Chapter Thirty.

Chapter Thirty.“Then every evil word I had spoken once,And every evil thought I had thought of old,And every evil deed I ever did.Awoke and cried, ‘This Quest is not for thee.’And lifting up mine eyes, I found myselfAlone, and in a land of sand and thorns,And I was thirsty even unto death.”The Holy Grail.The depression of spirit which fell upon David Stephens after leaving Faith was deepened by a number of other circumstances, which seemed to choose the saddest moment of his life to cast their separate troubles at him. When he reached home it was to learn that one of the most influential members of his body, in whose hands a sum of money had been gradually accumulated by means of the most painful labour and self-denial, had gone off to a Mormon settlement, carrying the money with him. And on the following day, David, hastening back at dinner-time to the prodigal whom he was sheltering and yearning over, found the little room empty, and the boy gone. The landlady, who had been in a heat of lofty indignation since Nat Wills was first brought to her house, would give no information; and David, tired and sick at heart, sat down on his bed, forcing his mind, by the strongest coercion he could bring to bear, to travel wearily along the probable roads by which the lad was setting forth again upon his downward journey, that so he might go after him and bring him back,—no matter what it cost him.But although his resolution was no less supported by an iron determination than it had been a few days ago on almost the same errand, the spring which had then made it comparatively easy had lost its power. His face was haggard and worn as if with a long illness. His hands moved restlessly from one thing to another. He turned with loathing from the food on the table, which, frugal as it was, was more than he would have ordered if he had not provided for the guest who had left him. Never in his life had such an unconquerable gloom seized him as that which held him now in an ever-tightening grasp.It appeared to him and he believed that he was looking dispassionately at what he judged, that all his attempts had resulted in failure. He had prepared himself for it in some sort, but not as it had met him, lull of crushing pain, a pain which had grown into his eyes, never to leave them again, and perhaps gave them some of the strange power which people noticed when he spoke. His aim had been the highest. Blame him as you will, his faults had been the falling short of that aim, his manner of striving towards it, his wilfulness in its pursuit, not the forgetting of it, or turning aside to something lower. He had yearned for the poor souls about him, the force of his love-making every shortcoming towards them horrible in his sight, so that out of his very pitiful compassion there grew actual injustice. Then he had seemed to gain many, his burning words having in them a compelling force which frightened and attracted the souls they touched. Against pride in this success, against the pride of which some who were jealous of his eloquence accused him, he had prayed intensely and passionately. He had not sought worldly advancement, riches, or fame, the only use of these things in his sight being as means by which he might have scope for the work, the desire of which possessed his soul. Men who have such longings are apt to believe that the very purity and nobility of their aims must needs put what they want within their reach, not perceiving that it is the very height at which they grasp which causes what they call failure. For, evermore, as we toil and climb we learn our littleness, and something of the glory of that which lies beyond; until with the struggle there comes the knowledge that here is not the end, nor the crown, nor the fulfilment.But to David at this moment the end seemed to have been within his reach and to have been missed. The power which he believed himself to have attained over some of the minds, or rather the affections of those with whom he had been brought in contact, directly it was touched by the test of self-interest, even in its basest form, failed. He told himself bitterly that if a passing emotion led them to ask how they might flee from the wrath to come, with something of the spirit which urged the Ephesians to burn their books, the Florentines to cast aside their vanities at the bidding of Savonarola,—when the emotion passed, the older selfishness reasserted its sway. As for himself, what was he to them? A humpbacked preacher, to whom novelty would attract them, but for whom not one would turn out of his way to send after him so much as a kindly word. The sense of desolation which surged up in his heart as he thought this was so terrible that great drops stood on his forehead and his limbs trembled. In spite of himself, he had never lost the hope that Faith might have faced his lot, and clung to him: but Faith had given him up; the boy for whom he had been pinching himself had run away; the man whom he called friend had crushed his last hopes of gaining what he believed absolutely necessary to the success of his work. Everything was against him. Men clung to the wreck from which he would have dragged them, hurt him with hard words, turned their faces from him; and standing there, solitary, in a room heavy with the remembrance of the boy who had shared and left it, David cried out in the anguish of his heart as though some one had smitten him a deadly blow. Yet with it all there was no faltering of his resolution, no holding back of his hand. He would go out again that evening, walk all the night if it were necessary, once more to bring back the last lost. As he passed along the street to the office, the boys jeered at him. “Thyur’s another pracher for the Mormuns!”