CHAPTER XXIV.
“And one, an English home—gray twilight pouredOn dewy pastures, dewy trees,Softer than sleep—all things in order stored,A haunt of ancient Peace.”
“And one, an English home—gray twilight pouredOn dewy pastures, dewy trees,Softer than sleep—all things in order stored,A haunt of ancient Peace.”
“And one, an English home—gray twilight pouredOn dewy pastures, dewy trees,Softer than sleep—all things in order stored,A haunt of ancient Peace.”
“And one, an English home—gray twilight poured
On dewy pastures, dewy trees,
Softer than sleep—all things in order stored,
A haunt of ancient Peace.”
Theodore and his friend betook themselves to Cheriton Chase on the following Friday, for that kind of visit which north country people describe as “a week end.” They carried their portmanteau in that portion of the dog-cart which is more legitimately occupied by a leash of spaniels or Irish setters, and they arrived in the golden light of the afternoon, just when that sunk lane approaching the west gate was looking its loveliest. Hart’s-tongue and rocky boulder, the great brown trunks of the oaks and the polypodium growing amidst their cloven branches were all touched with sun-gleams, while evening shadows lay soft and cool upon the tall flowering grasses in the meadows on either side of the deep gully.
“That is Mrs. Porter’s cottage,” said Theodore, indicating the gatekeeper’s house with a turn of his whip towards the end of the lane where the clustered chimneys showed through a gap in the trees.
Ramsay had been introduced to Miss Newton, and had constitutedhimself honorary surgeon and medical adviser to that lady and all her humble friends. He had been invited to the tea-parties in Wedgewood Street, and had interested himself in the young woman called Marian, and in her probable identity with the lodge-keeper’s missing daughter, for which reason he had a keen desire to make the lodge-keeper’s acquaintance.
“From your account of the lady she must be a piece of human adamant,” he said. “I like to tackle that kind of individual. I’ve met a few of them, and I’m happy to say that if I haven’t been able to melt them I’ve generally succeeded in making them smart. I should enjoy exhibiting my moral aquafortis in the case of this lady. I shall get you to accompany me in a morning call upon her while we are at Cheriton.”
“My dear Cuthbert, I would sooner call, uninvited and without credentials, upon the Archbishop of Canterbury. I don’t forget how she froze me when I tried to be friendly with her last New Year’s Day. She was more biting than the north-east wind that was curdling the ponds in the Park.”
“A fig for her bitingness. Do you suppose I mind? If you won’t take me to her, I shall go by myself. A character of that kind has an irresistible fascination for me. I would go a hundred miles any day to see a bitter, bad woman.”
“She is bitter enough, but she may not be bad. She may be only a creature who mistakes fanaticism for religion, who has so misread her Bible that she thinks it her bounden duty to shut her heart against a beloved child rather than to forgive a sinner. I believe she is to be pitied rather than blamed, odious as she may seem.”
“Very likely. A hard heart, or an obstinate temper, is a disease like other diseases. One ought to be sorry for the sufferer. But this woman has a strong character, anyhow, for good or evil, and I delight in studying character. The average man and woman is so colourless that there is infinite relief in the study of any temperament which touches the extreme. Think how delightful it would be to meet such a man as Iago or Othello—picture to yourself the pleasure of watching the gradual unfolding of such a mind as Iachimo’s, and consider how keen would be one’s interest in getting to the bottom of a woman like that poisoning stepmother of Imogen’s whose name Shakespeare does not take the trouble to record. So this is the lodge—charming Early English cottage—real rustic English, not Bedford Parkish—half-timbered, thatched gables, dormers like eyes under bushy eyebrows, walls four feet thick, lattices two hundred years old. It might be the very cottage in which Grandmamma Wolf waited for the dear, plump little girl, with chubby cheeks shining like the butter in her basket, and with lips as sweet as her honey. Poor little girl!”
The servant-maid ran down the steps to open the gate, and as the wheels stopped an upper casement swung suddenly open, and a woman’s face appeared in the golden light—a pale, wan face, whose most noticeable expression was a look of infinite weariness—
“Anæmic,” said Cuthbert, as they drove in at the gate. “Decidedly anæmic. I should suspect that woman——”
“Of what?”
“Of being a vegetarian,” answered Cuthbert, gravely. “But I’ll call to-morrow, and find out all about her.”
Lord Cheriton received his kinsman’s friend with marked cordiality, and seemed to enjoy his freshness and spontaneity. They talked of Cambridge—the Cambridge of forty years ago and the Cambridge of to-day,—and they talked of the continental schools of medicine, a subject in which the lawyer was warmly interested. There were no other visitors expected before September, when three old friends of Lord Cheriton’s were to shoot the partridges. In October there was to be a large party for the pheasant shooting, which was the chief glory of Cheriton Chase. There had been no shooters at the Chase last year, and Lord Cheriton felt himself so much the more constrained to hospitality.
“You fellows must come in October, when we have our big shoot,” he said; but Cuthbert Ramsay told him that he must be at work again in London before the end of September.
