Chapter Ten.

Chapter Ten.These few days of waiting were intolerable to Marion, who hated all delays, and from her earliest childhood objected to hear reason, as the old nurse used to say. Whatever was hanging over her head, good, bad, or indifferent, she would have come down at once, and let the crash be over. Poor Mrs Miles had too little in common with her daughter to know what to say or do. Every morning she was sure that a letter would come by that post, and as sure when the hour had passed that it was more natural that it should not arrive until the next day. Such little securities win their triumphs at last. On Saturday morning a few lines from Anthony announced their intended return in the afternoon.It struck Marion at once that her father was depressed, although there was evident gladness at getting back to his home. After he had kissed her, and before turning to his letters, he looked for a moment into her face with a touch of the wistfulness which his talk with her in the study seemed to have brought into his eyes. She determined to find Anthony, who had gone off to the stables to see the pony nibbed down, and whose whereabouts were easily discoverable through Sniffs bark of delight. Hearing his sister’s call, he crossed the yard.“Hallo, Marion, what have you been doing with yourself? You look as if you wanted fresh air badly. Put on your hat, and come up to Hardlands with me.”“Hardlands! Anthony, you and papa are as cruel as can be to keep me in this horrible suspense. O Anthony, dear, do tell me,—what did he say?—what is Marmaduke to do?”“I think it’s pretty nearly right, or on the way to be right,” said Anthony, digging his hands into his pockets, “though I don’t exactly know what Marmaduke expects.”“To be his heir,” said Marion quickly. “It was a promise.”“I think Marmaduke must have made a mistake there,” began Anthony, but she interrupted him at once.“He did not, indeed.”Anthony was silenced, and began to whistle, not knowing in the least what to say. His father had begged him to tell Marion no more than was absolutely necessary, and there was an uncomfortable and unacknowledged impression upon the two that she would not be satisfied with their tidings. Mr Tregennas would not admit anything definite. “Sha’n’t forget the lad, I tell you. If you want to know for your daughter’s sake, he’ll have enough to live upon, and she, too, unless you’ve brought her up in these new-fangled fashions.” This was what he had said, and of course it was something, Mr Miles would have said it was a good deal, if there had not been that uneasy consciousness of Marmaduke’s expectations, and it was quite certain that it did not satisfy Marion. It was sufficient, however, to give her a further ground on which to urge her father to admit of their engagement. If the Vicar had felt himself as free as usual to follow his own judgment, he would, probably, for some time yet, have refused his consent; but he was in the position of a man who, having failed to see what all the time lay close at hand, feels a nervous distrust of himself, and, moreover, his life had fallen too completely into a matter of routine for him to meet an unexpected call for decision as firmly as he would have met it years ago. He would have willingly let the matter drift to the shore as the tide of circumstances carried it. But Marion was too well aware of the advantage she had gained not to push it farther; Mr Tregennas had rather encouraged than opposed the engagement, and Mrs Miles shook her head over Marion’s loss of colour and brightness. The Vicar was inclined to believe implicitly in his wife at this moment, Marion had one of those temperaments which in their many changes act rapidly upon people’s looks, and her father could not meet her heavy eyes and live his own life any more in peace.So she had her way; the engagement was allowed, Marmaduke was to spend his approaching leave at Thorpe, and Anthony and he were to go for a week to Trenance.Here again the poor Vicar was aware of perplexity. Mr Tregennas had shown an inconveniently strong liking for Anthony, whom nobody wanted him to like. His energy and brightness seemed to have such an attraction for him, that the old man, now with little more left of his old nigged self-will than a certain feeble captiousness, would sit and watch him by the hour from under his big eyebrows. The Vicar, who had become aware of this, was almost provoked at his son’s unconsciousness. Anthony was at all times disposed to take it for granted that things would be as he thought best, and it seemed to him that Marmaduke was really as sure of his inheritance as if it had all been plainly set down in black and white. Even if the idea of his becoming his friend’s rival had ever entered his head, the prospect of heirship would have had little fascination for him. He had some money of his own, which made him independent of his father. Trenance was but a dull country place, and he was too young and too sanguine to care much for money and possessions. He wanted power, but not of that sort, and how to gain it he had not yet resolved, but there was a swing of energy about the young fellow which made all things seem possible. If his self-confidence were too buoyant, too ready to rush blindfold, it was a danger which he would be the last to discover for himself; if, later in life, his character were likely to develop just a touch of arrogance, it was for the present concealed by his brightness and boyish gaiety of heart. At any rate he could never be covetous. Trenance was nothing to him, and thinking of Marmaduke it was with a little real compassion for a life which was to be bounded by so many acres, a mine or two, and the little church town. His own dreams reached far beyond those limits.Already he had taken a step in one of the paths which lay before him, and seemed to invite him into smiling depths. He had written a pamphlet upon certain branches of reform, and it had been noticed with some commendation by an influential paper, to Mrs Miles’s great delight. The notice was a good deal more dear to her than the pamphlet, and she would go up to her son’s room and read out little bits, although with a sharp criticism of its shortcomings.“There are only two quotations, and so much that people would have liked to read! And why should they say you are a young author? I am sure there is nothing your father might not have written so far as age is concerned.”“They must criticise, you know.”“Well,” said Mrs Miles, doubtfully, “if they did not find a little fault, I suppose others would be jealous. But they could not deny that it is excellent.”She got up as she spoke, and went softly about the room, putting some tidying touches which Faith had neglected. The summer sun was shining in and discovering dust in little out-of-the-way corners where things were heaped. There was a faded sketch of Hardlands by Winifred stuck over the chimney-piece.“It is a pity those people don’t know who you are,” Mrs Miles continued. “I wish you would write and tell them, Anthony; I am sure they would be pleased. My dear, you would find a better picture than this in the portfolio down stairs.”“It does very well,” said Anthony sleepily.Mrs Miles went on with her work, but presently began again.“My dear, it is a long time since you called at Deanscourt, and Sir James Milman has always been so civil that it does not seem quite right. Suppose you were to ride over there this afternoon.”“I don’t believe they’ve come down yet.”“Lady and Miss Milman are at home, I know,” asserted Mrs Miles gravely, “for she wrote the other day to ask for Ellen Harding’s character. Miss Milman seems a very sweet girl.”“Oh!”“And very pretty, I’m sure.”“She’s not my style,” said Anthony, with an air of having disposed of her.“My dear, I think you would find her so, if only you knew her better,” interposed Mrs Miles earnestly, “and Mrs Featherly tells me—”“What?”“That all those girls have money.”“Well, mother, I’m too shy to venture there by myself, but, if you like, I’ll drive you over in the pony-carriage.”“Thank you, I’m sure, my dear, it would be very nice,” said Mrs Miles, whose pleasure in driving with her son was mixed with several pet perturbations of her own; “but are you sure the pony is not too fresh?”“Fresh? He wants a little work, of course, but it’s nothing on earth but play that makes him caper. I’ll see he does no harm.”“My dear, I can’t help wishing he would play in the stables, where he really has nothing else to do, but if you think he’s quite safe—”“As safe as any old cart-horse. Come, mother, if he should upset us, I’ll give you leave to call me all the bad names you can think of.”“O dear, but that will not make it any better,” said Mrs Miles, shaking her head. “I don’t see how you can help it if he takes it into his head to play, as you call it. However, my dear, you really ought to go to Deanscourt, so I will be quite ready by four o’clock, and now I must go and speak to Faith about the dust in this room.”“You don’t mean to say, mother, that you’ve let Faith engage herself to that dissenting fellow, Stephens,” said Anthony, beginning to speak energetically.“I could not prevent it,” said Mrs Miles, giving her head a mournful shake by way of protest. “I don’t know what the world is coming to, but servants are not at all what they were.”“We ought to have stopped it, though. How was he ever allowed to hang about the house? Faith is too good a little thing for a humbugging rascal like that. You wouldn’t believe how he has worked upon that old idiot Maddox; if I hadn’t gone into it, my father would have had a meeting-house stuck under his very nose, ay, and he’ll have it still, unless I keep a sharp lookout. But, upon my word, it is a great deal too bad that he should get hold of Faith.”Anthony was handling a tool as he spoke, and punching a hole in a bit of wood with as much force as if it had been Stephens’s head. Mrs Miles never liked to see her son “put out;” his face was quick to reflect his feelings, and he certainly did not look pleasantly upon what galled him. It was quite true that David was his present bugbear, and that he gave him credit for no motives except the lowest: his feelings had so much heat in them, that they deprived him in a great measure of the power of sympathy with that with which he had no agreement, and were always easily excited into prejudice.

These few days of waiting were intolerable to Marion, who hated all delays, and from her earliest childhood objected to hear reason, as the old nurse used to say. Whatever was hanging over her head, good, bad, or indifferent, she would have come down at once, and let the crash be over. Poor Mrs Miles had too little in common with her daughter to know what to say or do. Every morning she was sure that a letter would come by that post, and as sure when the hour had passed that it was more natural that it should not arrive until the next day. Such little securities win their triumphs at last. On Saturday morning a few lines from Anthony announced their intended return in the afternoon.

It struck Marion at once that her father was depressed, although there was evident gladness at getting back to his home. After he had kissed her, and before turning to his letters, he looked for a moment into her face with a touch of the wistfulness which his talk with her in the study seemed to have brought into his eyes. She determined to find Anthony, who had gone off to the stables to see the pony nibbed down, and whose whereabouts were easily discoverable through Sniffs bark of delight. Hearing his sister’s call, he crossed the yard.

“Hallo, Marion, what have you been doing with yourself? You look as if you wanted fresh air badly. Put on your hat, and come up to Hardlands with me.”

“Hardlands! Anthony, you and papa are as cruel as can be to keep me in this horrible suspense. O Anthony, dear, do tell me,—what did he say?—what is Marmaduke to do?”

“I think it’s pretty nearly right, or on the way to be right,” said Anthony, digging his hands into his pockets, “though I don’t exactly know what Marmaduke expects.”

“To be his heir,” said Marion quickly. “It was a promise.”

“I think Marmaduke must have made a mistake there,” began Anthony, but she interrupted him at once.

“He did not, indeed.”

