to him; but she never tried it again. With perfect gentleness, but irresistible firmness, he put her aside; and in her inmost heart she felt she deserved it.
He could forgive, even, in a sense, forget. But as to taking into his confidence, accepting the sympathy of the mother, whose previous indifference, narrow-minded prejudice, and love of power, had greatly been to blame for the great sorrow of his life—it was asking too much.
Still, though too late for confidence, there was perfect peace between mother and son; undisturbed even by the continued presence of through the winter of Florence Vyse, who had taken it into her head that the éclat of her marriage would be much increased by Medhurst being the scene of the interesting ceremony; in consequence of which the ardent Chepstow had to agree to its being deferred till the spring. Florence found it rather good fun being “engaged.” She kept her stout admirer trotting backwards and forwards between England and Italy all the winter; which was rather a profitable arrangement so far as she was concerned, as on each occasion of arrival and departure she was presented with a new and gorgeous “souvenir” of the about-to-be absent Chepstow, or token of his remembrance of her when in distant lands. His devotion was really “sweetly touching,” as ladies’ maids say; and paid well, too, for long before she became Mrs. Chepstow, the beauty had accumulated a very fair show of jewellery and such-like feminine treasures, not a few of which, in justice to her be it recorded, found their way to the humble little house standing in a “genteel” row, in one of the northern suburbs of London, where dwelt the mother and sisters on whom what she possessed of a heart was bestowed. She was more genuinely amiable and good-tempered this winter than she had yet shown herself. To Ralph in particular her manner had become gentle, almost humble. Prosperity suited her, and she could afford, now that the cause of her jealous irritation was removed, almost topitythe man, in every respect so immeasurably her superior, whose happiness she had yet, in a moment of pique and mean spitefulness, deliberately endeavoured to destroy. She too, before leaving Altes, had heard and believed Sophy Berwick’s romance; and had seized with delight the opportunity of delaying, till too late, all communication between Sir Ralph and the girl who, she fancied, had usurped her place with him.
Yet now, when she looked at him sometimes, and, despite all his proud self-control and impenetrable reserve, descried symptoms of a grief it was not in her self-absorbed nature to understand—now, when all was smiling on her, and she had begun to think herself decidedly better off with the manageable Mr. Chepstow, than she would have been as the wife of the incomprehensible Ralph, there were moments in which she wished she had not done that ugly thing, not said those two or three words, which even her easy conscience told her were neither more nor less than that which we prefer to call by any other name but its own—a cold-blooded, maliciouslie.
“Un mensonge qui flatte ou blesse le cœur trouve plus facilement créarice qu’une vérité indéferent.”
OCTAVEFEUILET.
“———Thank Godthe gift of a good man’s love.”
ANOLDSTORY.
MALLLINGFORDagain! And not looking more cheerful than when we last saw it. Then it was late autumn, now, except for the name of the thing, a scarcely more genial season, early spring.
“More genial,” indeed, impresses a comparison strictly speaking, impossible to draw—in Brentshire at least—between either November and February, or February and November; unless we subscribe to the logic of that celebrated individual, the March hare, who tells his bewildered guest, “Alice in Wonderland,” “that it is very easy to have more than, nothing.”
Geniality, truly, of any kind, outside or inside, our poor Marion had not met with, through all those cheerless, dreary months at the Cross House. Excepting always the occasional breaks in the cloudy monotony of her life, contrived for her by the watchful thoughtfulness of Geoffrey Baldwin. Not the least of these had been the pleasure of Harry’s company during the Christmas holidays (the last, in all probability, the young man would spend in England for years to come), for which Geoffrey alone was to be thanked. Miss Tremlett would have fainted at the bare idea of having that “dreadful boy” as even a few weeks’ guest. She “tipped” him, however, handsomely, with which proof of her affection Harry was amply content; finding his quarters at the Manor Farm infinitely more to his taste than a residence in the Cross House. Though two miles distant, he managed to see a great deal of his sister; his host being no unwilling coadjutor in this respect. They had plenty of rides together, to which this open winter, in other respects so disagreeable, was favourable; and at times, when braced by the fresh air and exhilarated by the exercise, Marion for a brief space felt almost happy.
