Winifred had kissed the young mother almost with emotion in the midst of her pleading; but somehow this return of the embrace gave a slight shock both to her delicacy and pride. She laughed a little and coloured when Miss Farrell, after the door closed, looked at her astonished. “You think I have grown into wonderful intimacy with Mrs. George?” she said.
“I do indeed, Winnie. My dear, I would not interfere, but you must not let your kind heart carry you too far.”
“Oh, my kind heart!” cried the girl, feeling a desperate irony in the words. “She suggests that they should live with me,” she added, turning her head away.
“Live with you? Winnie! my dear!” Miss Farrell gasped, with a sharp break between each word.
“She thinks it will arrange itself so, quite simply—oh, it is quite simple! Dear Miss Farrell, don’t say anything. I have been pushing it off. I have been pretending to be ill because I was miserable. Let me get up now—and don’t say anything,” she added after a moment, with lips that trembled in spite of herself. “There are no—letters; no one—has been here?”
“Nothing, Winnie.” Her friend did not look at her; she dared not betray her too profound sympathy, her personal anguish, even by a kiss.
When Winifred came downstairs she found Mr. Babington waiting for her. He was a very old acquaintance, whom she had not been used to think of as a friend; but trouble makes strange changes in the aspect of things aroundus, turning sometimes those whom we have loved most into strangers, and lighting up faces that have been indifferent to us with new lights of compassion and sympathy. Mr. Babington’s formal manner, his well-known features, so composed and commonplace, his grey, keen eyes under their bushy eyebrows, suddenly took a new appearance to Winifred. They seemed to shine upon her with the warmth of ancient friendship. She had known him all her life, yet, it seemed, had never known him till to-day. He came to meet her, holding out his hand, with some kind, ordinary questions about her health, but all the while a light put out, as it were, at the windows of his soul, to help her, another poor soul stumbling along in the darkness. It was not anything that he said, nor that she said. She did not ask for any help, nor he offer it; and yet in a moment Winifred felt herself, in her mind, clinging tohim with the sense that here was an old, old friend, somebody, above all doubt and uncertainty, in whom she could trust.
“Miss Winifred,” he said, “I am afraid, though you don’t seem much like it, that we must talk of business.”
“Yes; I wish it, Mr. Babington. I am only foolish and troubled—not ill at all.”
“I am not so sure about that; but still— Your brother Tom has been warning me, Miss Winifred— I hope to save you from a false step; that you are thinking of—going against your father’s will”—
“Did Tom tell you so, Mr. Babington?”
“He did. I confess that I was not surprised. I have expected you to do so all along; but so fine a fortune as you have got is not to be lightly parted with, my dear young lady. Think of all the power it gives you, power to do good, to increase the happiness, or at leastthe comfort, perhaps of hundreds of people. If it was in your brothers’ hands, do you think it would be used as well? We must think of that, Miss Winifred, we must think of that.”
“If it was in my power,” she said, looking at him wistfully, “I should think rather of what is just. Can anything be good that is founded upon injustice? Oh, Mr. Babington, put yourself in my place! Could you bear to take away from your brother, from any one, what was his by nature—to put yourself in his seat, to take it from him, to rob him?”
“Hush, hush, my dear girl! I am afraid I have not a conscience so delicate as yours. I could bear a great deal which does not seem bearable to you. And you must remember it is no doing of yours. Your father thought, and I agree with him, that you would make a better use of his money, and do more credit to his name, than either of your brothers. Itthrows a fearful responsibility upon you, we may allow; but still, my dear Miss Winifred”—
“Mr. Babington,” she cried, interrupting him, “you are my oldest friend—oh yes, my oldest friend! You know, if I am forced to do this, it will only be deceiving from beginning to end. I will only pretend to obey. I will be trying all the time, as I am now, to find out ways of defeating all his purposes, and doing—what he said I was not to do!”
Her eyes shone almost wildly through the tears that stood in them. She changed colour from pale to red, from red to pale; her weakness gave her the guise of impassioned strength.
“Miss Winifred,” said the lawyer very gravely, “do you know that you are guilty of the last imprudence in saying this, of all people in the world, to me?”
“Oh,” she cried, “you are my friend, my old friend! I never remember the time whenI did not know you. It is not imprudent, it is my only hope. Think a little of me first, whom you knew long before this will was made. Tell me how I can get out of the bondage of it. Teach me, teach me how to cheat everybody, for that is all that is left to me! how to keep it from them so as best to give it to them. Teach me! for there is no one I can ask but you.”
The lawyer looked at her with a very serious face. Her great emotion, her trembling earnestness, the very force of her appeal, as of one consulting her only oracle, hurt the good man with a sympathetic pain. “My dear,” he said, “God forbid I should refuse you my advice, or misunderstand you, you who are far too good for any of them. But, Miss Winifred, think again, my dear. Are you altogether a free agent? Is there not some one else who has a right to be consulted before you take astep—which may change the whole course of your life?”
Winifred grew so pale that he thought she was going to faint, and got up hurriedly to ring the bell. She stopped him with a movement of her hand. Then she said firmly, “There is no one; no one can come between me and my duty. I will consult nobody—but you.”
“My dear young lady, excuse me if I speak too plainly; but want of confidence between two people that are in the position of”—
“You mean,” she said faintly yet steadily, “Dr. Langton? Mr. Babington, he has no duty towards George and Tom. I love them—how can I help it? they are my brothers; but he—why should he love them? I don’t expect it—I can’t expect it. I must settle this by myself.”