Anthony was silenced, and began to whistle, not knowing in the least what to say. His father had begged him to tell Marion no more than was absolutely necessary, and there was an uncomfortable and unacknowledged impression upon the two that she would not be satisfied with their tidings. Mr Tregennas would not admit anything definite. “Sha’n’t forget the lad, I tell you. If you want to know for your daughter’s sake, he’ll have enough to live upon, and she, too, unless you’ve brought her up in these new-fangled fashions.” This was what he had said, and of course it was something, Mr Miles would have said it was a good deal, if there had not been that uneasy consciousness of Marmaduke’s expectations, and it was quite certain that it did not satisfy Marion. It was sufficient, however, to give her a further ground on which to urge her father to admit of their engagement. If the Vicar had felt himself as free as usual to follow his own judgment, he would, probably, for some time yet, have refused his consent; but he was in the position of a man who, having failed to see what all the time lay close at hand, feels a nervous distrust of himself, and, moreover, his life had fallen too completely into a matter of routine for him to meet an unexpected call for decision as firmly as he would have met it years ago. He would have willingly let the matter drift to the shore as the tide of circumstances carried it. But Marion was too well aware of the advantage she had gained not to push it farther; Mr Tregennas had rather encouraged than opposed the engagement, and Mrs Miles shook her head over Marion’s loss of colour and brightness. The Vicar was inclined to believe implicitly in his wife at this moment, Marion had one of those temperaments which in their many changes act rapidly upon people’s looks, and her father could not meet her heavy eyes and live his own life any more in peace.

So she had her way; the engagement was allowed, Marmaduke was to spend his approaching leave at Thorpe, and Anthony and he were to go for a week to Trenance.

Here again the poor Vicar was aware of perplexity. Mr Tregennas had shown an inconveniently strong liking for Anthony, whom nobody wanted him to like. His energy and brightness seemed to have such an attraction for him, that the old man, now with little more left of his old nigged self-will than a certain feeble captiousness, would sit and watch him by the hour from under his big eyebrows. The Vicar, who had become aware of this, was almost provoked at his son’s unconsciousness. Anthony was at all times disposed to take it for granted that things would be as he thought best, and it seemed to him that Marmaduke was really as sure of his inheritance as if it had all been plainly set down in black and white. Even if the idea of his becoming his friend’s rival had ever entered his head, the prospect of heirship would have had little fascination for him. He had some money of his own, which made him independent of his father. Trenance was but a dull country place, and he was too young and too sanguine to care much for money and possessions. He wanted power, but not of that sort, and how to gain it he had not yet resolved, but there was a swing of energy about the young fellow which made all things seem possible. If his self-confidence were too buoyant, too ready to rush blindfold, it was a danger which he would be the last to discover for himself; if, later in life, his character were likely to develop just a touch of arrogance, it was for the present concealed by his brightness and boyish gaiety of heart. At any rate he could never be covetous. Trenance was nothing to him, and thinking of Marmaduke it was with a little real compassion for a life which was to be bounded by so many acres, a mine or two, and the little church town. His own dreams reached far beyond those limits.

Already he had taken a step in one of the paths which lay before him, and seemed to invite him into smiling depths. He had written a pamphlet upon certain branches of reform, and it had been noticed with some commendation by an influential paper, to Mrs Miles’s great delight. The notice was a good deal more dear to her than the pamphlet, and she would go up to her son’s room and read out little bits, although with a sharp criticism of its shortcomings.

“There are only two quotations, and so much that people would have liked to read! And why should they say you are a young author? I am sure there is nothing your father might not have written so far as age is concerned.”

“They must criticise, you know.”

“Well,” said Mrs Miles, doubtfully, “if they did not find a little fault, I suppose others would be jealous. But they could not deny that it is excellent.”

She got up as she spoke, and went softly about the room, putting some tidying touches which Faith had neglected. The summer sun was shining in and discovering dust in little out-of-the-way corners where things were heaped. There was a faded sketch of Hardlands by Winifred stuck over the chimney-piece.

“It is a pity those people don’t know who you are,” Mrs Miles continued. “I wish you would write and tell them, Anthony; I am sure they would be pleased. My dear, you would find a better picture than this in the portfolio down stairs.”

“It does very well,” said Anthony sleepily.

Mrs Miles went on with her work, but presently began again.

“My dear, it is a long time since you called at Deanscourt, and Sir James Milman has always been so civil that it does not seem quite right. Suppose you were to ride over there this afternoon.”

“I don’t believe they’ve come down yet.”

“Lady and Miss Milman are at home, I know,” asserted Mrs Miles gravely, “for she wrote the other day to ask for Ellen Harding’s character. Miss Milman seems a very sweet girl.”

“Oh!”

“And very pretty, I’m sure.”

“She’s not my style,” said Anthony, with an air of having disposed of her.

“My dear, I think you would find her so, if only you knew her better,” interposed Mrs Miles earnestly, “and Mrs Featherly tells me—”

“What?”

“That all those girls have money.”

“Well, mother, I’m too shy to venture there by myself, but, if you like, I’ll drive you over in the pony-carriage.”

“Thank you, I’m sure, my dear, it would be very nice,” said Mrs Miles, whose pleasure in driving with her son was mixed with several pet perturbations of her own; “but are you sure the pony is not too fresh?”

“Fresh? He wants a little work, of course, but it’s nothing on earth but play that makes him caper. I’ll see he does no harm.”

“My dear, I can’t help wishing he would play in the stables, where he really has nothing else to do, but if you think he’s quite safe—”

“As safe as any old cart-horse. Come, mother, if he should upset us, I’ll give you leave to call me all the bad names you can think of.”

“O dear, but that will not make it any better,” said Mrs Miles, shaking her head. “I don’t see how you can help it if he takes it into his head to play, as you call it. However, my dear, you really ought to go to Deanscourt, so I will be quite ready by four o’clock, and now I must go and speak to Faith about the dust in this room.”

“You don’t mean to say, mother, that you’ve let Faith engage herself to that dissenting fellow, Stephens,” said Anthony, beginning to speak energetically.

“I could not prevent it,” said Mrs Miles, giving her head a mournful shake by way of protest. “I don’t know what the world is coming to, but servants are not at all what they were.”

“We ought to have stopped it, though. How was he ever allowed to hang about the house? Faith is too good a little thing for a humbugging rascal like that. You wouldn’t believe how he has worked upon that old idiot Maddox; if I hadn’t gone into it, my father would have had a meeting-house stuck under his very nose, ay, and he’ll have it still, unless I keep a sharp lookout. But, upon my word, it is a great deal too bad that he should get hold of Faith.”

Anthony was handling a tool as he spoke, and punching a hole in a bit of wood with as much force as if it had been Stephens’s head. Mrs Miles never liked to see her son “put out;” his face was quick to reflect his feelings, and he certainly did not look pleasantly upon what galled him. It was quite true that David was his present bugbear, and that he gave him credit for no motives except the lowest: his feelings had so much heat in them, that they deprived him in a great measure of the power of sympathy with that with which he had no agreement, and were always easily excited into prejudice.