Cuthbert was much impressed by the master of Cheriton Chase, and the grave and quiet dignity with which he wore success that might have made a weaker man arrogant and self-assertive. It would seem as if scarcely anything were wanting to that prosperous career. Yet Cuthbert saw that his host was not free from a cloud of care. It was natural, perhaps, that he should feel the tragedy of his son-in-law’s death as a lasting trouble, not to be shuffled off and forgotten when the conventional period of mourning was past.
Theodore had some private talk with his cousin on the first evening of his visit, walking up and down the terrace, while Cuthbert was looking at the books in the library, under Lady Cheriton’s guidance. He had it fully in his mind that the time must come when he would be obliged to take Lord Cheriton into his confidence, but he felt that time was still far off. Whenever the revelation came it must needs be infinitely painful to both, and deeply humiliating to the man whose hidden sin had brought desolation upon his innocent daughter, and untimely death upon the man whose fate had been linked with hers. It was for his dishonour, for the wrongs inflicted by him, that those two had made expiation.
No, the time to be outspoken—the time to say in the words of the prophet, “Thou art the man,” had not yet come. When it shouldcome he would be prepared to act resolutely and fearlessly; but in the mean time he must needs go on working in the dark.
He remembered his last conversation with Lord Cheriton on that subject—remembered how Cheriton had said that he believed Godfrey Carmichael incapable of a dishonourable action—incapable of having behaved cruelly to any woman. Had he who pronounced that judgment been guilty of dishonour—had he been cruel to the woman who sacrificed herself for him? There are so many degrees in such wrong-doing! There is the sin of impulse: there is the deliberate betrayal, the coldly planned iniquity, the sin of the practised seducer who has reduced seduction to a science, and who has no more heart or conscience than a machine. There is the sin of the generous man, who finds his feet caught in the web of circumstance, who begins, innocently enough, by pitying a neglected wife, and ends by betraying the neglectful husband. Theodore gave his kinsman credit for belonging to the category of generous sinners. Indeed, the fact that he had lived aloof from the world for many years, sharing the isolation of the woman who loved him, was in itself evidence that he had not acted as a villain; yet it was possible that when the final hour came, the hour for breaking those illicit bonds, the rupture may have been in somewise cruel; and the remembrance of that cruelty might be a burden upon the sinner’s conscience at this day. Such partings can never be without cruelty. The fact that one sinner is to marry and begin a new life, while the other sinner is to finish her days in a dishonoured widowhood, is in itself a cruelty. She may submit, as to a fate which she foresaw dimly, even in the hour of her fall—but she would be more than human if she did not think herself hardly used by the man who forsakes her. Nothing he can do to secure her worldly comfort or to screen her from the world’s disdain will take the sting out of that parting. The one fact remains that her day is done. He has ceased to care for her, and he has begun to care for another.
“Nothing has occurred since I was here to throw any new light upon the murder, I suppose?” Theodore said quietly, as they smoked their cigars, walking slowly up and down in the summer night.
“Nothing.”
“Did her ladyship tell you that I have met a girl in London, whom I believe to be no other than Mercy Porter?”
“Yes, she told me something about that fancy of yours, for I take it to be nothing more than a fancy. The world is too wide for you and Mercy Porter to meet so easily. What was your ground for identifying her with the lodge-keeper’s girl?”
“The lodge-keeper’s girl!” There was something needlessly contemptuous in the phrase, it seemed to Theodore: a studied disdain.
“It was she herself who suggested the idea, by her inquiries about Cheriton. She confessed to having come from this part of the world, and she has an air of refinement which shows that she does not belong to the peasant class. She is a very good pianiste—plays with remarkable taste and feeling; and Lady Cheriton tells me that Mercy had a talent for music. I have no doubt in my own mind that this young woman is Mercy Porter, and I think her mother ought to go to London and see her, even if she should not think fit to bring her back to the home she left.”
“Mrs. Porter is a woman of peculiar temper. The girl may be happier away from her.”
“Yes, that is very likely—but the mother ought to forgive her. The penitent sinner, whose life for the last few years has been blameless, ought to feel that she is pardoned and at peace with her mother. I tried to approach the subject, but Mrs. Porter repelled me with an almost vindictive air; and I do not think it would be any good for me to plead for my poor friend again. If you or Lady Cheriton would talk to her——”
“I will get my wife to manage her. It is a matter in which a woman would have more influence than you or I. In the mean time, if there is anything I can do to make Mercy Porter’s life easier, I shall be very glad to do it, for her father’s sake.”
“You are very good; but she is not in want, and she seems content with her lot.”
“What is she doing for a living?”
“Her employment is fine needlework. She lives in one small back room in Lambeth, and has only one friend in the world, and that friend happens to be a lady who once lived in this house.”
“A lady who lived in this house!” exclaimed Lord Cheriton. “Who, in Heaven’s name, do you mean?”
“Miss Newton, who was governess to Miss Strangway nearly forty years ago.”
“What brought Miss Newton and you together?”