“And yet he will be the one to suffer,” saidthe lawyer reflectively in a parenthesis. “My dear Miss Winifred, take a little time to think it over, there is no cause for hurry; take a week, take another day. Think a little”—
“I have done nothing but think,” she said, “since you told me first. Thinking kills me, I cannot go on with it; and you can’t tell—oh, you can’t tell how it harmsthem, what it makes them do and say! Tom”—(here her voice was stifled by the rising sob in her throat) “and all of them,” she cried hastily. “Oh, tell me how to be done with it, to settle it so that there shall be no more thinking, no more struggling!” She clasped her hands with a pathetic entreaty, and looked imploringly at him. And she bore in her face the signs of the struggle which she pleaded to be freed from. Her face had the parched and feverish look of anxiety, its young, soft outline had grown pinched and hollow, and all thecheerful glow of health had faded. The lawyer looked at her with genuine tenderness and pity.
“My poor child,” he said, “one can very well see that this great fortune, which your poor father believed was to make you happy, has brought anything but happiness to you.”
She gave him a little pathetic smile, and shook her head; but she was not able to speak.
“Then, Miss Winifred,” he said cheerfully, “since you are certain that you don’t want it, and won’t have it, and have made up your mind to do nothing but scheme and plot to frustrate the will, even when you are seeming to obey it,—I think I know a better way. Write down what you mean to do with the property, and leave the rest to me.”
She looked at him, roused by his words, with an awakening thrill of wonder. “Write down—what I mean to do? But that willmake me helpless to do it; that will risk everything; or so you said.”
“I said true. Nevertheless, if you are sure you wish, at the bottom of your heart, to sacrifice yourself to your brothers”—
She shook her head half angrily, with a gesture of impatience. “To give them back their rights.”
“That means the same thing in your phraseology. If that is what you really wish, do what I say, and leave the rest to me.”
She looked at him for a moment, bewildered, then rose up hastily and flew to the writing-table. How easy it was to do it! how blessed if only it were possible to throw this weight once for all off her shoulders, and be free!
THIS was in the morning, and nothing further happened until the afternoon. Winifred, though she was tremulous with weakness, had her pony carriage brought round, and went out, taking Miss Farrell with her. They went sometimes slowly, sometimes like the wind, as their conversation flagged or came to a point of interest. They had much to say to each other, and argued over and over again the same question. They went round and round the park, and along a bit of road between the Brentwood gate and the one that was called the Hollyport. Winifred’s ponies seemed to take that way without any will of hers. Wasit without her will? But, if not, it was quite ineffectual. The long road stretched white on either side, disappearing here and there round the corner of the woods; but there was no one visible, one way or the other—no one whom the ladies wished to see. Once, indeed, as they approached the farthest gate on their return, some one riding quickly, at a pace only habitual to one person they knew, appeared on the brow of the Brentwood hill coming towards them. The reins shook in Winifred’s hands. She let her ponies fall into a walk, not so much of set purpose as because her wrists had lost all power; and the reins lay on the necks of the little pair, who, like other pampered servants, did no more work than they were obliged to do. The horseman came steadily down the hill, and disappeared in the hollow, from which he would naturally reappear again and meet them before many minutes. But he did not reappear.The ladies lingered, the ponies took advantage of the moment of weakness to draw aside to the edge of the road and munch grass, as if they were uncertain of their daily corn. But no one came by that way. They had not said anything to each other, nor had either said a word to show that she was aware of any meaning in this pause. When, however, there was no disguising that it was futile, Winifred said, almost under her breath, “He must have gone round by the other way.”
“I heard there was some one ill at the Manor Farm,” said Miss Farrell, with a quick catching of her breath.
“That will be the reason,” Winifred said, with a dreary calm, and she said no more, nor was any name mentioned between them as they drove quietly home. Old Hopkins came out to the steps as she gave the groom the reins.
“If you please, Miss Winifred, Mr. Babingtonhas been asking for you. He said, would you please step into the library as soon as you came back. The gentlemen,” Hopkins added after a pause, with much gravity, “is both there.”
“Will you come, Miss Farrell?” Winifred said.
“If I could be of any use to you, my darling; but I could not, and you would rather that no one was there.”
“Perhaps,” said Winifred, with a sigh. Yet it was forlorn to see her in her deep mourning, walking slowly in her weakness, alone and deserted, though with so much depending on her. She went into the library without even taking off her hat. Mr. Babington was seated there at what had been her father’s writing-table, and Tom and George were both with him. Tom stood before the fire, with that air of assumption which he had never put off—the rightful-heir aspect, determined to stand upon his rights. George had his wife with him asusual, and sat with her whispering and consulting at the other end of the room. Mr. Babington had been writing; he had a number of papers before him, but evidently, from the silence, only broken by the undertones of George and his wife, which prevailed, had put off all explanations until Winifred was present. Neither of the brothers stirred when she entered. George had forgotten, in the composure of a husband whose wife requires none of the delicacies of politeness from him, those civilities which men in other circumstances instinctively pay to women, and Tom was too much out of temper and too deeply opposed to his sister to show her any attention. Mr. Babington rose and gave her a chair.
“Sit here, Miss Winifred. I shall want to place various things very clearly before you,” he said. “Now, will you all give me your attention?” His voice subdued Mrs. George, whohad sprung up to go to her sister-in-law with a beaming smile of familiarity. She fell back with a little alarm into her chair at her husband’s side.