Chapter Eleven.“Like, but unlike, the sun that shone,The waves that beat the shore,The words we said, the songs we sung,Like, unlike, evermore.”A.F.C.K.The summer was passing at Thorpe very much as other summers had passed, and yet with the difference that dogs our footsteps whether we will or no. The grass waves, the forget-me-nots look up from the brink of cool brown streams, the roses are as sweet as ever,—we wonder as we touch them how there can be a change and what it is, but we know in our hearts that it has come, and that things can never more be what they once have been.As for Anthony, all things considered, he seemed to be leading a pleasant life enough. There was bright, settled weather, and the neighbourhood had taken one of those sudden freaks of gaiety with which such neighbourhoods are occasionally seized; dinners and picnics and cricket-matches succeeded one another rapidly, people came to stay with each other, glad to escape from the heat of London to these pretty country-places, where they could lie under the shadow of great elms, and pick dewy fruit in old-fashioned gardens. It was an easy, charming existence, with a busy idleness about it, which had an indescribable delight so long as the sun would shine. Anthony was wanted for all the little festivities, he was asked to stay here, to dine there; the Milmans, the Hunters, the Bennetts, the Davieses, had each some attraction to offer, and young ladies who were ready to encourage Mr Miles’s attentions. By and by little echoes of rumours began to be heard. At one picnic he had talked to no one but Miss Lovell, at another dinner-party he had devoted himself for the whole evening to Miss Milman. Winifred had been there, and had seen it for herself, and, indeed, Anthony, when he indulged in these flirtations, generally contrived to be near Winifred. Not that a spirit of mischief prompted him on such occasions, or anything beyond a light-hearted enjoyment of the present moment. He liked the pretty flatteries of manner, the little attentions, which the young girls were not unwilling to lavish upon him,—liked to feel himself courted and appealed to,—liked also, or something more than liked, that Winifred should be near him, that he might look at her, listen to her at the very moment he was turning away, touch something she had touched, unconsciously compare her with her companions. Unconsciously, I repeat, for, although many problems were puzzling him at this moment, he was thinking least of all about his own heart. He did very much what he liked, and if it pleased him to talk to Miss Milman and to sit near Winifred, he talked and he sat. That was all.That was all, and no one could have said a word against it if it had been always so. He had no intention of neglecting Winifred; but to a girl who loves, unintentional neglect is more cruelly wounding than any other. Each day worked with a sort of slow torture upon her, the more so that her cheeks burnt with shame, when she even acknowledged it to herself. She was in high spirits,—or so it seemed. She fancied herself that all sweetness and gentleness had died out of her heart, leaving bitter ashes behind. When she spoke to Anthony it was laughingly and lightly, only every now and then there would descend a sharp cut, or one that she thought sharp, poor child, and would repeat over to herself with a dreary satisfaction, while she invented other sayings more terrible, which the time never came for uttering. After all, they were not so severe as she intended, for such weapons did not belong to her by nature, and she used them as tremblingly as a woman will fire off a gun that she expects to explode in her hands. As often as not, Anthony did not notice these little attacks; he noticed more what she did not say, the pleasant things which fell so trippingly from others’ lips, to Winifred’s disdain. Feeling as if Anthony were slipping away altogether from the pleasant, familiar intercourse which had been enough to satisfy her while it lasted, and which, therefore, she fancied would have satisfied her forever, these sweet summer days, in which all the world was making holiday, were to her full of restless misery, to which she dared neither give a name nor a cause, and over which she shed the bitterest tears that her life as yet had known.No one saw the struggle. It would have added tenfold to her suffering if they had done so, for she had too much of her grandmothers undaunted spirit not to be at times fierce and impatient with herself, and her very prayers were not so often that she might be loved again, as that she might cease to love, and so have done with the pain. She had no mother. The Squire, when he was in his most jovial moods, would strike Anthony on the back and ask who was the last flame, but his own daughter’s name had never occurred to him. Mrs Miles was distracted between hopes and fears, represented by Miss Milman and Miss Davies. Marion was taken up with Marmaduke, who was at Thorpe, and who for his part was absorbed in thoughts of Mr Tregennas and Trenance. After this one step had been gained, he was greedy for a clearer declaration of the old man’s intentions, and waited restlessly for a repetition of the invitation to himself and Anthony. Yet when it arrived, he said jealously to Marion,—“Why should Anthony go? What has he to do with it? Is he trying to come over the old man?”Even she flamed a little. “You should know him better. There was never any one in the world who cared less for money,” she said angrily.One wonders sometimes how many misjudgments will rise up and face us one day. Anthony was so far from thinking the thoughts that Marmaduke put into his head, that he was a good deal vexed at the summons which took him away from the pleasant little round into which he had fallen. But he consoled himself with grumbling, and the Milmans insisted upon putting off their picnic until his return.“They’ll turn the boy’s head between them,” said Mr Robert Mannering wrathfully to himself. He was in his garden, alternately attending to some newly budded roses, and doing his utmost to discomfit the imperturbable Stokes. The little ugly red-faced man guessed better than other people what was going on, and perhaps saw more clearly. “Confound those women!” he said ungallantly. “They do their best to spoil any man they take a fancy to! Stokes, I presume you suppose these unhappy buds are to undo their own bandages? I should like to tie you up for a week, and see how you’d feel at the end of it. And those seedling carnations are in a disgraceful condition.”“There bain’t wan o’ them worth the soil he grows in,” asserted Stokes with round emphasis.“Not worth! Pray do you know where the seed came from, and how much I gave for it?”“I shouldn’t be surprised but what you might ha’ given anything they asked of you. I can’t help that, Mr Robert. There’s a lot of impostors in gardining like as there is in anything else, unless you looks pretty sharp. And they thyur caernations is rubbish.”“That’s your ignorance. I should like to know how much you knew about gardening until I taught you.”“I knowed rubbish—always,” said Stokes, with an air of decision which fairly drove Mr Robert off the field. He walked towards the house across the short fine turf, all unlike the Vicarage lawn with its intruding daisies and dandelions, smiling a little to himself over his own discomfiture.“They are worthless, I believe,” he said, “only I didn’t think the fellow would have the wit to find it out. Who are these coming in at the gate? The Chesters, if I’m not mistaken.” And away hurried Mr Robert to receive his visitors.“The girls got hold of me, and would make me walk over with them,” said the Squire, pulling Bessie’s hair, and talking loudly. “What are you doing in the garden, eh? Your hobby, ain’t it, Mannering? I’ll lay sixpence, though, you don’t show me a finer dish of peas than we had for dinner yesterday. What were they called, Bessie? Bessie’s the one for remembering all the fine names.”“Come and dine with us one day, and I’ll see what we can do. Will you say Thursday?—unless Miss Winifred has some engagement.”“No,” said Winifred, with a little weariness in her voice, which Mr Mannering detected at once. “The Milmans were to have had a picnic on that day, but it is to wait.”“Because Anthony is going away,” put in Bessie in an aggrieved tone.“They want young Miles to marry the girl Milman, and so they can’t make enough of him,” said the Squire. “That’s the long and short of it.”“Ah, I don’t believe he has any such notion in his head,” replied Mr Robert, manfully. “He’ll not be marrying just yet, though other people will marry him a dozen times over.”“Perhaps not, perhaps not; I don’t know that I should expect to see him do anything so sensible. Old Milman isn’t over-troubled with brains, but they carry him along very fairly, and he’s as sound a Tory as any man in the county. It might be the making of the young fellow to marry into a good steady holdfast family like that, and get some of his harebrained notions knocked out of him,” said the Squire, who was becoming very sore with Anthony’s arguments.“O, his notions will come all right by and by!” said Mr Robert pacifically. “People can’t all think and live in just the same grooves.”“More’s the pity. I don’t see that the new grooves are any the better.”“Well, perhaps sometimes they’re not so much worse as we think them. And how does Bessie get on without Miss Palmer?”“Why, she plagues us all,” said the Squire, with great satisfaction. “She’s always running out into the fields after me, when she ought to be at her lessons, or her sampler, I tell her. Winifred’s got no end of trouble with her. And now she’s bothering my life out to go into Aunecester twice a week, to the School of Art I suppose she must go, but who’s to take her, I should like to know?”“You, papa, of course,” said Bessie decidedly. “You are always as glad as you can be to go to Aunecester.”“There, you hear. That’s how she serves her father,” said Mr Chester, chuckling, and pulling her hair again. “No, thank you, we’ll not come in, Henderson’s waiting to speak to me about his farm. Where’s Mannering?”“He’s driven over to dine at the Hunters’.”“What a man he is for society.”“Yes, he likes it, and it does him good,” said Mr Robert quietly.“That’s what people always say about things that please them. I tried it for a good bit upon salmon, but it didn’t do. Had to give it up. Well, girls, now you’ve had your say, I hope you’re satisfied, and will let me go home in peace. You’re a lucky man, Mannering, to have your own way without being plagued for it. Here’s Bessie, now: a fellow will have a pretty handful that gets her,—bless you, she’ll not let him say his soul’s his own,” added the Squire, in high good-humour, making signs behind his youngest daughter’s back.“How is the Farleyense, Mr Mannering?” asked Winifred, lingering.“I really think that, if possible, it is in more perfect condition than when you did it the honour to come to look at it.”“And Stokes has not tried any experiments?”“He knows that if he did it would cost him his place. No, Miss Winifred, there is a point behind which even the easiest master must intrench himself.”The girl sighed a little. Her father and sister were strolling along the lane outside the gates, and the Squire’s loud laugh came to them scarcely softened by the short distance. The rich fulness of August seemed to weigh somewhat heavily in the air; the hedge-row elms stood in thick unenlightened masses against the sky; the garden was a little parched and exhausted by its very profusion of flowers, the scent of the jessamine was almost oppressive in its richness; it was one of those days in which, without any perceptible change, the knowledge forces itself upon us that the change is there, and that something is gone from us.“And do you still carry the key in your pocket?” said Winifred, with a faint smile.“No, no, the house is open. Will you come and see it again?”“Winifred!” called the Squire from the other side of the wall.“Not now, thank you. I mustn’t keep my father.”She spoke hurriedly, but walked lingeringly towards the gate, and Mr Mannering remained stationary for some moments after she had disappeared. “I wonder what is making her take such an interest in the Farleyense,” he said to himself. “The plant is a picture, to be sure, but still—when I think of it—and why should I keep the key in my pocket?—Why—what an old fool I am!—I had forgotten all about Anthony, and no doubt the poor girl wanted to hear a word or two more about him. He’s off somewhere to-day, I dare say, and going into Cornwall to-morrow,—the best place for him, too, if he doesn’t know what’s good for him; and there she is fretting over all these confounded reports, and thinking I could have said a word or two to comfort her. I’ve a great mind not to look at the Farleyense for a week. However, perhaps I’d better just go and give it a glance, to make sure that Stokes hasn’t been meddling.”

“Like, but unlike, the sun that shone,The waves that beat the shore,The words we said, the songs we sung,Like, unlike, evermore.”A.F.C.K.

“Like, but unlike, the sun that shone,The waves that beat the shore,The words we said, the songs we sung,Like, unlike, evermore.”A.F.C.K.

The summer was passing at Thorpe very much as other summers had passed, and yet with the difference that dogs our footsteps whether we will or no. The grass waves, the forget-me-nots look up from the brink of cool brown streams, the roses are as sweet as ever,—we wonder as we touch them how there can be a change and what it is, but we know in our hearts that it has come, and that things can never more be what they once have been.

As for Anthony, all things considered, he seemed to be leading a pleasant life enough. There was bright, settled weather, and the neighbourhood had taken one of those sudden freaks of gaiety with which such neighbourhoods are occasionally seized; dinners and picnics and cricket-matches succeeded one another rapidly, people came to stay with each other, glad to escape from the heat of London to these pretty country-places, where they could lie under the shadow of great elms, and pick dewy fruit in old-fashioned gardens. It was an easy, charming existence, with a busy idleness about it, which had an indescribable delight so long as the sun would shine. Anthony was wanted for all the little festivities, he was asked to stay here, to dine there; the Milmans, the Hunters, the Bennetts, the Davieses, had each some attraction to offer, and young ladies who were ready to encourage Mr Miles’s attentions. By and by little echoes of rumours began to be heard. At one picnic he had talked to no one but Miss Lovell, at another dinner-party he had devoted himself for the whole evening to Miss Milman. Winifred had been there, and had seen it for herself, and, indeed, Anthony, when he indulged in these flirtations, generally contrived to be near Winifred. Not that a spirit of mischief prompted him on such occasions, or anything beyond a light-hearted enjoyment of the present moment. He liked the pretty flatteries of manner, the little attentions, which the young girls were not unwilling to lavish upon him,—liked to feel himself courted and appealed to,—liked also, or something more than liked, that Winifred should be near him, that he might look at her, listen to her at the very moment he was turning away, touch something she had touched, unconsciously compare her with her companions. Unconsciously, I repeat, for, although many problems were puzzling him at this moment, he was thinking least of all about his own heart. He did very much what he liked, and if it pleased him to talk to Miss Milman and to sit near Winifred, he talked and he sat. That was all.

That was all, and no one could have said a word against it if it had been always so. He had no intention of neglecting Winifred; but to a girl who loves, unintentional neglect is more cruelly wounding than any other. Each day worked with a sort of slow torture upon her, the more so that her cheeks burnt with shame, when she even acknowledged it to herself. She was in high spirits,—or so it seemed. She fancied herself that all sweetness and gentleness had died out of her heart, leaving bitter ashes behind. When she spoke to Anthony it was laughingly and lightly, only every now and then there would descend a sharp cut, or one that she thought sharp, poor child, and would repeat over to herself with a dreary satisfaction, while she invented other sayings more terrible, which the time never came for uttering. After all, they were not so severe as she intended, for such weapons did not belong to her by nature, and she used them as tremblingly as a woman will fire off a gun that she expects to explode in her hands. As often as not, Anthony did not notice these little attacks; he noticed more what she did not say, the pleasant things which fell so trippingly from others’ lips, to Winifred’s disdain. Feeling as if Anthony were slipping away altogether from the pleasant, familiar intercourse which had been enough to satisfy her while it lasted, and which, therefore, she fancied would have satisfied her forever, these sweet summer days, in which all the world was making holiday, were to her full of restless misery, to which she dared neither give a name nor a cause, and over which she shed the bitterest tears that her life as yet had known.

No one saw the struggle. It would have added tenfold to her suffering if they had done so, for she had too much of her grandmothers undaunted spirit not to be at times fierce and impatient with herself, and her very prayers were not so often that she might be loved again, as that she might cease to love, and so have done with the pain. She had no mother. The Squire, when he was in his most jovial moods, would strike Anthony on the back and ask who was the last flame, but his own daughter’s name had never occurred to him. Mrs Miles was distracted between hopes and fears, represented by Miss Milman and Miss Davies. Marion was taken up with Marmaduke, who was at Thorpe, and who for his part was absorbed in thoughts of Mr Tregennas and Trenance. After this one step had been gained, he was greedy for a clearer declaration of the old man’s intentions, and waited restlessly for a repetition of the invitation to himself and Anthony. Yet when it arrived, he said jealously to Marion,—

“Why should Anthony go? What has he to do with it? Is he trying to come over the old man?”