“Wann be’m going, Jim?”“Doan’t ’ee know? Whay, wann thyur’s a lot more money scraped up for to build a chapel.” Although David walked along without paying any apparent regard, each word fell like a lash on his sore heart, on which the burden of the other man’s deeds seemed to be heaped.He went through his work dully and mechanically, but without failing in any point of its routine. He was, however, detained at the office until a later hour than usual, owing to a delay on the line, and he made up his mind, in the intervals during which he allowed his mind to dwell on the subject, to search for Nat Wills in Underham itself before going farther; thinking it not unlikely, from some words the boy had let drop, that he would find a hiding-place there.When he left the office it was quite dark, and long ago the glory of the setting sun had faded out of the heavens. For an hour or two he went, as he had determined, from house to house in the black courts where vice and misery huddle together, nearer us oftener than we think in our contentedness. And even here he was scourged by the other man’s sin. Women taunted him with it, every taunt carrying a fresh sting. Some of them in moments of emotion had given him their pence for the object he had at heart, and cast this in his teeth again, or reproached him with mute white faces which were more intolerable. No one could tell what it cost him to feel that the work he had believed to be in progress lay all unravelled and useless in his hand, the stone which infinite labour had pushed upwards had dropped back an inert mass. The solitude, too, of a sectarian creed was upon him. He felt alone among these people. When he came out at last into a wider street, the light from a lamp hard by falling on his face showed it intensified with a look of such pain as a man cannot endure long and live.The purpose in his heart was, however, as strong as ever, and he moved slowly along the street towards another quarter in which it was possible that Nat might have found refuge. Just as he reached a corner Anthony Miles came round it on his way from the Bennetts’. It was not a happy time for him to meet David, after the talk of the night before, and when the evening had been such as we know. He stopped abruptly, and David stopped also.“That’s you, Stephens, is it not?”“Yes, sir.”“Mr Bennett has been telling me of the rascally manner in which that man Higgins has made off. I should think that ought to show you the set of fellows you’re getting mixed up with. But if you will run your head against a wall there’s another thing I’ve got to say. I understand you are still trying for a bit of land in Thorpe, and you may as well know that I’ve not changed my mind, and that I shall fight you through thick and thin before you get it.”“I know that, sir,” said David, with a concentrated forlornness in his voice of which Anthony was immediately aware. “You’ve done it with all your might up to now, but you won’t need to trouble yourself much longer.”“Have you changed your opinions, then?” said Anthony, softened by the thought of concession.“Have I given up my faith, do you mean?” Stephens said bitterly. “Can I put my religion on and off as easy as you your glove? No, Mr Miles, if there’s no more left to me, there’s that, at any rate. What I mean to say is that since the money has gone there’s a further hindrance put in the way of the gospel, and that if there’s any who can triumph over the working of another man’s sin, they may do it now.”In spite of his irritation at the man’s meaning, Anthony could not repress some sort of pity for the deep dejection with which he spoke. It was impossible to doubt his earnestness, although he had no sympathy for his efforts.“There are different ways of preaching the gospel, Stephens,” he said more kindly, “without taking other men’s duties upon ourselves. Well, good-night to you. I wished to give you that warning. If I were you I should shake myself clear of the Higgins lot.”Each figure went its separate way in the darkness, little thinking how soon they were to meet again. For the first time for some weeks a fresh alarm awoke in Davids conscience, perhaps caused by the touch of change in Mr Miles’s manner, perhaps by the end of those hopes which had influenced his conduct towards him. He had succeeded in persuading himself that Anthony had been a persecutor of religion, and that his own silence had been caused by no mere personal grudge; now, wounded by the scorn and disappointment of the last two days, he began to realise what he had permitted to fall on the other man. What if he, more than Anthony, had been the persecutor? What if here were a sin which he had nursed until God would have patience no longer, and had smitten him and his labour to the earth?He groaned aloud, and stretched out his hands towards heaven and the stars which were shining softly. A woman who passed noticed a dart figure leaning against a house, and fled in terror. David never saw her. The anguish which he had carried with him all the day reached its crisis, and almost overwhelmed him. His soul, struck with a sense of its own weakness, swallowed up by a terrified horror, was crying out for help, for teaching, in a new-found passion of humility. He sank down on his knees in the road, and, taught by the spiritual experience of his life to crave for and to obey sudden impulses, had almost resolved to follow Anthony at once, and to tell him all he knew. The recollection of Nat Wills withheld him; and as if he would lose no more time in finding him, and thus becoming free to follow his design, he staggered to his feet, and hurried along towards the water.