“You are all aware of the state of affairs up to this point,” Mr. Babington said. “Your father’s large fortune, left in succession, first to one and then to the other of his sons, to be withdrawn from both as they in turn displeased him, has been finally left to Miss Winifred, whom he thought the most likely of his three children to do him credit and spend his money fitly. Exception may be taken to what he did, but none, in my opinion, to the reason. He thought of that more than anything else, and he chose what seemed to him the best means to have what he wanted.”
“He must have been off his head; I shall never believe anything else, though there may not be enough evidence,” Tom said.
“I daresay my father was right,” said George in his despondent voice.
“I think, from his point of view, your father was quite right; but there are many things that men, when they make their wills, don’t take into consideration. They think, for one thing, that their heirs will feel as they do, and that they have an absolute power to make themselves obeyed. This, unfortunately, they very often fail to do. Miss Winifred becomes heir under a condition with which she refuses to comply.”
“Mr. Babington!” Winifred said, putting her hand on his arm.
“You may trust to me, my dear. The condition is, that she is not, under any circumstances, to share the property with her brothers, or to interfere in any way with the testator’s arrangements for them. This she refuses to do.”
“Don’t be a fool, Winnie!” cried Tom. “Pass over that, please. We all know whatyou mean, and that she’s to pose as our benefactor, and to receive our eternal gratitude, and so forth.”
“I think it would be a great pity if Winnie took any rash step,” George said.
Mr. Babington looked round upon them with a smile. “She wishes,” he said, “to give the landed property, Bedloe, to her brother George, and to make up an equivalent to it in money for Mr. Tom there. These are the arrangements she proposes to me—the sole executor, you will observe, charged to carry your father’s will into effect.” He took up one of the papers as he spoke, and with a smile, caught in his own the hand which she once more tremulously put forth to interrupt him. “Here is the proposal written in her own hand,” he said. “Miss Winifred, you must trust to me; I am acting for the best. Naturally this puts an end to her, as her father’s heir.”
Here there arose a confused tumult round the little group in the middle of the room. Mrs. George was the first to make herself heard. She burst forth into sobs and tears.
“Oh! after all she’s promised to do for us! after all she’s said for the children! Oh, George! go and do something, stand up for your sister. Don’t let it be robbed away from her, after all she’s promised. Oh, George! Oh, Miss Winnie! remember what you’ve promised!—and what is to become of Georgie?” the young mother cried.
“Mr. Babington,” said George, “I don’t think it’s right to take advantage of my sister because she’s foolish and generous. Who is it to go to if you take it from her? Let one of us at least have the good of it. I don’t want her to give me Bedloe. She could be of use to us without that.”
Tom had burst into a violent laugh of despite and despair. “If that’s what it’s to come to,” he said, “we’ll go to law all of us. Winnie too, by Jove! No one can say we’re not a united family now.”
Winifred sat with her eyes fixed on the old lawyer’s face. She said nothing, and if there was a tremor in her heart too, did not express it, though already there began to arise dull whispers—Ought she to have done it? Was it her duty? Was this in reality the way to serve them best?
“The law is open to whoever seeks its aid—when they have plenty of money,” said Mr. Babington quickly. “You ask a very pertinent question, Mr. George. It is one which never has been put to me before by any of the persons most concerned.”
This statement fell among them with a thrill like an electric shock. It silenced Tom’s nervous laughter and Mrs. George’s sobs. They instinctively drew near with a bewildering expectation, although they knew not what their expectation was.
“Mr. Chester,” said the lawyer, “like most men, thought he had plenty of time before him, and he did not understand much about the law. I am bound to add that in this particular he got little information from me; and the consequence was that he forgot, in God’s providence, to assign any heirs, failing Miss Winifred. It was a disgrace to my office to let such a document go out of it,” he added, with a twinkle in his eyes, “but so it was. He thought perhaps that he would live for ever, or that at least he’d see his daughter’s children, or that she would do implicitly what he told her, or something else as silly—begging your pardon; all men are foolish where wills are concerned.”
There was another pause. Mr. Babington leant back in his chair, so much at his easeand leisure, that he looked like a benevolent grandfather discoursing to his children round him. They surrounded him, a group of silent and anxious faces. Tom was the one who thought he knew the most. He asked, with a voice which sounded parched in his throat, moistening his lips to get the words out, “Who gets the property, then?” bringing out the question with a rush.
Mr. Babington turned his back upon Tom. He addressed himself to George, whose face had no prevision in it, but was only dully, quietly anxious, as was habitual to him. George knew little about the law. He was not in the way of expecting much. Whatever new thing might come, it was in all likelihood a little worse than the old. He was vexed and grieved that Winnie, who certainly would have been kind to him and his children, was not to have the money; but he had not an idea in his mind as to what, failing her, its destination would be.
“Mr. George Chester,” he said, “you are the eldest son; your father, I suppose, had his reasons for cutting you out, but those reasons I hope don’t exist now. As your sister refuses to accept the condition under which the property comes to her, and as your father made no provision for such a contingency, it follows that the will is not worth the paper it is written on, and that Mr. Chester as good as died intestate, if you know what that means.”