Even she flamed a little. “You should know him better. There was never any one in the world who cared less for money,” she said angrily.

One wonders sometimes how many misjudgments will rise up and face us one day. Anthony was so far from thinking the thoughts that Marmaduke put into his head, that he was a good deal vexed at the summons which took him away from the pleasant little round into which he had fallen. But he consoled himself with grumbling, and the Milmans insisted upon putting off their picnic until his return.

“They’ll turn the boy’s head between them,” said Mr Robert Mannering wrathfully to himself. He was in his garden, alternately attending to some newly budded roses, and doing his utmost to discomfit the imperturbable Stokes. The little ugly red-faced man guessed better than other people what was going on, and perhaps saw more clearly. “Confound those women!” he said ungallantly. “They do their best to spoil any man they take a fancy to! Stokes, I presume you suppose these unhappy buds are to undo their own bandages? I should like to tie you up for a week, and see how you’d feel at the end of it. And those seedling carnations are in a disgraceful condition.”

“There bain’t wan o’ them worth the soil he grows in,” asserted Stokes with round emphasis.

“Not worth! Pray do you know where the seed came from, and how much I gave for it?”

“I shouldn’t be surprised but what you might ha’ given anything they asked of you. I can’t help that, Mr Robert. There’s a lot of impostors in gardining like as there is in anything else, unless you looks pretty sharp. And they thyur caernations is rubbish.”

“That’s your ignorance. I should like to know how much you knew about gardening until I taught you.”

“I knowed rubbish—always,” said Stokes, with an air of decision which fairly drove Mr Robert off the field. He walked towards the house across the short fine turf, all unlike the Vicarage lawn with its intruding daisies and dandelions, smiling a little to himself over his own discomfiture.

“They are worthless, I believe,” he said, “only I didn’t think the fellow would have the wit to find it out. Who are these coming in at the gate? The Chesters, if I’m not mistaken.” And away hurried Mr Robert to receive his visitors.

“The girls got hold of me, and would make me walk over with them,” said the Squire, pulling Bessie’s hair, and talking loudly. “What are you doing in the garden, eh? Your hobby, ain’t it, Mannering? I’ll lay sixpence, though, you don’t show me a finer dish of peas than we had for dinner yesterday. What were they called, Bessie? Bessie’s the one for remembering all the fine names.”

“Come and dine with us one day, and I’ll see what we can do. Will you say Thursday?—unless Miss Winifred has some engagement.”

“No,” said Winifred, with a little weariness in her voice, which Mr Mannering detected at once. “The Milmans were to have had a picnic on that day, but it is to wait.”

“Because Anthony is going away,” put in Bessie in an aggrieved tone.

“They want young Miles to marry the girl Milman, and so they can’t make enough of him,” said the Squire. “That’s the long and short of it.”

“Ah, I don’t believe he has any such notion in his head,” replied Mr Robert, manfully. “He’ll not be marrying just yet, though other people will marry him a dozen times over.”

“Perhaps not, perhaps not; I don’t know that I should expect to see him do anything so sensible. Old Milman isn’t over-troubled with brains, but they carry him along very fairly, and he’s as sound a Tory as any man in the county. It might be the making of the young fellow to marry into a good steady holdfast family like that, and get some of his harebrained notions knocked out of him,” said the Squire, who was becoming very sore with Anthony’s arguments.

“O, his notions will come all right by and by!” said Mr Robert pacifically. “People can’t all think and live in just the same grooves.”

“More’s the pity. I don’t see that the new grooves are any the better.”

“Well, perhaps sometimes they’re not so much worse as we think them. And how does Bessie get on without Miss Palmer?”

“Why, she plagues us all,” said the Squire, with great satisfaction. “She’s always running out into the fields after me, when she ought to be at her lessons, or her sampler, I tell her. Winifred’s got no end of trouble with her. And now she’s bothering my life out to go into Aunecester twice a week, to the School of Art I suppose she must go, but who’s to take her, I should like to know?”

“You, papa, of course,” said Bessie decidedly. “You are always as glad as you can be to go to Aunecester.”

“There, you hear. That’s how she serves her father,” said Mr Chester, chuckling, and pulling her hair again. “No, thank you, we’ll not come in, Henderson’s waiting to speak to me about his farm. Where’s Mannering?”

“He’s driven over to dine at the Hunters’.”

“What a man he is for society.”

“Yes, he likes it, and it does him good,” said Mr Robert quietly.

“That’s what people always say about things that please them. I tried it for a good bit upon salmon, but it didn’t do. Had to give it up. Well, girls, now you’ve had your say, I hope you’re satisfied, and will let me go home in peace. You’re a lucky man, Mannering, to have your own way without being plagued for it. Here’s Bessie, now: a fellow will have a pretty handful that gets her,—bless you, she’ll not let him say his soul’s his own,” added the Squire, in high good-humour, making signs behind his youngest daughter’s back.

“How is the Farleyense, Mr Mannering?” asked Winifred, lingering.

“I really think that, if possible, it is in more perfect condition than when you did it the honour to come to look at it.”

“And Stokes has not tried any experiments?”

“He knows that if he did it would cost him his place. No, Miss Winifred, there is a point behind which even the easiest master must intrench himself.”

The girl sighed a little. Her father and sister were strolling along the lane outside the gates, and the Squire’s loud laugh came to them scarcely softened by the short distance. The rich fulness of August seemed to weigh somewhat heavily in the air; the hedge-row elms stood in thick unenlightened masses against the sky; the garden was a little parched and exhausted by its very profusion of flowers, the scent of the jessamine was almost oppressive in its richness; it was one of those days in which, without any perceptible change, the knowledge forces itself upon us that the change is there, and that something is gone from us.

“And do you still carry the key in your pocket?” said Winifred, with a faint smile.

“No, no, the house is open. Will you come and see it again?”

“Winifred!” called the Squire from the other side of the wall.

“Not now, thank you. I mustn’t keep my father.”

She spoke hurriedly, but walked lingeringly towards the gate, and Mr Mannering remained stationary for some moments after she had disappeared. “I wonder what is making her take such an interest in the Farleyense,” he said to himself. “The plant is a picture, to be sure, but still—when I think of it—and why should I keep the key in my pocket?—Why—what an old fool I am!—I had forgotten all about Anthony, and no doubt the poor girl wanted to hear a word or two more about him. He’s off somewhere to-day, I dare say, and going into Cornwall to-morrow,—the best place for him, too, if he doesn’t know what’s good for him; and there she is fretting over all these confounded reports, and thinking I could have said a word or two to comfort her. I’ve a great mind not to look at the Farleyense for a week. However, perhaps I’d better just go and give it a glance, to make sure that Stokes hasn’t been meddling.”

Chapter Twelve.“Brave spirits are a balsam to themselves:There is a nobleness of mind, that healsWounds beyond salves.”Cartwright.The two young men found time hang on their hands at Trenance somewhat heavily. The old shadowy house stood at the foot of a hill, by the river’s side; the river was there, making silvery gleams between the trees; it was all cool, green, and dull for these energetic lives, but Marmaduke looked forward to the sweets of ownership, and found it more endurable than his companion. And yet Anthony was the most kind to the old man.“Poor old fellow!” he said one day, as they locked the door of the boat-house, where the water was lapping drearily among the piles, and climbed the bank towards the house. “There must be a queer sort of feeling in looking at the man who is waiting to step into one’s shoes. I am not sure we should stand it so well as he does.”“He has had his day.”“Well, I don’t know that having had dinner one day makes one wish to go without it the next, if that’s what you mean.”“You wouldn’t care for dinner if you had lost your appetite,” said Marmaduke.“You mightn’t care, though, much to see other people eat.”“Pray do you suggest my starving myself for company?”“I wasn’t thinking of you, I was thinking of him,” said Anthony, stopping to cut down an ungainly bramble. “Everybody knows it’s the course of nature, and all that. Still, I say it can’t be altogether easy to be pleasant under those circumstances,—particularly when it’s not your own son that’s to follow.”“That’s not my fault,” said Marmaduke, who seemed to put himself upon the defensive.“No, it’s your luck, old fellow,” said Anthony kindly. “Don’t be crusty. Do you suppose I’m not glad from the bottom of my heart there don’t happen to be a Mrs Tregennas and half a dozen young Tregennases to keep you out of Trenance? Though, by all the much-abused laws of justice and equity, I don’t know that you ought to be here now.”“Why not?” said Marmaduke, turning hastily.“Because there’s nearer blood.”“Mrs Harford is dead.”“Of course she is. But her daughter isn’t, so far as we know,” said Anthony, finishing his bramble.“She’s well out of the way in Australia, at any rate.”“O, she’s far enough off. And her grandfather seems to care little enough what becomes of her. If I were you, Marmaduke, I’d say a good word for her. My father tried, but he wouldn’t listen.”“Thank you,” said Marmaduke, curtly. They were near the house, and he turned abruptly into one of the side paths and walked off by himself. Anthony, whose temper was none of the sweetest, felt a little indignant at his manner. Marmaduke was not like the boy he remembered, a change seemed to have come over him; Anthony, perhaps, had not yet learned how many-sided we all may be, how as one front and then another comes forward, it needs a golden cord to draw us into the beauty of harmony, or a false mask to make pretence of it. Marmaduke had not either at this time. There were things surging up in him which were all at war; he was torn and distracted between them. He knew Anthony well, and yet he had lost faith in his own knowledge. The idea that had once taken root grew hatefully into form and haunting prominence, and there was not a look of old Mr Tregennas, or a word from the young man, but he caught at greedily, and with it fed the lurking fear. He was forever watching, and, as he called it to himself, countermining. Anthony’s natural ease and brightness of manner became, in his sight, deliberate pitfalls spread to entrap the old man; so that although he did contrive to disguise his feelings with a facility which was becoming dangerous, he was restless and uneasy when Anthony was out of his sight, especially when he suspected him of being by Mr Tregennas’s side. His disquiet was the more unaccountable that Mr Tregennas rather fell foul of the world in a peevishly discontented fashion, which had taken the place of his former ungracious doggedness, than showed any especial marks of favour on that side or on this. He snubbed Anthony quite as much as he snubbed Marmaduke, on the whole perhaps rather more, Anthony being less careful not to disagree with him, and having taken up a crusade about some labourers’ cottages on the estate, a suggestion to improve which was popularly considered to have the same effect upon the master as the shaking of a red rag has upon a bull. Anthony used to talk to the men, and invite them to complain to the steward, and then come back and tell Mr Tregennas what he had done.“What d’ye mean by that, sir?” the old man would growl in a rage. “What d’ye mean by stirring these rascals up?”“They’re in the right, sir, indeed they are. You can’t get down to see the place, and White doesn’t choose to tell you what the people say, but it’s a shame that any one should have to live in such holes.”“You’ll live in them yourself one of these days, if you go on in this confounded fashion of yours.”“Then I hope you’ll have them set in order at once, sir,” said Anthony, with a promptitude over which old Tregennas chuckled.In about a fortnight he let them go. Anthony was so conscious of the sacrifice he had made upon the altar of friendship, that he was the more irritated at the change which had become perceptible in Marmaduke. It seemed at times as if he scarcely cared to conceal his repulsion, and at other moments as though he were studiously forcing himself to wear the old dress of pleasant companionship. Anthony’s nature was one which very quickly took the tone which others exhibited towards him; he was apt to fall aloof at the first symptom of drawing back, and to feel more anger than sorrow at the loss of good-will. In this case, however, the thought of Marion prevented the alteration in their relations to one another becoming so marked as it might otherwise have been, and, indeed, Marmaduke was kept closely at his distasteful duties during the following autumn and winter months.Anthony himself was not uninterruptedly at the Vicarage. He had a feeling as if this choice of a profession which lay before him were a crisis in his life; perhaps a little pleasant sense of self-importance gave it even undue gravity in his eyes. It was possible to debate upon it without that goad of necessity behind him by which men are often driven into the decisions of life, and his mind travelled after many projects in the paths which stretched to this and that summit in the horizon of the future. At one time he would be a barrister,—until he went to London and was talked out of it by one of the profession; at another he would travel with a pupil, an idea unconsciously crushed by Sir James Milman’s energy in offering him the charge of a shock-headed lad whose irreproachable heaviness would have driven Anthony out of his senses by the end of a week; finally, his longest and favourite dream was that of literature, the gates of which were to fly open as all gates are to open before these young knights. Meanwhile his life was much what it had been in the summer, energetic in everything, whether shooting or flirting or dancing or writing, splendidly young, as Mr Robert once said. As to his relations with Winifred Chester, the barrier between them, doubtless, still existed, and caused a fret on either side, he telling himself that Winifred was changeable and unsympathetic, and she accusing him of giving up old friendships for new, yet neither the one nor the other so entirely believing in their own reproaches as to have lost the idea that some day things would go back to what once had been. Meanwhile, if the old familiar life did not flow on with the pleasant smoothness of former days,—and, indeed, the Squire’s manner with Anthony must be allowed in some measure to have prevented this,—Winifred was less tired in the winter than in the gay brightness of the summer days, and it was less sharp to dream of his sitting by Miss Milman’s side than to be actually there to feel herself neglected. Moreover, she was struggling with all her might to prove herself—even to herself—indifferent. It was balm to her sore heart, ashamed of its own weakness and attempting to ignore it, to keep away from the Vicarage when Anthony was there, to avoid the roads in which she was likely to meet him, to turn the conversation when it drew near the subject which was dearest, to remain in her own room when he came to Hardlands. Every such act was a triumph, but what a triumph! For Anthony was not likely to bear his treatment with good-humoured indifference. It galled him. He was inclined to retaliate, and he laid all the blame of their altered relations at Winifred’s door. Now and then there came a faint return of what once had been, but there was no doubt that the last few months had developed a certain easiness to take offence, which had never before seemed to belong to the girl’s nature, so that often even after a momentary relaxation she pulled herself up with a sharp and uncomfortable check. It is indeed a little difficult for a woman in her position to strike the just balance between self-respect and pride.If she could not altogether deceive herself, she unconsciously contrived to mystify others: the men said she had refused young Miles, the women that she had tried in vain to marry him, even shrewd Mr Robert was puzzled. There was no one so loving, so tender, so observant, that they weighed the trifles which might have betrayed her, no swiftness of motherhood to read what was passing. So far as human sympathy was concerned, she bore her burden, without a finger being stretched to help her; but there is a Hand from whose loving touch the sorest heart never shrinks, and from out of the very depths it draws us gently.Her self-containing puzzled even herself. There comes a time in most strong lives when the mysterious power of repression becomes an experience to them and grows into a wonder. It fills the world with a keener interest than when all things seemed open in the page of the great book. Face, heart, nature,—what is hidden beyond our sight?—what does the mask cover?—of what tremendous powers are we unconscious that lie beside us and round our very hearth? Now and then the crust heaves, and we see a flash, but the very working of our own hearts is often hidden from us, and it is only by slow degrees that we learn those forces in ourselves which teach us to reverence our brother’s soul.