“Then every evil word I had spoken once,And every evil thought I had thought of old,And every evil deed I ever did.Awoke and cried, ‘This Quest is not for thee.’And lifting up mine eyes, I found myselfAlone, and in a land of sand and thorns,And I was thirsty even unto death.”The Holy Grail.

The depression of spirit which fell upon David Stephens after leaving Faith was deepened by a number of other circumstances, which seemed to choose the saddest moment of his life to cast their separate troubles at him. When he reached home it was to learn that one of the most influential members of his body, in whose hands a sum of money had been gradually accumulated by means of the most painful labour and self-denial, had gone off to a Mormon settlement, carrying the money with him. And on the following day, David, hastening back at dinner-time to the prodigal whom he was sheltering and yearning over, found the little room empty, and the boy gone. The landlady, who had been in a heat of lofty indignation since Nat Wills was first brought to her house, would give no information; and David, tired and sick at heart, sat down on his bed, forcing his mind, by the strongest coercion he could bring to bear, to travel wearily along the probable roads by which the lad was setting forth again upon his downward journey, that so he might go after him and bring him back,—no matter what it cost him.

But although his resolution was no less supported by an iron determination than it had been a few days ago on almost the same errand, the spring which had then made it comparatively easy had lost its power. His face was haggard and worn as if with a long illness. His hands moved restlessly from one thing to another. He turned with loathing from the food on the table, which, frugal as it was, was more than he would have ordered if he had not provided for the guest who had left him. Never in his life had such an unconquerable gloom seized him as that which held him now in an ever-tightening grasp.

It appeared to him and he believed that he was looking dispassionately at what he judged, that all his attempts had resulted in failure. He had prepared himself for it in some sort, but not as it had met him, lull of crushing pain, a pain which had grown into his eyes, never to leave them again, and perhaps gave them some of the strange power which people noticed when he spoke. His aim had been the highest. Blame him as you will, his faults had been the falling short of that aim, his manner of striving towards it, his wilfulness in its pursuit, not the forgetting of it, or turning aside to something lower. He had yearned for the poor souls about him, the force of his love-making every shortcoming towards them horrible in his sight, so that out of his very pitiful compassion there grew actual injustice. Then he had seemed to gain many, his burning words having in them a compelling force which frightened and attracted the souls they touched. Against pride in this success, against the pride of which some who were jealous of his eloquence accused him, he had prayed intensely and passionately. He had not sought worldly advancement, riches, or fame, the only use of these things in his sight being as means by which he might have scope for the work, the desire of which possessed his soul. Men who have such longings are apt to believe that the very purity and nobility of their aims must needs put what they want within their reach, not perceiving that it is the very height at which they grasp which causes what they call failure. For, evermore, as we toil and climb we learn our littleness, and something of the glory of that which lies beyond; until with the struggle there comes the knowledge that here is not the end, nor the crown, nor the fulfilment.