Tom, who had been listening intently over Mr. Babington’s shoulder, threw up his clenched hands with a loud exclamation. Into George’s blank face there crept a tremor as of light coming. Winifred and Mrs. George sat unmoved except by curiosity and wonder, unenlightened, trying to read, as women do, the meaning in the face of the speaker, but uninformed by the words.
“If I know what that means? Intestate? I don’t think I do know what it means.”
“You fool!” his brother cried.
“It means,” said Mr. Babington, “a kind of natural justice more or less, at least in the present circumstances. When a man dies intestate, his landed property (I’ll spare you law terms) goes without question to his eldest son—which you are—and natural representative. The personalty, that is the money, you know, is divided. Do you understand now what I mean? The personal property is far more than the real in this case, so it will make a very just and equal division. And now, Miss Winnie, tell me if I have not managed well for you? Are you satisfied now to have trusted yourself to your old friend?”
“George, George! I don’t understand. What’s to be divided? What do we get?” cried Mrs. George, standing up, the tears only half dried in her eyes, her rose tints coming back to her face.
George was so startled and overwhelmed by information which entered but slowly into an intelligence confused by ill-fortune, that for the moment he made his wife no reply; but Tom did, who had already fully savoured all the sweets and bitters of this astounding change of affairs.
“Mrs. Chester,” he said, with an ironical bow, “you get Bedloe, my father’s place, that he never would have let you set foot in, if he could have helped it, poor old governor. And the rest of us get—our due; oh yes, we get our due. I know I was a fool and didn’t keep his favour when I had got it; and you, Winnie, you traitor, oh, you traitor! There isn’t a female for the word, is there? it should be female altogether. You that he put his last trust in, poor old governor! you’ve served him out the best of any of us,” said Tom, with a burst of violent laughter, “and there’s an end of him and all his schemes!” he cried.
Winifred rose up tremulous. There was perhaps in her heart too an echo of Tom’s rage and sense of wrong. This woman, the reverse of all that her father’s ambition (vulgar ambition, yet so strong) had hoped for, to be the mistress of the house! And Bedloe, which Winnie loved, to pass away to a family which had rubbed off and forgotten even the little gloss of artificial polish which Mr. Chester had procured for his sons. She would have given it to them had the power been in her hands, she had always intended it, never from the first moment meant anything else. And yet when all was thus arranged according to her wish, above her hopes, Winifred felt, to the bottom of her heart, that to give up her home to Mrs. George was a thing not to be accomplished without a thrill of indignation, a sense of wrong. And the very relief which filled her soul brought back to her those individual miseries which thisblessed decision (for it was a blessed decision though cruel) could not take away. She made Tom no reply. She scarcely returned the pressure of Mr. Babington’s kind hand. She said not a word to the agitated, triumphant, yet astonished pair, who could not yet understand what good fortune had happened to them. She went straight out of the library to Miss Farrell’s room. She still wore her hat and outdoor dress. She took her old friend’s hand, and drew her out of the chair in which she had been seated, watching for every opening of the door. “Come,” she said, “come away.”
“What has happened, Winnie? What has happened?”
“Everything that is best. George has got Bedloe. It is all right, all right, better than any one could have hoped. And I shall not sleep another night under this roof. Dear Miss Farrell, if you love me, come away, come away!”
EDWARD LANGTON had never meant to forsake his love. He intended no more to give her up because she did not agree with him, because he thought her mistaken, or even because she had rejected his guidance and wounded his pride, than he meant to give up his life. But he had been very deeply wounded by her acceptance of his withdrawal at that critical moment. She had not chosen to put him, her natural defender, between her brothers and herself. She had refused, so his thoughts went on to say, his intervention. She had preferred to keep her interests separate from his, to give him no share in what might be the mostimportant act of her life. He would not believe it possible when he left her. As he crossed the hall and hurried down the avenue, he thought every moment that he heard some one, a messenger hastening after him to bring him back. But there was no such messenger. He expected next morning a letter of explanation, of apology, at least of invitation imploring him not to forsake her—but there was none. While Winifred’s heart sank lower and lower at the absence of any communication from him, he was waiting with a mingled sense of dismay, astonishment, and indignation for something from her. It seemed incredible to him that she should not write to soothe away his offence, to explain herself. His first sensation indeed had been that the offence given to him was deadly and not to be explained, and that she who would not have him to help her in her trouble, could not want him in her life; butbefore the next morning came he had reasoned himself into a certainty that he should have as full an explanation as it was possible to make, that she would excuse herself by means of a hundred arguments which his own reason suggested to him, and call him to her with every persuasion of love. But nothing of the kind took place— Winifred, sick and miserable, awaited on her side the letter, the inquiry which never came, and felt herself forsaken at the moment when every generous heart, she thought, must have felt how much she needed support and sympathy. She did not want his interference; she had been able to manage her family business—to do without him; he had beende tropbetween her brothers and herself. Then let it be so! he said at last to himself, and plunged into his work, riding hither and thither, visiting even patients who needed him no longer, to prove to himself thathe was too much and too seriously offended to care. To be sure, he was not the man to stand cap in hand and plead for her favour.