But only for a brief space. Her life was very repulsive to her, and although she made the best of it to Harry, he saw enough to make him feel for her greatly. Nor did his pity end with the sentiment. In all seriousness the brother offered, rather than condemn her to such an existence, to give up his cherished and chosen intention of entering the army, for which by this time he was fully prepared; and remain near her, with the hopes of in time being able to set up a modest little establishment of their own. He would try for a clerkship in the Mallingford Bank, or take to farming, under Geoffrey Baldwin’s guidance. To neither of which proposals, however, would Marion hear of consenting.
“You don’t think so poorly of me, Harry, as to imagine that my life would be any the happier for knowing I had been the means of spoiling yours? Though I love you for offering this, and I will try to be incited by the remembrance of it to more cheerfulness.”
Her one woman-friend, the gentle, but brave-spirited Veronica, warmly applauded her unselfish resolution. So, in his heart, for more reasons than one, did Geoffrey Baldwin, though he said nothing.
With a face smiling through its tears the poor girl bid her brother farewell.
“Only to midsummer, you know, May,” said the boy, “whatever regiment I may get my commission in, I’m sure of some weeks at home first. That’s to say with Baldwin,” he added, for “home,” alas, was a mere memory of the past to the two orphans. “He is so very kind, May. I really don’t know how we are ever to thank him for it.”
“He is indeed,” said Marion warmly, so warmly that Harry, who had but small experience of that queer thing, a woman’s heart, smiled to himself, and want away considerably happier in mind about his sister for this corroboration, as he thought it, of a very pleasant suspicion which had lately entered his imagination.
“It would suit so capitally,” he thought to himself. “In every way he’s a thorough good fellow. Not so clever as May, certainly, but they’d get on just as well for all that.” Perhaps so, Harry. It is a question, and a not easily answered one, as to how far congeniality of mind is necessary to a happy marriage.
But certainly, to give two such different natures as those of Geoffrey Baldwin and Marion Vere, a chance of assimilating in the long run, one element is indispensable, a good foundation of mutual love. Not friendship, however sincere, not esteem, however great—but love—of which the former are but a part. “And not necessarily even that,” say some, from whom nevertheless I differ in opinion.
After Harry had gone, it was the old monotonous story again. It was impossible for her to ride so much as while her brother was with them, for the Copley girls were not always to be got hold of, and Mr. Baldwin, as Marion observed with some surprise, rather fought shy of tête-à-tête excursions.
“Who would have thought he was so prudish,” she said to herself. “It’s rather misplaced, for I’m sure everybody knows he is just like a sort of uncle or brother to me.”
“Everybody” however, in Brentshire, is not in the habit of thinking anything so natural and innocent, and Geoffrey was wise in his generation. Though in this instance really, the Mrs. Grundys of the neighbourhood might have been excused for remarking the very palpable and undeniable fact, that Mr. Baldwin was a remarkably handsome bachelor of only seven or eight and twenty, and Miss Vere “a pretty pale girl” of little more than nineteen. “The sort of girl too that manages to get herself admired by gentlemen, though why I really can’t see,” remarked one of the sister-hood to her confidante for the time. Who in reply observed that “no more could she.” Adding, moreover, that, “Everyone knows what that sort of story-book affair is sure to end in. Young guardian and interesting ward! The girl knew well enough what she was about. Evidently she had not taken up her quarters with that odious Miss Tremlett for nothing. Had her father lived, or left her better off, she might have looked higher. But as things were she had done wisely not to quarrel with her bread-and-butter.”
Marion’s visits to Miss Temple, though by reason of her aunt’s unreasonable prejudice, they had to be managed with extreme discretion and not made too frequently, were at this time of great benefit to the girl. The influence of the thoroughly sound and sweet Veronica softened while it strengthened her; and did much to weaken, if not altogether eradicate, a certain root of bitterness, which, not unnaturally, began to show itself in her disposition. She was not given to bosom friendships or confidantes. Though frank and ingenuous, she had, like all strong natures, a great power of reserve. Even to Cissy Archer, the most intimate friend she had ever had, she by no means, as we have seen, thought it necessary to confide all her innermost feelings.