But to David at this moment the end seemed to have been within his reach and to have been missed. The power which he believed himself to have attained over some of the minds, or rather the affections of those with whom he had been brought in contact, directly it was touched by the test of self-interest, even in its basest form, failed. He told himself bitterly that if a passing emotion led them to ask how they might flee from the wrath to come, with something of the spirit which urged the Ephesians to burn their books, the Florentines to cast aside their vanities at the bidding of Savonarola,—when the emotion passed, the older selfishness reasserted its sway. As for himself, what was he to them? A humpbacked preacher, to whom novelty would attract them, but for whom not one would turn out of his way to send after him so much as a kindly word. The sense of desolation which surged up in his heart as he thought this was so terrible that great drops stood on his forehead and his limbs trembled. In spite of himself, he had never lost the hope that Faith might have faced his lot, and clung to him: but Faith had given him up; the boy for whom he had been pinching himself had run away; the man whom he called friend had crushed his last hopes of gaining what he believed absolutely necessary to the success of his work. Everything was against him. Men clung to the wreck from which he would have dragged them, hurt him with hard words, turned their faces from him; and standing there, solitary, in a room heavy with the remembrance of the boy who had shared and left it, David cried out in the anguish of his heart as though some one had smitten him a deadly blow. Yet with it all there was no faltering of his resolution, no holding back of his hand. He would go out again that evening, walk all the night if it were necessary, once more to bring back the last lost. As he passed along the street to the office, the boys jeered at him. “Thyur’s another pracher for the Mormuns!”

“Wann be’m going, Jim?”

“Doan’t ’ee know? Whay, wann thyur’s a lot more money scraped up for to build a chapel.” Although David walked along without paying any apparent regard, each word fell like a lash on his sore heart, on which the burden of the other man’s deeds seemed to be heaped.

He went through his work dully and mechanically, but without failing in any point of its routine. He was, however, detained at the office until a later hour than usual, owing to a delay on the line, and he made up his mind, in the intervals during which he allowed his mind to dwell on the subject, to search for Nat Wills in Underham itself before going farther; thinking it not unlikely, from some words the boy had let drop, that he would find a hiding-place there.

When he left the office it was quite dark, and long ago the glory of the setting sun had faded out of the heavens. For an hour or two he went, as he had determined, from house to house in the black courts where vice and misery huddle together, nearer us oftener than we think in our contentedness. And even here he was scourged by the other man’s sin. Women taunted him with it, every taunt carrying a fresh sting. Some of them in moments of emotion had given him their pence for the object he had at heart, and cast this in his teeth again, or reproached him with mute white faces which were more intolerable. No one could tell what it cost him to feel that the work he had believed to be in progress lay all unravelled and useless in his hand, the stone which infinite labour had pushed upwards had dropped back an inert mass. The solitude, too, of a sectarian creed was upon him. He felt alone among these people. When he came out at last into a wider street, the light from a lamp hard by falling on his face showed it intensified with a look of such pain as a man cannot endure long and live.

The purpose in his heart was, however, as strong as ever, and he moved slowly along the street towards another quarter in which it was possible that Nat might have found refuge. Just as he reached a corner Anthony Miles came round it on his way from the Bennetts’. It was not a happy time for him to meet David, after the talk of the night before, and when the evening had been such as we know. He stopped abruptly, and David stopped also.

“That’s you, Stephens, is it not?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Mr Bennett has been telling me of the rascally manner in which that man Higgins has made off. I should think that ought to show you the set of fellows you’re getting mixed up with. But if you will run your head against a wall there’s another thing I’ve got to say. I understand you are still trying for a bit of land in Thorpe, and you may as well know that I’ve not changed my mind, and that I shall fight you through thick and thin before you get it.”

“I know that, sir,” said David, with a concentrated forlornness in his voice of which Anthony was immediately aware. “You’ve done it with all your might up to now, but you won’t need to trouble yourself much longer.”

“Have you changed your opinions, then?” said Anthony, softened by the thought of concession.

“Have I given up my faith, do you mean?” Stephens said bitterly. “Can I put my religion on and off as easy as you your glove? No, Mr Miles, if there’s no more left to me, there’s that, at any rate. What I mean to say is that since the money has gone there’s a further hindrance put in the way of the gospel, and that if there’s any who can triumph over the working of another man’s sin, they may do it now.”