He went over all the district in those three days, dashing along the roads, hurrying from one hamlet to another. It was not the life he had been so foolish as to imagine to himself, the life—he felt himself blush hotly at the recollection—of the master of Bedloe, restoring the prestige of the old name, changing the aspect of the district, ameliorating everything as only (he thought) a man who was born the friend and master of the place could do. It had been an ideal life which he had imagined for himself, not one of selfishness. He had meant to brighten the very face of the country, to mend everything that needed mending, to do good to the poor people, who were his own people. He remembered now that there were those who thought it humiliating and base for a man to be enriched by his wife,and the subtle contempt of women embodied in that popular prejudice rose up in hot and painful shame to his heart and his face. A man is never so sure that women are inferior, as when a woman has neglected or played him false. Edward Langton’s heart was very sore, but he began to say to himself that it served him right for his meanness in depending on a woman, and that a man ought to be indebted to his own exertions and not look for advancement in so humiliating a way. These thoughts grew more and more bitter as the days went on. He flung himself into his work: an epidemic would have pleased him better than the mild little ailments or lingering chronic diseases which were the only visitations known among those healthy country folk; but such as they were he made the most of them, frightening the sick people by the unnecessary energy of his attendance, and saying to himself that this,and not a fiction of the imagination or anything so degrading as a wife’s fortune, was his true life. That he flew about the country without many a lingering unwilling look towards Bedloe, it would be false to say. His way wherever he went led him past the park gates, which he found always closed, silent, giving no sign. On the one occasion when Winifred perceived him descending the hill, by one of those hazards which continually arise to confuse human affairs, he, for the moment half-happy in the entrancement of a case which presented dangerous complications, did not see or recognise the little pony carriage lingering under the russet trees, and thus missed the only chance of a meeting and explanation; but he did meet, when that chance was over, next day, in the afternoon, Mr. Babington driving his heavy old phaeton from the gates of Bedloe. Langton’s heart gave a leap evenat this means of hearing something of Winnie; but perhaps his pride would still have prevented any clearing up, had not the old lawyer taken it into his own hands. He stopped his horse and waited till Edward, who was walking home from the house of a patient in the village, came up.
“I want to speak to you,” Mr. Babington said. “Will you jump up and come with me along the road, or will you offer me your hospitality and a bit of dinner? There is full moon to-night and I don’t mind being late. Oh, if it’s not convenient, never mind.”
Edward’s pride had made him hesitate—his good breeding came to his aid, showing it to be inevitable that he should obey the hungry longing of his heart.
“Certainly it is convenient, and I am too glad—drive on to my house, and I shall be with you in a moment.”
Though he had felt it to be his only salvationto hold fast by his profession and present tenor of existence, Langton’s heart beat loud as he hurried on. Now, he said to himself, he should know what it meant, now he should have some light thrown upon the position at least which Winifred had assumed.
Mr. Babington, however, ate his dinner, which was simple and not over-abundant, having been prepared for the doctor alone, with steady composure, and it was only when the meal was over that he opened out. Langton had apologised, as was inevitable, for the simple fare.
“Don’t say a word,” said the lawyer, with a wave of his hand. “It was all excellent, and I’m glad to see you’ve such a good cook. You don’t know what a comfort it is to come out of a confused house likethat, with lengthy fine dinners that nobody understands, to a comfortable chop which a man can enjoy and which it is a pleasure to see.”
“Bedloe was not a confused house in former days,” said Langton, with a feeling that Winifred’s credit was somehow assailed.
“Ah, nothing is as it was in former days,” said Mr. Babington, shaking his head; “everything is topsy-turvy now. I suppose you know all about the last turn the affair has taken. I wonder you were not there, though, to support poor Miss Winifred, poor thing, who has had a great deal to go through.”
“You will be surprised,” said Langton, forcing a somewhat pale smile, “if I tell you that I don’t know anything about it. Miss Chester preferred that the question between her brothers and herself should be settled among themselves. And perhaps she was right.”
“My dear Langton,” said Mr. Babington, laying his hand on the young man’s arm, “I hope there’s no coolness on this account between that poor girl and you?”
“I see no reason why she should be called a poor girl,” Langton said quickly.
“Ah, well, you have not seen her then during the last two or three days. Poor thing! between making the best of these fellows, and struggling to keep up a show of following her father’s directions—between acting false and meaning true”—
“Mr. Babington,” said Langton, with a dryness in his throat, “unhappily, as you say, there has been—no coolness, thank Heaven—but a little—a momentary silence between Miss Chester and me. Perhaps I have been to blame. I thought she— Tell me what has happened, and how everything is settled, for pity’s sake!”
“Yes,” said the old lawyer, “I haven’t the slightest doubt, my young friend, that you have been to blame. That is why the poor child looked so white and pathetic when she said tome that she had no one to consult. When you come to have girls of your own,” Mr. Babington said somewhat severely, “you’ll know how it feels to see a little young creature you are fond of look like that.”
Heaven and earth! as if all the old fogeys in the world, if they had a thousand daughters, could feel half what a young lover feels! The blood rose to young Langton’s temples, but he did not trust himself to reply.
“Well,” Mr. Babington continued, “it’s all comfortably settled at the last. I had my eye on this solution all along. I may say it was my doing all along, for I carefully refrained from pointing out to him what of course, in an ordinary way, it would have been my duty to point out—that in case of Miss Winifred’s refusal there was no after settlement. You don’t understand our law terms, perhaps? Well, it was just this, that if she refused to accept, therewas no provision for what was to follow. I knew all along she would never accept to cut out her brothers—so here we come to a dead stop. He had not prepared for that contingency. I don’t believe he ever thought of it. She had obeyed him all her life, and he thought she would obey him after he was dead. She refused the condition, and here we are in face of a totally different state of affairs. The other wills were destroyed, and this was as good as destroyed by her refusal. What is to be done then but to return to the primitive condition of the matter? He dies intestate, the property is divided, and everybody, with the exception of that scamp Tom, is content.”