Through the circumstances of her life and education, her principle acquaintances, not to say friends, had been of the opposite sex—and to tell the truth she preferred that they should be such—though from no unwomanliness in herself, from no shadow of approach to “fastness,” had she come to like the society of men more than that of women. Rather I think from the very opposite cause—her extreme, though veiled, timidity and self-distrust; which instinctively turned to the larger and more generous nature for encouragement and shelter. It never cost her a moment’s shrinking or hesitation to preside at one of her father’s “gentlemen” dinner parties, where the sight of her bright,interestedface and the sound of her sweet, eager voice, were a pleasant refreshment to the brain-weary, overworked men who surrounded the table. Yet in a ball-room, or worse still, in a laughing, chattering party of fashionable girls, Marion, though to outward appearance perfectly at ease—a little graver and quieter perhaps than her companions—at heart was shy and self-conscious to a painful degree.
After all, however, it is well for a woman to have one or more good, true-hearted friends of her own sex. And this Marion acknowledged to herself, as she came to know more intimately how true and beautiful a nature was contained in the poor and crippled form of the invalid. Veronica was, I daresay, an exceptional character; not so much as to her patience and cheerful resignation—these, to the honour of our nature be it said, are no rare qualities among the “incurables” of all classes—as in respect of her wonderful unselfishness, power of going out of and beyond herself to sympathise in the joy as well as the sorrow of others, and her unusual wide-mindedness. A better or healthier friend Marion Vere could not have met with. That some personal sorrow, something much nearer to her than the death of her father or the losses it entailed, had clouded the life of her young friend, Veronica was not slow to discover. But she did not press for a confidence, which it was evidently foreign, to the girl’s feelings to bestow. She only did in her quiet way, what little she could, insensibly almost, towards assisting Marion to turn to the best account in her life training this and all other experiences that had befallen her.
How different from Geoffrey! Ever so long ago he, honest fellow, had poured out all his story to the friend who had for many years stood him in place of both mother and sister; and by her advice he had acted, in refraining from risking all, by a premature avowal to Marion of his manly, love and devotion.
Veronica, poor soul, was sorely exercised in spirit about these two. She loved them both so much, and yet she could not but see how utterly, radically unlike they were to each other. Geoffrey, some few years her junior, had from infancy seemed like a younger brother of her own; and since her illness in particular the gentle kindness, the never-failing attention he had shown her, had endeared him to her greatly. What, on his side, of his real manliness, his simple love of the good and pure, and hatred of the wrong, he owed to this poor crippled woman, is one of the things that little suspected now, shall one day be fully seen. Yet for all this, for all her love for, and pride in him, Veronica made no hero of the young man. She saw plainly that in all but his simple goodness he was inferior to Marion. And seeing this, and coming to love the girl and admire her many gifts as she did poor Veronica, as I have said, was sorely perplexed. She temporized in the first place; till she saw that it was absolutely necessary to do so, she had not the heart to crush poor Geoffrey’s hopes.
“Wait,” she said to him, “wait yet awhile. She has had much to try her of late, and there is no time lost. Think how young she is. If you startled her you might ruin all. Wait at least, till the spring.”
So Geoffrey bit the end of his riding-whip rather ruefully, thanked Miss Veronica, and much against his will—waited.
“It may be,” thought Veronica, “that this is to be one of those unequal marriages, that after all turn out quite as happily, or more so, than those where the balance is more even. Marion, as yet, is hardly conscious of her own powers. Should she marry Geoffrey the probability is she will never become so. Never, at least, in the present state of things. And after all, much power is doomed for ever inthisworld to remain latent! But, on the other hand—I wish it could be! I do, indeed wish it so much, that I doubt my own clear-sightedness.Shewill, assuredly, be well able to decide for herself when the question comes before her, as I suppose in time it must. It is Geoffrey I am so troubled about. Should I do better to crush his hopes altogether? Icoulddo so. But then, again, if it should turn out unnecessary! Ah, no! All I can do is to watch and wait. If only he does not ruin his own cause by anything premature.”