In spite of his irritation at the man’s meaning, Anthony could not repress some sort of pity for the deep dejection with which he spoke. It was impossible to doubt his earnestness, although he had no sympathy for his efforts.

“There are different ways of preaching the gospel, Stephens,” he said more kindly, “without taking other men’s duties upon ourselves. Well, good-night to you. I wished to give you that warning. If I were you I should shake myself clear of the Higgins lot.”

Each figure went its separate way in the darkness, little thinking how soon they were to meet again. For the first time for some weeks a fresh alarm awoke in Davids conscience, perhaps caused by the touch of change in Mr Miles’s manner, perhaps by the end of those hopes which had influenced his conduct towards him. He had succeeded in persuading himself that Anthony had been a persecutor of religion, and that his own silence had been caused by no mere personal grudge; now, wounded by the scorn and disappointment of the last two days, he began to realise what he had permitted to fall on the other man. What if he, more than Anthony, had been the persecutor? What if here were a sin which he had nursed until God would have patience no longer, and had smitten him and his labour to the earth?

He groaned aloud, and stretched out his hands towards heaven and the stars which were shining softly. A woman who passed noticed a dart figure leaning against a house, and fled in terror. David never saw her. The anguish which he had carried with him all the day reached its crisis, and almost overwhelmed him. His soul, struck with a sense of its own weakness, swallowed up by a terrified horror, was crying out for help, for teaching, in a new-found passion of humility. He sank down on his knees in the road, and, taught by the spiritual experience of his life to crave for and to obey sudden impulses, had almost resolved to follow Anthony at once, and to tell him all he knew. The recollection of Nat Wills withheld him; and as if he would lose no more time in finding him, and thus becoming free to follow his design, he staggered to his feet, and hurried along towards the water.