“I don’t understand,” Langton said: it was true so far, that the words were like an incoherent murmur in his ears—but even while he spoke, the meaning came to his mind like a flash of light. He had put aside all such(as he said to himself) degrading imaginations, and had made up his mind that his work was his life, and that a country doctor he was, and should remain; but, all the same, the sensation of knowing that Bedloe had become unattainable in fact and certainty, not only by the temporary alienation of a misunderstanding, went through his heart like a sudden knife.
“I can make you understand in a moment,” said Mr. Babington. “Miss Winifred made the will void by refusing to fulfil its condition, and no provision had been made for that emergency; therefore, in fact, it is as if poor Chester had never made a will at all: in which case the landed property goes to the eldest son. The personalty is divided. They will all be very well off,” the lawyer added. “There is nothing to complain of, though Tom is wild that he is not the heir, and Miss Winifred, poor girl—she was very anxious to do justice, but whenit came to giving over her house to that pink-and-white creature, much too solid for her age, George’s wife—Well, it was her own doing; but she could not bear it, you know. Her going off like that left them all very much confused and bewildered, but I think on the whole it was the wisest thing she could do.”
“How going off?” cried Langton, starting to his feet.
“My dear fellow, didn’t you know? Come now, come now,” said the old lawyer, patting him on the arm, “this is carrying things too far. You should not have left her when she wanted all the support that was possible. And she should not have gone away without letting you know—but poor thing, poor thing! I don’t think she knew whether she was on her head or her heels. She couldn’t bear it. She just turned and fled and took no time to think.”
“Turned and fled? Do you mean to say—do you mean to tell me”— The young man, though he was no weakling, changed colour like a girl: his sunburnt, manly countenance showed a sudden pallor under the brown, something rose in his throat. He took a turn about the room in his sudden excitement, then came back, mastering himself as best he could. “I beg your pardon; this news is so unexpected, and everything is so strange. Of course,” he added, forcing himself into composure, “I shall hear.”
“Yes, of course you’ll hear; but if I were you, I should not wait to hear, I should insist on knowing, my young friend. Don’t let pride spoil your whole existence, as I’ve seen some things do with boys and girls. She is well enough off, to be sure. I wish my girls had the half or quarter of what she will have; but still it’s a come-down from Bedloe. And to give it up to Mrs. George, that was harder than she thought. She thought only of her brothers, youknow, till she saw the wife. What the wife did to disgust her, I can’t tell, but I’ve always noticed that when there are two women in a case like this, they always feel themselves pitted against each other, and the men count for nothing with them. As soon as the thing was done, Miss Winnie forgot her brother: she saw only Mrs. George, and to give up to her was a bitter pill. She is a good girl, and meant everything that was good, but Mrs. George is a bitter pill: when it came to that, she felt that she could not put up with it. And you were not there, excuse me for reminding you. And she took it into her head that everything was against her, as girls do—and fled. That is the worst of girls, they are so hasty. You will know when you have daughters of your own.”
Thus the good man went on maundering, quite unconscious that his companion could have risen and slain him every time that he mentioned thosedaughters of his own. What had his daughters to do with Winnie? Mr. Babington talked a great deal more on that and every branch of the subject, until it seemed to him that it was time “to be driving on,” as he said. And then Edward had leisure for the first time to contemplate the situation in which he found himself. Self-reproach, anger, disappointment, coursed through his veins. He was wroth with the woman he loved, wroth with himself: one moment attributing to her a desire to cast him off, a want of confidence in him which it was unendurable to think of; the next, bitterly blaming his own selfish pride, which had driven him from her at the moment of her need. The high tide of conflicting sentiments was so hot within him that he went out to walk off his excitement, returning, to the consternation of his household, an hour or more after midnight, the most unhallowed of all promenadings in the opinionof the country folk. When he got back again to his dim little surgery and study, returning, as it seemed, to a dull life deprived of her and of all things, and to the overmastering consciousness that she was gone from him, perhaps by his own fault, the young doctor had a moment of despair: then he rose up and struck his hand upon the table, and laughed aloud at himself. “Bah!” he said to himself; “nobody disappears at this time of day. What a fool one is! as if these were the middle ages! Wherever she has gone, she must have left an address!” He laughed loud and long, though his laugh was not mirthful, at this bringing down of his despair to the easy possibilities of modern life. That makes all the difference between tragedy, which is mediæval, and comedy, which is of our days: though the comedy of common living involves a great many tragedies in every age, and even in our own.
AN address is not everything: there must be the will and the power to write, there must be the letter produced, and the address obtained. The very first step was hard. To go up to Bedloe and ascertain from the brother, who was “that cad” to Langton, where Winifred had gone, and thus betray his ignorance and the separation between them—the idea of this was such a mortification and annoyance to him as it is difficult to describe. He could not bear to expose himself to their remarks, to perhaps their laughter, perhaps, worse still, their pity. A few days elapsed before he could screw up his courage tothis point, and when at last he did so, his brief and cold note was answered by George in person, whose dejected aspect bore none of the signs of triumph which Langton had expected.