“If only!” But, alas, there came a day on which, riding back to Mallingford, Geoffrey seeing Marion home after parting with the Misses Copley at the gate a their father’s park, the following conversation took place.
It was late in February, a rank, dank, chilly afternoon, such as there had been plenty of this winter. Foggy, too; daylight already growing dim, an hour or more before it had any right to do so.
Marion shivered, though not altogether from the cold.
“Isn’t it ahorribleday, Mr. Baldwin?” she asked; “a perfectly wretched day. Enough to make one wonder that people can be found willing to stay in such an ugly, disagreeable world. And yet there’s something fascinating about it too. I wonder how that is! Let me see; what is it it reminds me of? Oh, I know. It’s that song of Tennyson’s. ‘A spirit haunts the year’s last hours,’ it begins.
‘My very heart faints and my whole soul grievesAt the moist rich smell of the rotting leaves.And the breathOf the fading edges of box beneath.’
That’s the sort of smell there is to-day, though it’s so chilly. Though that song is for the autumn. But it’s more like autumn than spring just now, isn’t it, Mr. Baldwin? There isn’t the slightest feeling of spring anywhere. No freshness, no life. Everything seems to be decaying.”
“I don’t know,” said Geoffrey doubtfully, sniffing the air as he spoke. “Things ain’t looking bad on the whole. You’ll see it will all take a start soon, once the sprouts get their heads above ground. And then just think what a hunting season we’ve had! I declare my horses haven’t had so much taken out of them for I don’t know the time.”
“Yes,” said Marion, half amused at her companion’s way of putting things. “To you, I daresay it has seemed a very bright winter, and a cheerful, promising spring. After all, I believe the seasons are as muchinus as outside us. Long ago I remember days on which I was so happy, that looking back, I fancy they were in the very brightest and loveliest of the summer, though in reality they were in dreary mid-winter. It is like time, which seems so short when we are happy, so long—so terribly long—when we are in sorrow. And yet in reality it is always the same. I wonder what is reality? Sometimes I think there is no outside at all.”
Having arrived at which satisfactory explanation of the mystery of the sensible world, Marion remembered her companion, long ago left behind her, having, as he would have phrased it, had he been in the habit of defining him situations, “come to grief at the very first fence, on leaving the lanes.”
“I wish I weren’t so stupid,” he thought to himself. “I wonder if all girls say the same queer, puzzling, pretty sort of things she does.”
Not that Marion favoured many people with all the fanciful, dreamy talk—a good deal of it great nonsense, but not commonplace, as she said it, for all that —with which patient Geoffrey was honoured. But she had got into the way of saying to him—before him rather—whatever came into her head, not troubling herself as to whether he understood it or not. Rather a tame-cat way of treating him! But as he was far from resenting it, there is no occasion for us to fight his battles.
To the last observation he made no reply. For some minutes they rode along the lane in silence; the horses apparently somewhat depressed in spirit, not being, like Miss Vere, dubious of the reality of an outside world, and a very foggy and disagreeable one to boot. Their feet sank, with each step, into the soft yielding mud, in great measure composed of the all but unrecognizable remains of last year’s leaves, not yet buried decently out of sight, as should have been done by this time. Nature was in a lazy mood that year. There was no sound except the thud, a ruddy, slushy sound, of the tired animals’ slow jogtrot steps.
Suddenly Marion spoke again. This time in a different tone. With something of appeal, something of child-like deprecation, she turned to her companion.
“Mr. Baldwin,” she said shyly, “you said just now it was almost spring. Don’t you remember promising me that by the spring you would try to do something for me?”
“What, Miss Vere?” said Geoffrey, rather shortly. He knew what was coming. He had a presentiment he was going to be sorely tried between the promptings of his heart and the sound advice of his friend Veronica, to which in his inmost mind he subscribed as wise and expedient. So he answered coldly, and hated himself for so doing, while his heart was already throbbing considerably faster than usual.