“Brave spirits are a balsam to themselves:There is a nobleness of mind, that healsWounds beyond salves.”Cartwright.

“Brave spirits are a balsam to themselves:There is a nobleness of mind, that healsWounds beyond salves.”Cartwright.

The two young men found time hang on their hands at Trenance somewhat heavily. The old shadowy house stood at the foot of a hill, by the river’s side; the river was there, making silvery gleams between the trees; it was all cool, green, and dull for these energetic lives, but Marmaduke looked forward to the sweets of ownership, and found it more endurable than his companion. And yet Anthony was the most kind to the old man.

“Poor old fellow!” he said one day, as they locked the door of the boat-house, where the water was lapping drearily among the piles, and climbed the bank towards the house. “There must be a queer sort of feeling in looking at the man who is waiting to step into one’s shoes. I am not sure we should stand it so well as he does.”

“He has had his day.”

“Well, I don’t know that having had dinner one day makes one wish to go without it the next, if that’s what you mean.”

“You wouldn’t care for dinner if you had lost your appetite,” said Marmaduke.

“You mightn’t care, though, much to see other people eat.”

“Pray do you suggest my starving myself for company?”

“I wasn’t thinking of you, I was thinking of him,” said Anthony, stopping to cut down an ungainly bramble. “Everybody knows it’s the course of nature, and all that. Still, I say it can’t be altogether easy to be pleasant under those circumstances,—particularly when it’s not your own son that’s to follow.”

“That’s not my fault,” said Marmaduke, who seemed to put himself upon the defensive.

“No, it’s your luck, old fellow,” said Anthony kindly. “Don’t be crusty. Do you suppose I’m not glad from the bottom of my heart there don’t happen to be a Mrs Tregennas and half a dozen young Tregennases to keep you out of Trenance? Though, by all the much-abused laws of justice and equity, I don’t know that you ought to be here now.”

“Why not?” said Marmaduke, turning hastily.

“Because there’s nearer blood.”

“Mrs Harford is dead.”

“Of course she is. But her daughter isn’t, so far as we know,” said Anthony, finishing his bramble.

“She’s well out of the way in Australia, at any rate.”

“O, she’s far enough off. And her grandfather seems to care little enough what becomes of her. If I were you, Marmaduke, I’d say a good word for her. My father tried, but he wouldn’t listen.”

“Thank you,” said Marmaduke, curtly. They were near the house, and he turned abruptly into one of the side paths and walked off by himself. Anthony, whose temper was none of the sweetest, felt a little indignant at his manner. Marmaduke was not like the boy he remembered, a change seemed to have come over him; Anthony, perhaps, had not yet learned how many-sided we all may be, how as one front and then another comes forward, it needs a golden cord to draw us into the beauty of harmony, or a false mask to make pretence of it. Marmaduke had not either at this time. There were things surging up in him which were all at war; he was torn and distracted between them. He knew Anthony well, and yet he had lost faith in his own knowledge. The idea that had once taken root grew hatefully into form and haunting prominence, and there was not a look of old Mr Tregennas, or a word from the young man, but he caught at greedily, and with it fed the lurking fear. He was forever watching, and, as he called it to himself, countermining. Anthony’s natural ease and brightness of manner became, in his sight, deliberate pitfalls spread to entrap the old man; so that although he did contrive to disguise his feelings with a facility which was becoming dangerous, he was restless and uneasy when Anthony was out of his sight, especially when he suspected him of being by Mr Tregennas’s side. His disquiet was the more unaccountable that Mr Tregennas rather fell foul of the world in a peevishly discontented fashion, which had taken the place of his former ungracious doggedness, than showed any especial marks of favour on that side or on this. He snubbed Anthony quite as much as he snubbed Marmaduke, on the whole perhaps rather more, Anthony being less careful not to disagree with him, and having taken up a crusade about some labourers’ cottages on the estate, a suggestion to improve which was popularly considered to have the same effect upon the master as the shaking of a red rag has upon a bull. Anthony used to talk to the men, and invite them to complain to the steward, and then come back and tell Mr Tregennas what he had done.

“What d’ye mean by that, sir?” the old man would growl in a rage. “What d’ye mean by stirring these rascals up?”

“They’re in the right, sir, indeed they are. You can’t get down to see the place, and White doesn’t choose to tell you what the people say, but it’s a shame that any one should have to live in such holes.”

“You’ll live in them yourself one of these days, if you go on in this confounded fashion of yours.”

“Then I hope you’ll have them set in order at once, sir,” said Anthony, with a promptitude over which old Tregennas chuckled.

In about a fortnight he let them go. Anthony was so conscious of the sacrifice he had made upon the altar of friendship, that he was the more irritated at the change which had become perceptible in Marmaduke. It seemed at times as if he scarcely cared to conceal his repulsion, and at other moments as though he were studiously forcing himself to wear the old dress of pleasant companionship. Anthony’s nature was one which very quickly took the tone which others exhibited towards him; he was apt to fall aloof at the first symptom of drawing back, and to feel more anger than sorrow at the loss of good-will. In this case, however, the thought of Marion prevented the alteration in their relations to one another becoming so marked as it might otherwise have been, and, indeed, Marmaduke was kept closely at his distasteful duties during the following autumn and winter months.

Anthony himself was not uninterruptedly at the Vicarage. He had a feeling as if this choice of a profession which lay before him were a crisis in his life; perhaps a little pleasant sense of self-importance gave it even undue gravity in his eyes. It was possible to debate upon it without that goad of necessity behind him by which men are often driven into the decisions of life, and his mind travelled after many projects in the paths which stretched to this and that summit in the horizon of the future. At one time he would be a barrister,—until he went to London and was talked out of it by one of the profession; at another he would travel with a pupil, an idea unconsciously crushed by Sir James Milman’s energy in offering him the charge of a shock-headed lad whose irreproachable heaviness would have driven Anthony out of his senses by the end of a week; finally, his longest and favourite dream was that of literature, the gates of which were to fly open as all gates are to open before these young knights. Meanwhile his life was much what it had been in the summer, energetic in everything, whether shooting or flirting or dancing or writing, splendidly young, as Mr Robert once said. As to his relations with Winifred Chester, the barrier between them, doubtless, still existed, and caused a fret on either side, he telling himself that Winifred was changeable and unsympathetic, and she accusing him of giving up old friendships for new, yet neither the one nor the other so entirely believing in their own reproaches as to have lost the idea that some day things would go back to what once had been. Meanwhile, if the old familiar life did not flow on with the pleasant smoothness of former days,—and, indeed, the Squire’s manner with Anthony must be allowed in some measure to have prevented this,—Winifred was less tired in the winter than in the gay brightness of the summer days, and it was less sharp to dream of his sitting by Miss Milman’s side than to be actually there to feel herself neglected. Moreover, she was struggling with all her might to prove herself—even to herself—indifferent. It was balm to her sore heart, ashamed of its own weakness and attempting to ignore it, to keep away from the Vicarage when Anthony was there, to avoid the roads in which she was likely to meet him, to turn the conversation when it drew near the subject which was dearest, to remain in her own room when he came to Hardlands. Every such act was a triumph, but what a triumph! For Anthony was not likely to bear his treatment with good-humoured indifference. It galled him. He was inclined to retaliate, and he laid all the blame of their altered relations at Winifred’s door. Now and then there came a faint return of what once had been, but there was no doubt that the last few months had developed a certain easiness to take offence, which had never before seemed to belong to the girl’s nature, so that often even after a momentary relaxation she pulled herself up with a sharp and uncomfortable check. It is indeed a little difficult for a woman in her position to strike the just balance between self-respect and pride.