“I was coming to ask you,” George said. “My sister went off in such a hurry she left no address. She left her maid to pack up her things. I did not even know she was going. It was a great disappointment to my wife and me. We should have been very glad to have had her to stay with us until—well, until her own affairs were settled. She would have been of great use to Alice,” George continued, with an unconscious gravity of egotism which was almost too simple to be called by that harsh name. “She could have put my wife up to a great many things: for we haven’t just been used, you know, to this sort of life, and it is very difficult to get into all the ways. And then the children were so good withWinnie, they took to her in a moment. Speaking of that, I wish you would just come up and look at Georgie. My wife thinks he is quite well, but I don’t quite like the little fellow’s look,” the anxious father said.
Langton was not mollified by this unexpected invitation. The idea of becoming medical attendant to George Chester’s children and at the beck and call of the new household at Bedloe filled him indeed with an unreasonable exasperation. He explained as coldly as he could that he did not “go in for” children’s ailments, and recommended Mr. Marlitt, of Brentwood, who was specially qualified to advise anxious parents. He was indeed so moved by the sight of the new master of Bedloe, that the purpose for which George had come was momentarily driven out of his head. Why it should be a grievance to him that George Chester was master of Bedloe hecould not of course have explained to any one. He had not been exasperated by George’s father. Disappointment, and the sharper self-shame with which he could not help remembering his own imaginations on the matter, joined with the sense of angry scorn with which he beheld the place which he had meant to fill so well, filled so badly by another. George thanked him warmly for recommending Dr. Marlitt, “though I am very sorry, and so will my wife be, that you don’t pay attention to that branch. Isn’t it a pity? for surely if anything is important, it’s the children,” he said in all good faith.
It was only after he was gone that Edward reflected that he had obtained no information. It soothed him a little to think that she had not let her brother know where she was going. It had been, then, a sudden impulse of disgust, a hasty step taken in a moment when she felt herself abandoned. Edward did not forgiveher, but yet he was soothed a little, even though excited and distressed beyond measure by his failure to know where she was. A day or two passed in the lethargy of this disappointment and perplexity as to what to do next. Then he thought of Mr. Babington. He wrote immediately to the old lawyer, begging him to find out at once where Winifred was. “I don’t ask if you can, for I know you must be able to do it. People don’t disappear in these days.”
But Mr. Babington, with a somewhat peevish question whether he knew how many people did disappear, in the Thames or otherwise, and were never heard of, in these famous days of ours, informed him that he knew nothing about Winifred’s whereabouts. She had gone abroad, and with Miss Farrell, that was all he knew. By this time Edward Langton had become very anxious and unhappy, ready almost to advertise in theTimesor take any other wildstep. He resolved to lose no further time, not to delay by writing, but to go off at once and find her as soon as he had the smallest clue. This clue was found at last through the bankers (for Langton was quite right in his certainty that people with a banking account who draw money never do really disappear in these days), who did not refuse to tell where the last remittances had been sent. He was so anxious by this time that he went up to London himself to make these inquiries, and came back again with the fullest determination to start at once in search of Winifred. He sent to Mr. Marlitt, of Brentwood, who was a young doctor, but recently established and much in want of patients, to ask whether he could take charge of the few sick folk at Bedloe, and made all his preparations to go. It was November by this time, and all the fields were heaped with fallen leaves. He had settled everythingeasily on the Saturday, and on Sunday night was going up to town in time to catch the Continental mail next day.
Then—according to the usual perversity of human affairs—the epidemic came all at once, which he had invoked some time before. It broke out on the very Saturday when all his arrangements were made—two cases in one house, one in the house next door. He perceived in a moment that this was no time to leave his duty. Next day there were three more cases in the village, and in the evening, just at the moment when he should have been starting, the brougham from Bedloe drew up at his door, with an air of agitation about the very horses, which had flecks of foam on their shoulders, and every indication of having been hard driven. George Chester entered precipitately, as pale as death.
“Oh, Langton,” he cried, “look here! don’t stand on ceremony. I never did anything against you. You attend the children in the village; why don’t you attend mine? Little Georgie’s got it!” the poor man cried out, with quivering lips.
It is not for a moment to be supposed that Edward could resist such an appeal. He went with the distracted father, and fought night and day for two or three weeks for little Georgie’s life, as well as for the lives of several other little Georgies as dear in their way. Here he had what he wanted, but not when he wanted it. When he woke up in the morning from the interrupted sleep, which was all his anxieties allowed him, he would remember in anguish that even the clue given by the bankers would serve no longer. But during the day, as he went from one bedside to another, he had too much to remember, and so the dark winter days wore away.