“Oh, don’t be vexed, with me,” she said; “I have not spoken of it for ever so long. Don’t you remember? I am sure you do. It was about trying to arrange for me to live somewhere else than with Aunt Tremlett. Could I not go somewhere as a sort of boarder perhaps? I am sure I should not be difficult to please if they were quiet, kind sort of people, and if I could have a couple of rooms, and be more independent than I am now. The worst of living at the Cross House is that I am never free, except when my aunt is asleep. She is always sending for me or wanting me to do something or other for her, and yet with it all Inevercan please her. Have you no friends, Mr. Baldwin, who would be willing to let me live with them as a sort of boarder? You see I am quiet and different from other girls. I care very little for gaiety of any kind, and I feel so much older than I am.”
Geoffrey rode on in perfect silence, his head turned away from Marion as she made this rather long speech, all in the same tone, half of appeal and half of deprecation. At last she grew surprised at his not replying, and spoke again.
“Do answer me, Mr. Baldwin. If you are vexed with me, and think me troublesome and unreasonable, please say so. Only I am so miserable at the Cross House, and you are the only person I can ask to help me.”
The last words sounded broken and quivering, as if the poor little speaker’s contemplation of her own desolate condition was too much for her self-control.
Geoffrey turned round suddenly, his fair face flushed with the depth of his emotion, his voice sounding hoarse and yet clear from very earnestness. He laid his hand on the crutch of Marion’s saddle, and leaned forward so as to face her almost as he spoke.
“Miserable you say you are at the Cross House?—then possibly you will forgive me if hearing this compels me to lay before you the only alternative I have to offer you. I had not meant to speak of this so soon, but you have tried me too far. I cannot be silent when I hear you speak of being miserable. Marion, there is one home open to you, whose owner would gladly spend himself, his whole life and long, to make you happy. I know I am not good enough for you. I know in every sense I am unworthy of you. Only I love you so deeply, so truly;surelyI could make you happy. Oh, Marion! what can I say to convince you of my earnestness? For God’s don’t answer hastily! Don’t you think youcouldbe happy as my wife—happier at least than you are?”
Till he left off speaking, Marion felt too utterly amazed and surprised—stunned as it were—to attempt to interrupt him. But when his voice ceased, she came to himself. In a sense at least. Not to her best self by any means, for there was ungentle haste in the movement with which she pushed away poor Geoffrey’s hand, and a tone of extreme irritation, petulance almost, in her voice, as she replied to his little expected proposition.
“How can you be so foolish, Mr. Baldwin, so very foolish as to talk to me in that way. Are you really so blind as not to see that to you are more like another Harry than—than—anything of that sort? Oh! what a pity you have done this—said this to me! The only friend I had. And now you have put a stop to it all. I can never again feel comfortable with you. You have spoilt it all. It is very, very unkind of you!” And she ended her strange, incoherent speech by bursting into tears.
Poor Geoffrey already, its soon as the words were uttered, aware of his egregious mistake and penitent to the last degree, forthwith set himself down as a monster of inconsiderateness and cruelty. Her tears altogether for the moment put out of sight his own exceeding disappointment. Hee only thought how best to console her.
“Oh, Miss Vere,” he said, “forgive me! It indeed inexcusable of me to have so startled and distressed you. I had no right so to take advantage of my position with you. I am a rough boor, I know, but I entreat you to forgive me, and forget all this. Only—only—after as time perhaps—could youneverget accustomed to the idea? Must I never again allude to this? I would wait—years, if you wished it. Butnever?” and his voice, which he had striven to make gentle and calm, grew hoarse again in spite of his efforts.
(He was not of the order of suitors, you see, who think a “no” in the first place far from discouraging. For though by no means “faint-hearted,” he was far too chivalrous to persist, and too genuinely humble-minded not to be easily repulsed.)