If she could not altogether deceive herself, she unconsciously contrived to mystify others: the men said she had refused young Miles, the women that she had tried in vain to marry him, even shrewd Mr Robert was puzzled. There was no one so loving, so tender, so observant, that they weighed the trifles which might have betrayed her, no swiftness of motherhood to read what was passing. So far as human sympathy was concerned, she bore her burden, without a finger being stretched to help her; but there is a Hand from whose loving touch the sorest heart never shrinks, and from out of the very depths it draws us gently.

Her self-containing puzzled even herself. There comes a time in most strong lives when the mysterious power of repression becomes an experience to them and grows into a wonder. It fills the world with a keener interest than when all things seemed open in the page of the great book. Face, heart, nature,—what is hidden beyond our sight?—what does the mask cover?—of what tremendous powers are we unconscious that lie beside us and round our very hearth? Now and then the crust heaves, and we see a flash, but the very working of our own hearts is often hidden from us, and it is only by slow degrees that we learn those forces in ourselves which teach us to reverence our brother’s soul.

Chapter Thirteen.“He that wrongs his friendWrongs himself more, and ever bears aboutA silent court of justice in his breast.”Tennyson.Marmaduke came down in April, and it was evident enough to any one that he wanted change, or rest, or some other means of renewing health. His face was thin, his eyes unquiet; there was a sort of suspicious watchfulness in his manner unlike his old languor, which nobody could make out, but which they all noticed, except the Vicar and Marion. It made Winifred so uncomfortable that she could not help asking Marion whether anything were the matter.“Everything is the matter,” said the girl in her eager way. She could not get out of her head that each day that passed was defrauding them of that perfect bliss for which she waited impatiently. She looked with a little contempt at Winifred, who seemed not to understand this impetuous demand for happiness. Poor Winifred! It was impossible for her not to contrast Marion’s position with her own, and to wonder that it should bring so little contentment. Once when Marion was pouring forth her complaints and longings, she said gravely,—“You don’t know what worse than nonsense you are talking;” and yet, as she said it, her eyes were full of tender depth. Her moods were not very settled at this time, sometimes she was resentful, abrupt; but she said these words so strangely that they startled Marion, who was accustomed on the strength of her engagement to look down upon her friend as from a height of experience. She did not know that there were other springs of experience of which she could not fathom the depths, nay, that there is something far more divine and profound than experience itself, out of the strength of which came Winifred’s quiet words. Yet something in them made her wonder. It was a spring afternoon, one of those days in which sudden surprises of shade and brightness alternate with each other. Now and then an intensity of light flashed out from a break in the grey hurrying clouds, and the young green of the larches and the tender pink blossoms of the elms grew vivid and sparkling under its touch; now and then it all faded into sober tints. A line of heavy blue marked the distant moorland; between a thinly clothed network of branches might be traced a crowd of small fields, patches of red soil crossed by sombre lines of hedges, brown nests in the rookery swaying in the wind, a pear-tree standing up in ghostly whiteness before the rent clouds. Winifred was leaning against a window of the Vicarage drawing-room, and looking out, her steadfast eyes grave with a sweet seriousness. Marion, who was watching her, said suddenly,—“Winifred, you have grown older!”She smiled, but gave no answer.“But it is you who do not know. Wait until you are engaged yourself,” continued Marion, falling back upon her old point of superiority, and yet anxious to induce Winifred to agree.“It is possible to see, although one is outside,—besides, it has nothing to do with feelings.”This was said slowly, and Marion cried out at once,—“Nothing to do with feelings!”“The right or the wrong can’t be affected by them, I mean,” Winifred went on, still slowly, turning her face towards the grey clouds broken with white depths that were driven from the west. “There is something more secure for us to rest upon than even the love you hold to be so strong, Marion, or else—”“Else what?” said Marion impatiently. But Winifred would not answer. She came from the window, and took up her hat which was lying on the sofa.“I must go, or I shall be caught in the rain. Take care of your cold.”“O, I am taking care!” said Marion discontentedly. “Marmaduke was obliged to go into Underham on some stupid business of Miss Philippa’s. Old people are so selfish. Anthony comes back to-morrow. Ask Bessie to bring the last magazines. But you don’t know what you were talking about, Winifred, really.”Winifred laughed and went away.Marmaduke had gone to Underham, as she said, doing what he had done a hundred times before, walking in through the narrow lanes, white with the blossom of the blackthorn, and past the farm orchards to the little ugly improving town, with its bustle, its grimy coal-wharves, and its rows of stiff houses run up quickly by the sides of the street. Marmaduke transacted Miss Philippa’s business, and stood talking for a while to Mr Featherly. He particularly disliked meeting Mr Featherly, because the old clergyman had a fashion of inquiring whether he were still at work in the north, with an expression which Marmaduke chose to interpret as astonishment, although his questioner only intended to prove his interest in the little lad whom he remembered running about with the Miles children in the days when he was a younger man, and rode out to Thorpe now and then when ordered forth by Mrs Featherly to take a constitutional Marmaduke, however, imagined that his words implied that wonder from which we are inclined to wince when it professes to be excited in our behalf, a wonder that Mr Tregennas had not done more for the nephew who was popularly looked upon as his heir, and he was careful to avoid the old clergyman whenever it was practicable. On this day his efforts had been in vain, and Mr Featherly kept him for an unusual length of time to tell him the story of some local event, which his wife permitted no one but herself to relate in her presence, and which Mr Featherly therefore hailed the opportunity of producing. Afterwards, Marmaduke, who had not Anthony’s many-sided interests, and found time a wearisome weight, sauntered round by the canal, watched a coal-barge dragged up to her moorings, and then strolled towards the post-office, it being the custom at Thorpe for any responsible inhabitant who happened to be at Underham after the arrival of the mail train, to call for the letters due by the second delivery to the Vicarage, the Red House, and Hardlands. He was not, however, sure whether the train had come in, and stopped David Stephens, who was passing him, to ask the question.His own feelings towards David were rather favourable than otherwise; not that his nature was sufficiently large to have a more just view of the real intensity of the man’s longings, or, indeed, that he could have sympathised with any desires which were merely spiritual, and therefore to his mind unreal, but that he knew that Anthony was opposing David with all his might, and something within him inclined him to rank himself in every matter on the side against Anthony. He had not a very clear idea of what position David held amongst the dissenters, or of the points at variance between him and Anthony, and he was not sorry for the opportunity of putting one or two leading questions, which should at all events let David see that he was not offending all the family by his open warfare. He said in a conciliatory tone,—“I heard something of your trying to get into the post-office, Stephens. Have you succeeded?”“I hardly know as yet, sir. I have not many friends among those who have the disposal of the place; a dissenter seems necessarily to bring a large amount of ill-will about his head.”“Not necessarily, I should suppose. It is hard to believe that any man could be persecuted in these days for holding his own religious opinions.”“There are many hard things that are true,” said David bitterly. “One would say that it is hard that so much as standing room should be denied to those who would worship God as they believe right, and yet you know, Mr Lee, whether that is true or not, and who has done it.”“Mr Anthony does not think much of the feelings of those who oppose him,” said Marmaduke, slowly lighting a cigar. “I am afraid it is of no use for me to say anything, Stephens. You had better give it up, unless you really see a chance of succeeding in spite of him.”“Until to-day I had hopes, sir, but I find he has been more inveterate than I could have supposed. Mr Maddox has gone back from his word altogether; the fear of man has been too strong for him to battle against, even with the fear of another world before him. I thank you, sir, however, for your kindness.”He went on quickly, as if he were afraid of adding more, and Marmaduke strolled leisurely after him to the post-office, where the clerk handed him three letters for Mr Mannering, one for Hardlands, and none for the Vicarage. Setting off to walk homewards, however, he heard steps behind, and Stephens, overtaking him, said,—“Mr Tucker overlooked one letter, sir.”“Thank you, Stephens. Are you going this way?”“I am making haste to a cottage where they want me, and I have to be back at the office by an hour’s time. Good day, sir.”For the second time they parted, and Marmaduke looked at the letter. He saw at a glance that it was for the Vicarage, and for Anthony, but he saw at the same moment something which brought a red flush into his face. The letter was for Anthony, and it came from Mr Tregennas.To ordinary persons it might have seemed a not unnatural thing for Mr Tregennas to have written to Anthony, who had once or twice been his guest; but to Marmaduke the sight of the handwriting broke down the barriers which had hitherto stemmed in his slowly accumulating suspicions, and let loose a very torrent. The thoughts could not have leapt to life in that moment, but they leapt from their hiding-places. In those few feebly written words he saw revealed a very network of treachery, and walked on mechanically, looking at the letter as he walked with a kind of dumb rage. What did it conceal from him? What plot was weaving round him its web of ruin? How had Anthony toiled and dug, and how much had he gained? Gained away from him,—his own as he had thought it, and called it, and counted upon it! How had he been so blind? Jealousies that hitherto had been vague and unacknowledged took shape and rose up in fierce array. He said to himself that Anthony had seemed abstracted of late, and called himself a fool as he recollected that just before he went to London a week ago he had noticed a letter in his hand, the address upon which stirred him with a half-memory. As he walked quickly on, shut in by green lanes, he lashed himself by a hundred evidences into the conviction that Anthony was a traitor, and that in his hand he carried the letter which held the key to this treachery.In his hand.It was a strange power. To his excited imagination the thought dawned like the beginning of retribution. How many chances were there not against its thus coming into his possession! Had justice so guided it that he, of all others, should be the one to whose care it was delivered? Had Anthony’s absence and Miss Philippa’s fancies all worked for this end? He looked at the letter as if there, hidden only by a slender cover, lay the means of confounding his enemies, at first with a kind of angry triumph that so much at least had been gained. The letter was in his hands, and that was the first step.After all, however, he became soon aware that it was only a step. To himself it might be conclusive proof, but that was not sufficient, and he felt irritated and baffled. In what shape did the danger threaten, and would it be yet impossible for him to turn its tide? He had thought of giving Anthony Miles the letter, and so openly accusing him as to force from him a confession of his shamelessness; but, with a passionate impotence, he acknowledged this to be a vain manner of confronting the blow. He was not in the position to make good his claim. He must meet his enemy with all the subtlety of self-defence. But what had he to meet? How should he know what lay before him, from which side the thrusts should be parried, in what shape grew the threat? The questions beat in his brain with recurrent strokes, as if a hammer were smiting dull iron. All the keenness of suspicion could do no more than bring a shadowy uncertainty before him; nothing could solve the problem except the letter, with its poor feeble failing writing, which he held in his hand.For there, to be sure, lay the certainty; there was hid the proof or the acquittal, as the case might be. He began to look at it as though Anthony were the prisoner on trial before him, while he himself was the person who possessed the clew, and could determine the guilt. To his distorted reasoning it became almost a sin against Anthony not at once to decide the question, when, after all, he might be innocent, and surely it would be better that this innocence should be placed beyond the power of doubt, than that so cruel a suspicion should divide two friends. For Anthony’s own sake it seemed to Marmaduke a duty to determine the truth forever. The letter had been given to him for some purpose, he argued, as a man will argue, himself clothing the temptation in the strong armour with which it comes to meet him at last, mighty and irresistible. It needed only one look to convince himself, a look which could not harm Anthony Miles in any way, only put Marmaduke on his guard, and show him how to defend his rights. One look—nothing more—at the letter which was in his hands.He opened it. And as he did so, out of some background of old associations, there rushed upon him such an intolerable loathing for his own action that for a few moments his eyes refused to see its contents. The false pleading with which he had covered it was no longer to be called up, could never any more be called up. It was with a sense of desperate degradation that he forced himself to master the writing, pathetic in its feebleness, confused and indistinct. “I think it is all coming to an end at last,” it said, with a forlornness which might have touched him at another time, “and that my successor will soon be free of my shoes, such as they are. I don’t talk about repenting, but somehow my girl’s face comes before me night and day,—I might have been more patient with her, though I did no more than I told her to look for. Your father seems a just man; people call me a hard old fellow, but I have still a feeble belief in human nature, and I believe in him. If you choose you may place a decision in his hands, and if he tells me the thing should be done, I will make an alteration in my will, half the money shall go as it is now settled, and half to Ellen Harford, Margaret’s child. But should he think the change unnecessary, I do not wish to be pestered by replies or arguments. Silence will answer me fully. I shall understand that he thinks my proposal unadvisable, and I shall never break it by an allusion.”And this was the letter which Marmaduke must deliver.For a quarter of an hour he stood motionless with it in his hand. Over his head was the sweet changeable April sky, and on either side of the road a little green copse in which the birds were chirping and twittering. He looked up at last, with a fierce gesture of impatience at their glad piping, at the tender sunshine; a sudden storm, a wild rending of all these pretty gentle things, would have been more congenial to him just then than the burden of their joy. Two men jogged by him in a cart, and looked at him curiously as he stood by the roadside. It raised a quick fear that they might discover his secret, and he began to walk slowly on again, reading and rereading the letter in obedience to some mechanical impulse, for the first sight had burned the words into his brain. It was remarkable that he had no longer any fear of Anthony as a rival, probably from his own frame of mind being such that it was impossible for him to realise a sane man putting such a choice into the hands of his heir, and conceiving the idea of his exercising it in any way but one. It was only a robbery of himself which was revealed to him; an iniquitous deprival of half of his inheritance. For he needed no assurance of what Mr Miles’s decision would be. He had a half-uncomfortable, half-slighting contempt for the Vicar’s notions, which he classed with other antiquated forms of thought belonging to the old world. Anthony’s words came back to him with a sting which they had not at the time they were spoken, when he believed them to be powerless, and he knew that half of those good things on which he had so long counted would go out of his grasp forever as soon as this letter was delivered. As soon as it was delivered,—but the question immediately forced itself on his thought of why such a letter should exist at all to harrow them with its sentence of deprivation. Was not the Vicar himself concerned, Marion’s interests being equally involved with his own? And it was for the sake of a girl who knew nothing, hoped nothing, and whose father was as equally averse to a reconciliation as Mr Tregennas had been. Then he thought angrily that the decision, if there were one, should have been offered to himself. Indeed, fate said the same thing, and, resenting the injustice, gave him the needed opportunity. If he did not embrace it, he was yielding his own property, and sealing a gross injustice. The thought grew, it rang in his brain as he walked along,—alas, no song of birds could drown it!He tore the letter across and across without a renewal of those accusing feelings which had rushed upon him when first he opened it, having wrought himself into a condition in which right and wrong became mere accidents dependent on his own will. He set his teeth and tore it into a hundred fragments, dropping them, as he walked, upon the grass by the side of the lane, and almost taking a pleasure, as it seemed, in their symmetrical destruction. No sense of pity touched him for the failing life that had there made its last vain effort, and the notion that he was baffling an act of injustice he was able by a strong and concentrated pressure of conscience to keep uppermost in the place it had usurped.A little farther along the lane he once more met David Stephens, letting him pass this time without comment, and congratulating himself that the man had not timed his return earlier. It was, however, noticeable that, having delivered himself from his previous haunting suspicions of Anthony’s rivalship, he should, nevertheless, immediately decide that he would in some hidden manner assist Stephens, thinking that the fortune which was to come into his hands would enable him to do this, and siding more strongly than even an hour ago with any attempt to oppose Anthony’s influence.David himself, accustomed to observe keenly, was aware of some disturbance in Marmaduke’s face as he passed him, wondering, too, at his having gone so short a distance since they parted. It is possible that the surprise made him quick to notice trifles, for the tiny atoms which had fluttered on the grass would naturally have escaped his observation. As it was, he stooped and gathered some of them into his hand. They were torn so closely as to make it almost a matter of impossibility to fit one piece with another, unless he had bestowed long attention upon the work, and no impulse moved him to do this. But a scrap of the envelope, which Marmaduke had destroyed with less care, showed enough of the postmark for Polmear to be distinguishable, and Polmear had been stamped on the letter which Stephens had handed to Mr Lee. One or two other half-words there were, which, his curiosity being a little excited, he tried to put together as he went along, but for the most part they were illegible. Something, however, gave him an uneasy feeling as he hurried on to the post-office to hear whether his application had been successful.