Winifred had taken refuge in the universal expedient of going “abroad.” It is difficult to tell all that this means to simple minds. It means a sort of cancelling of time and space, a flying on the wings of a dove, an abstraction of one’s self and one’s affairs from the burden of circumstances, from the questions of the importunate, from all that holds us to a local habitation. Winifred was sick at heart of her habitual place, and all the surroundings to which she had been accustomed. It was not possible for her, she thought, to explain the position, to answer all the demands, to make it apparent to the meanest capacity how and why it was that her own heirship was at an end. She fled from this, and from the unnatural (she said) prejudice against her brother and his wife which seized her as soon as it became apparent that Bedloe was in their hands—and she fled, but not so much from Edward, as from what she thoughthis desertion of her. What she thought—for after a while she too, like Edward himself, began to feel uncertain as to whether he had deserted her—to ask herself whether she had been blameless, to say to herself that it could not be, that it was impossible they could part like this. What was it that had parted them? It had been done in a moment, it had been her brother’s foolish accusation—ah, no, not that, but her own tacit refusal of his counsel and aid. When Winifred began to come to herself, to disentangle her thoughts, to see everything in perspective, it became gradually and by slow degrees apparent to her that if Edward was in the wrong, he was yet not altogether or alone in the wrong. Her mind worked more slowly than did Langton’s, partly because it had been far more strained and worn, and because the complications were all on her side. She had to disengage her mind from all that had troubled anddisturbed her life for weeks and months before, and to recover from the agitation of so many shocks and changes before she could think calmly, or at least without the burning at her heart of wounded feeling, hurt pride, and neglected love, of all that concerned her lover. It was some time even before she spoke to Miss Farrell of the subject that soon occupied all her thoughts. Miss Farrell had felt Edward’s silence on her pupil’s account with almost more bitterness than Winifred herself had felt it. She had put away his name from her lips, and had concluded him unworthy. She avoided talking of him even when Winifred began tentatively to approach the subject. “My darling, don’t let us speak of him,” she had said. “I have not command of myself: I might say things which I should be sorry for afterwards.”
“But why should he have changed so?” Winifred said; “what reason was there? He was always kind and true.”
“I don’t know about true, Winnie.”
Then Winifred faltered a little, remembering how he had advised her to humour her father. She made a little pause of reflection, and then abandoned the subject for the moment; but only to return to it a hundred and a hundred times. She was not one of those that prolong a misunderstanding through a lifetime. She pondered and pondered, and it was her instinct to think herself in the wrong. She had been hasty, she had been self-absorbed. And had he not a right to be offended when she so distinctly, of her own will, by no one’s suggestion, put him aside from her counsels, and let him know that she must deal with her brothers alone? It made her shiver to think what a thing it was she had thus done. She would have done it again, it was a necessity of theposition in which she found herself. But yet when you reflect, to put your betrothed husband away from you in a great crisis of fate, to reject his aid, to bid him—for it was as good as bidding him—leave her to arrange matters in her own way, what an outrage was that! She could not think how she could have done it, and yet she would have done it over again. To get Miss Farrell to see this was difficult, but she succeeded at last; and then they both trembled and grew pale together to think of what had been done. Poor Edward! and all those days when Winifred had sat miserable in her room, feeling that her last hope and prop had failed her, and that she was left alone in the world, what had he been thinking on his side? That she had thrown him off, that she would have none of him? In their consultations these ladies made great use of the man’s wounded pride. They allowed to each other that it wasthe wrong of all others which he would be least likely to bear. It was not only a wrong, it was an insult. How could they ever have thought otherwise? It was he who was forsaken, and that without a word, without a reason given.
They had settled themselves, after some wanderings, in one of those villages of the Riviera, which fashion and the pursuit of health have taken out of the hands of their peasant inhabitants. It was not a great place, full of life and commotion; but a little picturesque cluster of houses, small and great, with an old campanile rising out of the midst of them, and a soft background of mild olive-trees behind. They had thought they would stay there till the winter was over, till England had begun to grow green again, and the east winds were gone; but already, though it was not yet Christmas, they were beginning to reconsider the matter, to feel home calling them over the misty seas. Christmas! but what a Christmas! with roses blooming, and all the landscape green and soft, the sea warm enough to bathe in, the sunshine too hot at noon. Winifred had begun to weary of the eternal greenness, of the skies which were always clear, of the air which caressed and never smote her cheek, before they had long been established in the little paradise which Miss Farrell, even with all her desire to see her child happy, could not pretend not to be pleased with.
“I cannot believe it is Christmas,” Winifred said discontentedly. “No frost, no cold, even flowers!” as if this were a kind of insult. “Everything,” she cried, “is out of season. I don’t see how we can spend Christmas here.”
“It is not like Christmas weather,” said Miss Farrell; “but still, my dear, neither was it in the Holy Land, I should suppose, not like what we call Christmas,” she added, faltering a little; “but it is very nice, Winnie, don’t you think, dear?”
“No, I don’t think it is nice: it is enervating, it is unmeaning, it has no character in it. It might be May,” cried Winnie; and then she added with a sudden outburst of passion, “I don’t think I can bear it any longer. I cannot bear it any longer. Oh, Miss Farrell, Edward! what can he be thinking of me, if he has not given up thinking of me altogether?”
“No, dear, not that,” Miss Farrell said, soothing her.
“What, then? he must be beginning to hate me. I cannot let Christmas pass and this go on. Think of him alone amongst the frost and the snow, nothing but his sick people, no one to cheer him, called out perhaps in the middle of the night, riding miles and miles to comfort some poor creature, and no one, no one to comfort him!”
“My dear child!” Miss Farrell cried, taking Winifred into her kind arms.
At this moment there was a tinkle at thequeer little bell outside—or rather it had tinkled at the moment when Winifred spoke of the frost and snow. When Miss Farrell rose and hastened to her, to raise her downcast head and dry her tears, the old lady gave a start and cry, displacing suddenly that head which she had drawn to her own breast. Winifred, too, looked up in the sudden shock; and there, opposite to her in the doorway, a cold freshness as of the larger atmosphere outside coming in with him, stood Edward Langton, pale and eager, asking, “May I come in?” with a voice that was unsteady, between deadly anxiety and certain happiness.
They said a great deal to each other, enough to fill volumes; but so far as the present history is concerned, there need be no more to say.