“Never, Mr. Baldwin!” said Marion, decisively and remorselessly, with but, to tell the truth, little thought for the time, of the suffering her words were inflicting on an honest, manly heart. She was not her best self just then. Trouble and weary suspense had made her querulous sometimes, and temporarily developed in her the selfishness which, alter all, is to some extent inherent in the best of us. “Never!” she repeated. “How could you have mistaken me so? Can’t you see that I mean what I say about being different from other girls? Allthatsort of thing is done with for me, altogether and entirely. So please, understand, Mr. Baldwin, that what you were speaking of canneverbe.”
“If so, then, ‘thatsort of thing’ as you call it, Miss Vere, is likewise altogether and entirely over forme,” said Geoffrey, with, for the first time, a shade of bitterness in his voice. “You will not punish me for my wretched presumption by withdrawing from me the amount of friendship, or regard, with which you have hitherto honoured me? It would complicate our relations most uncomfortably were you to do so, for unfortunately we have no choice as to remaining in the position of ward and guardian. Can’t you forgive me, Miss Vere, and forget it, and think of me again as a sort of second Harry? Some day—perhaps before long—you may choose another guardian for yourself, but till then, till the day when that fortunate person takes out or my hands the very little I can do for you, will you not try to feel towards me as you did before I so deplorably forgot myself?
“The day you speak of will never come,” said Marion; and the words, notwithstanding his soreness of heart, fell pleasantly on Geoffrey’s ears. “I tell you I am not like other girls. I am like an old woman, and my heart, if not dead, is dying. There now, I have told you more than I ever told anyone. I will try to forget that you were so silly. Some dayyouwill find some one far nicer than I to make you happy, and I shall be great friends with her. So let us forget all this. Now good-bye”—for by this time they were nearly at the Cross House—“good-bye. Don’t think me unkind.”
Geoffrey smiled kindly—forced himself to do so—as he parted from her. Something in the smile sent a little pang through the girl’s heart, for it was after all a very tender one.
“HaveI been unkind?” she asked herself. “Is there more depth in him than I have given him credit for? Can he really be feeling this very much?”
And the misgiving did her good; recalled her a little from the self-absorption in which at this season it appeared as if her nature were about to be swamped.
She could not help thinking a good deal about Geoffrey that evening as she sat with her aunt, busy in repairing for that lady some fine old lace, Miss Tremlett having discovered that the girl’s young eyes and neat hands were skilful at such work. It was a very tiresome occupation, and her head ached long before the task was completed. But she had leisure to think while she worked, a luxury she had learnt to esteem highly of late; for Miss Tremlett was engrossed this evening with a new and most interesting three-volumer fresh from the circulating library behind the post office. And while the elder lady was absorbed by the loves and adventures of imaginary heroes and heroines, the younger one was picturing to herself for the thousandth time the happiness that might have been hers but for the mysterious obstacles that had intervened; from time to time, too, thinking sadly of the new cloud that had overshadowed her life, in the bitter disappointment she, on her side, had been the means of inflicting on another. The reflection took her a little out of herself. Her cry this evening was not merely as it had been for long, “Poor Marion!” It contained also a more unselfish refrain. “Poor Geoffrey!” she said to herself, “I cannot forgive myself for having made him unhappy.Asunhappy, perhaps, as Ralph’s strange, cruel silence has made me.”
Some days passed without anything being seen or heard of Mr. Baldwin at the Cross House. Marion began to wonder if really their pleasant friendship was to be at an end, and to reproach herself not a little, not for what she had done—concerning that she not the shadow of a misgiving—but for the way in which she had done it.
These days Geoffrey spent at home in no very happy state of mind. He was furious not with Marion!—but with himself for his own suicidal haste, which truly, as Veronica had warned him, had “spoilt all.” He was more thoroughly miserable than one could have believed possible for so sunny a nature. He dared not even go with the burden of his woes and misdeeds to his sympathising friend and adviser: for would she not truly be more than human did she not turn upon him with the cry more exasperating to bear than were to the “patient man” the many words of his three friends, the reproach we are all so ready to utter, so unwilling to hear—“I told you so.”