“He that wrongs his friendWrongs himself more, and ever bears aboutA silent court of justice in his breast.”Tennyson.

“He that wrongs his friendWrongs himself more, and ever bears aboutA silent court of justice in his breast.”Tennyson.

Marmaduke came down in April, and it was evident enough to any one that he wanted change, or rest, or some other means of renewing health. His face was thin, his eyes unquiet; there was a sort of suspicious watchfulness in his manner unlike his old languor, which nobody could make out, but which they all noticed, except the Vicar and Marion. It made Winifred so uncomfortable that she could not help asking Marion whether anything were the matter.

“Everything is the matter,” said the girl in her eager way. She could not get out of her head that each day that passed was defrauding them of that perfect bliss for which she waited impatiently. She looked with a little contempt at Winifred, who seemed not to understand this impetuous demand for happiness. Poor Winifred! It was impossible for her not to contrast Marion’s position with her own, and to wonder that it should bring so little contentment. Once when Marion was pouring forth her complaints and longings, she said gravely,—“You don’t know what worse than nonsense you are talking;” and yet, as she said it, her eyes were full of tender depth. Her moods were not very settled at this time, sometimes she was resentful, abrupt; but she said these words so strangely that they startled Marion, who was accustomed on the strength of her engagement to look down upon her friend as from a height of experience. She did not know that there were other springs of experience of which she could not fathom the depths, nay, that there is something far more divine and profound than experience itself, out of the strength of which came Winifred’s quiet words. Yet something in them made her wonder. It was a spring afternoon, one of those days in which sudden surprises of shade and brightness alternate with each other. Now and then an intensity of light flashed out from a break in the grey hurrying clouds, and the young green of the larches and the tender pink blossoms of the elms grew vivid and sparkling under its touch; now and then it all faded into sober tints. A line of heavy blue marked the distant moorland; between a thinly clothed network of branches might be traced a crowd of small fields, patches of red soil crossed by sombre lines of hedges, brown nests in the rookery swaying in the wind, a pear-tree standing up in ghostly whiteness before the rent clouds. Winifred was leaning against a window of the Vicarage drawing-room, and looking out, her steadfast eyes grave with a sweet seriousness. Marion, who was watching her, said suddenly,—

“Winifred, you have grown older!”

She smiled, but gave no answer.

“But it is you who do not know. Wait until you are engaged yourself,” continued Marion, falling back upon her old point of superiority, and yet anxious to induce Winifred to agree.

“It is possible to see, although one is outside,—besides, it has nothing to do with feelings.”

This was said slowly, and Marion cried out at once,—

“Nothing to do with feelings!”

“The right or the wrong can’t be affected by them, I mean,” Winifred went on, still slowly, turning her face towards the grey clouds broken with white depths that were driven from the west. “There is something more secure for us to rest upon than even the love you hold to be so strong, Marion, or else—”

“Else what?” said Marion impatiently. But Winifred would not answer. She came from the window, and took up her hat which was lying on the sofa.

“I must go, or I shall be caught in the rain. Take care of your cold.”

“O, I am taking care!” said Marion discontentedly. “Marmaduke was obliged to go into Underham on some stupid business of Miss Philippa’s. Old people are so selfish. Anthony comes back to-morrow. Ask Bessie to bring the last magazines. But you don’t know what you were talking about, Winifred, really.”

Winifred laughed and went away.

Marmaduke had gone to Underham, as she said, doing what he had done a hundred times before, walking in through the narrow lanes, white with the blossom of the blackthorn, and past the farm orchards to the little ugly improving town, with its bustle, its grimy coal-wharves, and its rows of stiff houses run up quickly by the sides of the street. Marmaduke transacted Miss Philippa’s business, and stood talking for a while to Mr Featherly. He particularly disliked meeting Mr Featherly, because the old clergyman had a fashion of inquiring whether he were still at work in the north, with an expression which Marmaduke chose to interpret as astonishment, although his questioner only intended to prove his interest in the little lad whom he remembered running about with the Miles children in the days when he was a younger man, and rode out to Thorpe now and then when ordered forth by Mrs Featherly to take a constitutional Marmaduke, however, imagined that his words implied that wonder from which we are inclined to wince when it professes to be excited in our behalf, a wonder that Mr Tregennas had not done more for the nephew who was popularly looked upon as his heir, and he was careful to avoid the old clergyman whenever it was practicable. On this day his efforts had been in vain, and Mr Featherly kept him for an unusual length of time to tell him the story of some local event, which his wife permitted no one but herself to relate in her presence, and which Mr Featherly therefore hailed the opportunity of producing. Afterwards, Marmaduke, who had not Anthony’s many-sided interests, and found time a wearisome weight, sauntered round by the canal, watched a coal-barge dragged up to her moorings, and then strolled towards the post-office, it being the custom at Thorpe for any responsible inhabitant who happened to be at Underham after the arrival of the mail train, to call for the letters due by the second delivery to the Vicarage, the Red House, and Hardlands. He was not, however, sure whether the train had come in, and stopped David Stephens, who was passing him, to ask the question.