“That is rather a long story. I took some trouble to find the lady in order to settle one question which had disturbed my cousin Juanita since her husband’s death.”
“What question?”
“She was haunted by an idea that Sir Godfrey’s murderer was one of the Strangways, and his murder an act of vengeance by some member of that banished race. It was in order to set this question at rest for ever that I took some trouble to hunt out the history of Squire Strangway’s two sons and only daughter. I traced them all three to their graves, and have been able to convince Juanita that they and their troubles were at rest long before the time of her husband’s murder.”
“What could have put such a notion into her head?”
“Oh, it came naturally enough. It was only a development of Churton’s idea of a vendetta.”
“She was always full of fancies. Yes, I remember she used to say the house was haunted by the ghosts of the Strangways. I really think she had a dim idea that I had injured that spendthrift race in buying the estate which they had wasted. And so to satisfy Juanita you took the trouble to ferret out Miss Newton? Upon my word, Theodore, your conduct is more Quixotic than I could have believed of any young man in the nineteenth century. And pray by what means did you discover theci-devantgoverness?”
Theodore told the story of his visit to the scholastic agencies, his journey to Westmorland, and his friendly reception by Miss Newton in her Lambeth lodgings.
“She was much attached to Miss Strangway, who was her first charge, and near enough to her own age to be more of a companion than a pupil,” he said, “and she spoke of her melancholy fate with great tenderness.”
“It was a melancholy fate, was it? I know she made a runaway-marriage; but in what way was her fate sadder than the common destiny of a spendthrift’s daughter—a girl who has been reared in extravagance and self-indulgence, and who finds herself face to face with penury in the bloom of her womanhood?”
“That in itself would be sad, but Miss Strangway’s destiny was sadder than that—commonplace enough, no doubt—only the old story of an unhappy marriage and a runaway wife.”
He could not help looking at Lord Cheriton at this point, thinking how this common story of an unfaithful wife must needs remind his kinsman of that other story of another wife which had influenced his early manhood. He must surely have a sensitive shrinking from the discussion of any similar story.
“She ran away from her husband! Yes, I remember having heard as much. What did Miss Newton know about her—beyond that one fact?”
“Very little—only that she died at Boulogne nearly twenty years ago. This fact Miss Newton heard from the lips of the man for whom Mrs. Darcy left her husband. I had been at Boulogne a week or so before I saw Miss Newton, and I had hunted there for any record of Mrs. Darcy’s death, without result. But this is not very strange, as it is quite likely that she lived at Boulogne under an assumed name, and was buried in that name, and so lies there, in a foreign land, dissevered for ever from any association with her name and kindred.”
“There are not many of her kindred left, I take it,” said Lord Cheriton. “There seems to have been a blight upon that race for the last half-century. But, now, tell me about some one in whom I am more interested—the girl you believe to be Mercy Porter. Ishould be very glad to make her life happier, and so I told her ladyship. You, Theodore, might be the intermediary. I would allow her a hundred a year, which would enable her to live in some pretty country place—in Devonshire or Cornwall, for instance, in some quiet sea-coast village where no one would know anything about her or her story.”
“A hundred a year! My dear Cheriton, that is a most generous offer.”
“No, no, there is no question of generosity. Her father was my friend, and I was under some obligation to him. And then the girl was my wife’sprotégée; and, finally, I can very well afford it. I am almost a childless man, Theodore. My grandson will be rich enough when I am gone, rich enough to be sure of a peerage, I hope, so that there may be a Baron Cheriton when I am in the dust.”
“You are very good. I believe this girl has a great deal of pride—the pride of a woman who has drunk the cup of shame, and she may set herself against being your pensioner; but if the matter can be arranged as you wish she may yet see happier days. I think the first thing to be done is to reconcile mother and daughter. Mrs. Porter ought to go up to London——”
“To see Miss Newton’sprotégée? On no account. I tell you Mrs. Porter is a woman of strange temper—God knows how bitterly she might upbraid her daughter. And if the girl is proud, as you say she is, the mother’s reproaches would goad her to refuse any help from me or my wife. No, Theodore, the longer we keep mother and daughter apart, the better for Mercy’s chances of happiness.”
“But if this young woman should refuse to confess her identity with Mercy Porter it will be impossible to benefit her.”
“That difficulty may be easily overcome. You can take my wife to see her. She was always fond of my wife.”
“And you will leave the mother out of the question. That seems rather hard upon her.”
“I tell you, Theodore, it is better to leave the mother out of the question. She never acted a mother’s part to Mercy—there was never any real motherly love—at least that was Lady Cheriton’s opinion of the woman, and she had ample opportunity for judging, which, of course, I had not. If you want to help the daughter, keep the mother aloof from her.”
“I dare say you are right, and I shall of course obey you implicitly,” said Theodore, inwardly reluctant.
He had an exalted idea of maternal love, its obligations and privileges, and it seemed to him a hard thing to come between a penitent daughter and a mother whose heart ought to be full of pity and pardon. Yet he remembered his brief interview with Mrs. Porter, and he could but own to himself that this might be an exceptional case.