But in some respects Miss Veronica was more than human, and when Geoffrey at last mustered sufficient courage to make his grievous confession, she, instead of irritating or depressing him further by undeniably truthful but nevertheless useless reproaches, set to work like a sensible woman as he was, to help the poor fellow to make the best of the affair he had so greatly mismanaged. Possibly, in her inmost heart she was not sorry to be relieved to some extent of the responsibility she had found so weighty; for, though most earnest in her anxiety for Geoffrey’s success she yet, as I have said, felt uncertain as to the precise extent to which she was called upon to work for it.
He told her the whole story, for he was not given to half confidences. What he had said, and how Marion had answered. In the girl’s replies Veronica discerned something deeper Geoffrey had discovered. They told of more than mere disinclination to think of her young guardian in any more tender relation. Girls of nineteen do not speak so bitterly as Marion had spoken to Geoffrey unless they have had, or fancied they have had, some very disappointing, heart trying experience reverse side of the picture of “that sort of thing,” as Miss Vere called it. These suspicions however were not new to Miss Temple, and she wisely kept them to herself. She confined her advice to Geoffrey to impressing upon him the extreme expediency of not allowing this unfortunate disclosure of his to make any difference in the relations hitherto existing between his ward and himself.
“It is not only expedient,” she said, “it is most distinctly yourdutyto let the poor child see that you were most thoroughly in earnest when you asked her, as you did, to forget all this, and think of you again ‘as a sort of another Harry.’ Think only of her very desolate position! Save for you and her young brother actually friendless in the world. You, Geoffrey, of all men, are the last to wish another to suffer for your inconsiderate conduct, as assuredly she would, if you allowed this to affect your friendship.”
To which Geoffrey replied that it was his most earnest wish that, at whatever cost to himself, Miss Vere should learn again to trust and rely on him, as she had done hitherto.
“I only fear,” he added, “that it will be impossible for her to do so. Shesaidshe should never feel comfortable with me again.”
“Oh, yes,” replied Veronica, “but when she said that she was startled and distressed. There is no fear but what she will soon be quite happy and at ease with you—learn probably to esteem you more highly than before, for she is the sort of girl thoroughly to appreciate manly generosity of the kind—if only you do not allow time for the unavoidable feeling of awkwardness at first, to stiffen into lasting coldness and constraint. Do not put off seeing her. If you can arrange with Margaret and Georgie Copley to ride to-morrow, I will ask them here to luncheon in the first place, so that you can avoid the embarrassment of a tête-à-tête just at the very first.”
Geoffrey thanked Veronica warmly and promised for the future implicitly to follow her advice.
So it came to pass that the following day, somewhat to her surprise, Marion received a note from Mr. Baldwin, saying that at the usual hour the Misses Copley escorted by himself would call for her at the Cross House; as they had arranged to have a good long ride out past Brackley village in the direction of the Old Abbey.
“I am glad he has made up his mind to besensible, was Marion’s reflection. “Really he is very good, and I hope he will soon fall in love with somebody much nicer and prettier than I.”
When they met, Geoffrey look just the same as usual.
“In better spirits than ever,” the Copley girls pronounced him. Even Marionhardlydetected the forcedness in his merriment, the want of ring in his usually irresistibly hearty laugh. He did his very utmost in his unselfish anxiety to set her thoroughly at ease. Only he could not help the crimson flush thatwouldoverspread his fair, boyish face when she addressed him specially, or when, once or twice, their hands came in contact as he arranged her reins or helped her in mounting and descending from the rather imposing attitude of Bessy’s back. Marion heartily wished the bay mare were a pony that day; for in a perverse spirit of independence she chose to attempt to mount by herself; which endeavour, as under the circumstances might have been predicted, resulted in utter failure, and an ignominious descent into—of all places in the world—Geoffrey Baldwin’s arms! Oh, how angry Marion was!
She did not feel much inclined for talking. Nor was she much called upon to do so. Her companions, all three, chattered incessantly. She hardly heard what they were saying, when a question from Margaret Copley recalled her to herself. They were passing near the ruined abbey at Brackley, two or three miles distant from the present residence of its owners.
“Have you have seen the New Abbey, Miss Vere?” asked Margaret. “It is only called New, you know, in contradistinction to the ruin, for in reality it is a couple of hundred years old itself.”