His own feelings towards David were rather favourable than otherwise; not that his nature was sufficiently large to have a more just view of the real intensity of the man’s longings, or, indeed, that he could have sympathised with any desires which were merely spiritual, and therefore to his mind unreal, but that he knew that Anthony was opposing David with all his might, and something within him inclined him to rank himself in every matter on the side against Anthony. He had not a very clear idea of what position David held amongst the dissenters, or of the points at variance between him and Anthony, and he was not sorry for the opportunity of putting one or two leading questions, which should at all events let David see that he was not offending all the family by his open warfare. He said in a conciliatory tone,—

“I heard something of your trying to get into the post-office, Stephens. Have you succeeded?”

“I hardly know as yet, sir. I have not many friends among those who have the disposal of the place; a dissenter seems necessarily to bring a large amount of ill-will about his head.”

“Not necessarily, I should suppose. It is hard to believe that any man could be persecuted in these days for holding his own religious opinions.”

“There are many hard things that are true,” said David bitterly. “One would say that it is hard that so much as standing room should be denied to those who would worship God as they believe right, and yet you know, Mr Lee, whether that is true or not, and who has done it.”

“Mr Anthony does not think much of the feelings of those who oppose him,” said Marmaduke, slowly lighting a cigar. “I am afraid it is of no use for me to say anything, Stephens. You had better give it up, unless you really see a chance of succeeding in spite of him.”

“Until to-day I had hopes, sir, but I find he has been more inveterate than I could have supposed. Mr Maddox has gone back from his word altogether; the fear of man has been too strong for him to battle against, even with the fear of another world before him. I thank you, sir, however, for your kindness.”

He went on quickly, as if he were afraid of adding more, and Marmaduke strolled leisurely after him to the post-office, where the clerk handed him three letters for Mr Mannering, one for Hardlands, and none for the Vicarage. Setting off to walk homewards, however, he heard steps behind, and Stephens, overtaking him, said,—

“Mr Tucker overlooked one letter, sir.”

“Thank you, Stephens. Are you going this way?”

“I am making haste to a cottage where they want me, and I have to be back at the office by an hour’s time. Good day, sir.”

For the second time they parted, and Marmaduke looked at the letter. He saw at a glance that it was for the Vicarage, and for Anthony, but he saw at the same moment something which brought a red flush into his face. The letter was for Anthony, and it came from Mr Tregennas.

To ordinary persons it might have seemed a not unnatural thing for Mr Tregennas to have written to Anthony, who had once or twice been his guest; but to Marmaduke the sight of the handwriting broke down the barriers which had hitherto stemmed in his slowly accumulating suspicions, and let loose a very torrent. The thoughts could not have leapt to life in that moment, but they leapt from their hiding-places. In those few feebly written words he saw revealed a very network of treachery, and walked on mechanically, looking at the letter as he walked with a kind of dumb rage. What did it conceal from him? What plot was weaving round him its web of ruin? How had Anthony toiled and dug, and how much had he gained? Gained away from him,—his own as he had thought it, and called it, and counted upon it! How had he been so blind? Jealousies that hitherto had been vague and unacknowledged took shape and rose up in fierce array. He said to himself that Anthony had seemed abstracted of late, and called himself a fool as he recollected that just before he went to London a week ago he had noticed a letter in his hand, the address upon which stirred him with a half-memory. As he walked quickly on, shut in by green lanes, he lashed himself by a hundred evidences into the conviction that Anthony was a traitor, and that in his hand he carried the letter which held the key to this treachery.

In his hand.

It was a strange power. To his excited imagination the thought dawned like the beginning of retribution. How many chances were there not against its thus coming into his possession! Had justice so guided it that he, of all others, should be the one to whose care it was delivered? Had Anthony’s absence and Miss Philippa’s fancies all worked for this end? He looked at the letter as if there, hidden only by a slender cover, lay the means of confounding his enemies, at first with a kind of angry triumph that so much at least had been gained. The letter was in his hands, and that was the first step.

After all, however, he became soon aware that it was only a step. To himself it might be conclusive proof, but that was not sufficient, and he felt irritated and baffled. In what shape did the danger threaten, and would it be yet impossible for him to turn its tide? He had thought of giving Anthony Miles the letter, and so openly accusing him as to force from him a confession of his shamelessness; but, with a passionate impotence, he acknowledged this to be a vain manner of confronting the blow. He was not in the position to make good his claim. He must meet his enemy with all the subtlety of self-defence. But what had he to meet? How should he know what lay before him, from which side the thrusts should be parried, in what shape grew the threat? The questions beat in his brain with recurrent strokes, as if a hammer were smiting dull iron. All the keenness of suspicion could do no more than bring a shadowy uncertainty before him; nothing could solve the problem except the letter, with its poor feeble failing writing, which he held in his hand.

For there, to be sure, lay the certainty; there was hid the proof or the acquittal, as the case might be. He began to look at it as though Anthony were the prisoner on trial before him, while he himself was the person who possessed the clew, and could determine the guilt. To his distorted reasoning it became almost a sin against Anthony not at once to decide the question, when, after all, he might be innocent, and surely it would be better that this innocence should be placed beyond the power of doubt, than that so cruel a suspicion should divide two friends. For Anthony’s own sake it seemed to Marmaduke a duty to determine the truth forever. The letter had been given to him for some purpose, he argued, as a man will argue, himself clothing the temptation in the strong armour with which it comes to meet him at last, mighty and irresistible. It needed only one look to convince himself, a look which could not harm Anthony Miles in any way, only put Marmaduke on his guard, and show him how to defend his rights. One look—nothing more—at the letter which was in his hands.

He opened it. And as he did so, out of some background of old associations, there rushed upon him such an intolerable loathing for his own action that for a few moments his eyes refused to see its contents. The false pleading with which he had covered it was no longer to be called up, could never any more be called up. It was with a sense of desperate degradation that he forced himself to master the writing, pathetic in its feebleness, confused and indistinct. “I think it is all coming to an end at last,” it said, with a forlornness which might have touched him at another time, “and that my successor will soon be free of my shoes, such as they are. I don’t talk about repenting, but somehow my girl’s face comes before me night and day,—I might have been more patient with her, though I did no more than I told her to look for. Your father seems a just man; people call me a hard old fellow, but I have still a feeble belief in human nature, and I believe in him. If you choose you may place a decision in his hands, and if he tells me the thing should be done, I will make an alteration in my will, half the money shall go as it is now settled, and half to Ellen Harford, Margaret’s child. But should he think the change unnecessary, I do not wish to be pestered by replies or arguments. Silence will answer me fully. I shall understand that he thinks my proposal unadvisable, and I shall never break it by an allusion.”

And this was the letter which Marmaduke must deliver.

For a quarter of an hour he stood motionless with it in his hand. Over his head was the sweet changeable April sky, and on either side of the road a little green copse in which the birds were chirping and twittering. He looked up at last, with a fierce gesture of impatience at their glad piping, at the tender sunshine; a sudden storm, a wild rending of all these pretty gentle things, would have been more congenial to him just then than the burden of their joy. Two men jogged by him in a cart, and looked at him curiously as he stood by the roadside. It raised a quick fear that they might discover his secret, and he began to walk slowly on again, reading and rereading the letter in obedience to some mechanical impulse, for the first sight had burned the words into his brain. It was remarkable that he had no longer any fear of Anthony as a rival, probably from his own frame of mind being such that it was impossible for him to realise a sane man putting such a choice into the hands of his heir, and conceiving the idea of his exercising it in any way but one. It was only a robbery of himself which was revealed to him; an iniquitous deprival of half of his inheritance. For he needed no assurance of what Mr Miles’s decision would be. He had a half-uncomfortable, half-slighting contempt for the Vicar’s notions, which he classed with other antiquated forms of thought belonging to the old world. Anthony’s words came back to him with a sting which they had not at the time they were spoken, when he believed them to be powerless, and he knew that half of those good things on which he had so long counted would go out of his grasp forever as soon as this letter was delivered. As soon as it was delivered,—but the question immediately forced itself on his thought of why such a letter should exist at all to harrow them with its sentence of deprivation. Was not the Vicar himself concerned, Marion’s interests being equally involved with his own? And it was for the sake of a girl who knew nothing, hoped nothing, and whose father was as equally averse to a reconciliation as Mr Tregennas had been. Then he thought angrily that the decision, if there were one, should have been offered to himself. Indeed, fate said the same thing, and, resenting the injustice, gave him the needed opportunity. If he did not embrace it, he was yielding his own property, and sealing a gross injustice. The thought grew, it rang in his brain as he walked along,—alas, no song of birds could drown it!

He tore the letter across and across without a renewal of those accusing feelings which had rushed upon him when first he opened it, having wrought himself into a condition in which right and wrong became mere accidents dependent on his own will. He set his teeth and tore it into a hundred fragments, dropping them, as he walked, upon the grass by the side of the lane, and almost taking a pleasure, as it seemed, in their symmetrical destruction. No sense of pity touched him for the failing life that had there made its last vain effort, and the notion that he was baffling an act of injustice he was able by a strong and concentrated pressure of conscience to keep uppermost in the place it had usurped.

A little farther along the lane he once more met David Stephens, letting him pass this time without comment, and congratulating himself that the man had not timed his return earlier. It was, however, noticeable that, having delivered himself from his previous haunting suspicions of Anthony’s rivalship, he should, nevertheless, immediately decide that he would in some hidden manner assist Stephens, thinking that the fortune which was to come into his hands would enable him to do this, and siding more strongly than even an hour ago with any attempt to oppose Anthony’s influence.

David himself, accustomed to observe keenly, was aware of some disturbance in Marmaduke’s face as he passed him, wondering, too, at his having gone so short a distance since they parted. It is possible that the surprise made him quick to notice trifles, for the tiny atoms which had fluttered on the grass would naturally have escaped his observation. As it was, he stooped and gathered some of them into his hand. They were torn so closely as to make it almost a matter of impossibility to fit one piece with another, unless he had bestowed long attention upon the work, and no impulse moved him to do this. But a scrap of the envelope, which Marmaduke had destroyed with less care, showed enough of the postmark for Polmear to be distinguishable, and Polmear had been stamped on the letter which Stephens had handed to Mr Lee. One or two other half-words there were, which, his curiosity being a little excited, he tried to put together as he went along, but for the most part they were illegible. Something, however, gave him an uneasy feeling as he hurried on to the post-office to hear whether his application had been successful.

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