“No, I have never seen it,” replied Marion, “is it worth seeing?”
“Not in itself. The house is nothing, but the pictures are good. It has been shut up for ever so long—five or six years at least. Lord Brackley fancies it does not suit him, so he lives almost always near his son, who is married and has a beautiful place belonging to his wife. Some day you must come with us and see Brackley Abbey. You are fond of pictures, I know.”
“And understands a good deal more about them than either you or I, Margaret,” said Georgie good-humouredly. “To tell the truth, what I go to the Abbey for is to gossip with the fanny old housekeeper. We were there the other day, and I declare I thought I should never get away from her. She told me the history of every family in the county.”
“Yes, indeed,” resumed Margaret, “she is a wonderful old body. By-the-by, Miss Vere, she had heard ofyouradvent in the neighbourhood, and was very curious to hear all about you. She remembered your mother, she said.”
“And I am sure she asked you if I was a beauty like my mother,” said Marion, laughing, “now didn’t she, Miss Copley? Only you didn’t like to say so, for you could not with any truth have said I was! Don’t you really think, Mr. Baldwin, it is rather a misfortune to have had a great beauty for one’s mother?”
“As bad as being the son of a remarkably clever man of business?” suggested Geoffrey.
“Very nearly, but not quite. For only think what terrible things have been entailed on you by your being your father’s son,” said Marion maliciously.
Geoffrey was pleased to see her sufficiently at ease to be mischievous, and replied to her remark by a kindly glance. Then Georgie Copley took up the strain.
“Old Mrs. What’s-her-name—what is her name, I always forget it?—the housekeeper, I mean, was full of a marriage that was to be in the family shortly. That is to say not in the family exactly but a near connection, Sir Ralph Severn, Lord Brackley’s step nephew. By-the-by, I dare say you know him, Geoffrey? He used to come here sometimes several years ago, before the Abbey was shut up. We were in the schoolroom, but I remember seeing him. It was long before he got the title.”
“I never met him,” said Mr. Baldwin. “Whom is he going to marry?”
“A sort of cousin of his own,” replied Georgie, “a Miss Vyse. A very beautiful girl, Mrs. Hutton—that’s her name—said. The old body made quite a romance out of it. This girl’s father, it appears, was in old days the lover of the present Lady Severn. But she was not allowed to marry him as she was an heiress. She used to be here a good deal with her step-brother when she was a girl, that is how Mrs. Hutton knows all about her. It sounds quite like a story-book, does it not? The children of the two poor things marrying, all these years after.”
“Very romantic, indeed,” said Geoffrey. “Particularly as the lady is beautiful.”
“Exceedingly beautiful,” said Miss Copley. “She has been living with Lady Severn for some time, for she has no home of her own. Every one has been surprised at the marriage not being announced sooner, Mrs. Hutton said. She had only just heard of it in some round-about way, and she was quite full of it.”
Then they talked about other things, and did not observe Marion’s increased silence, which lasted till they said goodbye to her at the door of the Cross House. A few days previously, when she had said to Geoffrey decisively that “allthatsort of thing” was done with for her, “altogether and entirely,” she had meant what she said and believed her own assertion.
Now, when she hurried upstairs to her own bedroom in the dingy Mallingford House, and sat down on the hard floor in her muddy riding-habit, with but one wish in her mind—to be alone, out of the reach of curious, unsympathetic eyes—Now, I say, when at last she felt free to think over, to realize what she had heard, she knew that it was not true what she had said. Far from being “done with for her,” on the secret, unacknowledged hope that for her a happy day was yet to dawn when all the mystery would be explained, all the suffering more than compensated for by the blessedness of the present—on this hope she had in truth been living, through all these weary months. And now that it was rudely thus snatched away, that all was indeed for ever,over, what was there left for her to do, poor weary, heartbroken wanderer in a very strange and desolate land—but to lie down and die?
* * * * * *
“But all did leaven the airWith a less bitter leaven of sure despair,Than these words—‘I loved once.’ ”
MRS.BROWNING.