Chapter Thirty One.“But this I know, that not even the best and first,When all is done, can claim by desert what even to the last and worstOf us weak workmen, God from the depths of his infinite mercy giveth.These bones shall rest in peace, for I know that my Redeemer liveth.”Owen Meredith.The short conversation between the two men did not leave the same impression upon Anthony as it had left upon David. Other thoughts had hold of him too completely to allow of much wandering from them. Although he had made no distinct resolution to do that which he had done, and permitted himself to believe that his words had not been premeditated, but were such as grew out of the situation, the possibility that they might be spoken had in truth lived in his heart, or had, rather, been lived upon, for some time past. He was too young not to feel that suffering was intolerable, that his own wrong must be righted, deliverance come in some unknown fashion. The hope was never altogether absent even in his moments of deepest dejection, and as yet he could scarcely grasp the fact that he had used the one resource which had seemed to him at once desperate and certain, and that—it had failed him.When he reached the bridge a bark at his heels startled him. He stood still and whittled for Sniff, and meeting no return remembered that he had left the Bennetts hurriedly, and had forgotten to ask for the dog. He turned round at once, and more from a vague feeling that some pain haunted the road by which he had reached his present point, than from any actual choice, took the path by the canal, and passed the spot from which that day he had seen the sun sink, and watched the shades gather.The Norwegian vessel lay still against the quay, its masts rising sharply against the softer darkness of the sky, in which tremulous stars were shining. Underneath the wall there was a blackness of water, where a plank or two floated and caught the faint light. Smoke was still pouring out of the little hooded funnel where the men had their fire, and there were three or four figures on the deck, and laughter which did not sound quite friendly. Anthony, as he came nearer, could distinguish words of broken English, and fancied that the men had been drinking and were quarrelsome. It was all shadowy and dusky, with here and there a little weird leaping light, and rough voices grating on the silence. But as he passed by the water’s edge he heard another voice which he recognised as David Stephens’s, and this made him look at the group with more curiosity, and wonder what the young man could be doing on board a foreign vessel. He could distinctly see him standing in the midst of the sailors, who were jeering or threatening, and presently he saw him turn away as if to jump on shore. Anthony lingered, he could scarcely tell why, when suddenly there was a cry and a splash; one of the men by accident or design had pushed violently against David, and he was in the water. The sailors, sobered in an instant, were crowding, looking, shouting, and in another moment Anthony was in the midst of them, had caught a rope, and swung himself down between the vessel and the quay. He was a good swimmer, the danger lay in the cramped space in which it was possible to move, and in the darkness which hid everything; but presently lights flashed, people were running and calling, and a gleam struck for a moment on something at which he clutched and missed, and clutched again, and dragged up at last on the slippery planks. Help came very quickly, men collected, two boats were jostling each other, and they lifted the burden from him, laid it in the boat, and rowed to the landing steps. There the men who were carrying poor David paused as if in doubt.“Where shall us take un, sir?” asked one of the old sailors.“It’s young Stephens, the preacher!” said another who had got a lantern, and held it up to the white face.“You may carr’n over to my place, if you’m minded,” said a gruff voice out of the little throng. “It’s handy, and the mis’ess wouldn’t be willing for he to be drownded.”“Take him to whichever house is nearest. And, here, one of you, go off for Mr Bowles,” said Anthony, recovering his breath.They carried him very tenderly across the road to a door at which a little light was already shining. The foreign sailors were watching with alarmed faces, uncertain how far they would be held answerable for what had happened. One of them began explaining in broken English to Anthony that he had come on board to look for some boy whom he accused them of harbouring, and then the men made fun of him, not in the least intending what had happened, their spokesman declared. It was so impossible to say whether there had really been more than this, that Anthony could only listen in silence. He was a little confused himself, for it had all passed in a minute, and there was a strange flutter of unreality about the darkness and the trampling feet moving through the narrow door. A kind grave-looking woman was there, who came forward with wet eyes, and touched Davids hand gently; she had had but a moment of preparation, and yet it all seemed ready as the men came in with their dripping burden, and carried it up stairs and laid it on the bed. Her husband stopped the people who were pressing after, but a lad broke past him, ran up into the room, and fell on his knees by the bedside, crying bitterly.“I’m Nat, David. I’ll go back with you where you please,” he said over and over, with a sharpness of appeal which touched them all. It seemed as if the heavy lids must lift themselves, the mouth unclose, in answer to this boyish cry; the men fell back a little, and waited in mute expectation. David had been right in tracking him to the ship. He had got one of the men to hide him for a lark, and then he had heard all the inquiries, the jerk, the sudden splash. They had some ado to keep him from flinging himself over the side, too.But neither cries nor remorse touched the quiet of the face which lay unconscious of them all in that awful insensibility which affects us with a curious sympathy as something that one day must hold us also in thrall. They thought that he was dead, and when at last, after the doctor had tried all means of restoration, life struggled feebly back, it was so slight and so precarious that it scarcely seemed like life at all.“I suspect some blow was received in the fall; but the poor fellow was weakly before, and the shock has proved too much for his rallying powers,” said Mr Bowles, under his breath.“Do you mean that he will die?” said Anthony, shocked.“You had better go and change your clothes, Mr Miles,” said the doctor, evading the question. “Can you find your way to my house?”“I will go to the Bennetts’, and hurry back as soon as possible. Is anything wanted?”“A little brandy for yourself. Nothing here, thank you.”Anthony was quickly back again, and Mr Bennett with him, full of fussy good-nature. David had spoken a word or two, and the calm of his face had deepened into something that looked like happiness, as he lay with his eyes resting upon Nat Wills, who was burying his head in the bedclothes, and now and then lifting it to sob out remorseful words. But as his look turned towards Anthony, and lay there for a minute or two as if he were not sufficiently conscious to know who it was, those who were watching saw a sudden change pass over the still features. It might have been wonder, fear, even terror, which drew the muscles together and opened the eyes, but it was shown so sharply that every one turned at once to look in the same direction, and see what caused the movement.“You may as well just slip behind, the sight of you seems to excite him,” said the young doctor, a little curious like the rest. As for Anthony, the intensity of the look fairly appalled him. He had disliked and opposed Stephens, but he was one of those people to whom it is always a shock to have ill-feeling returned, especially at a moment when he was full of kindly emotion towards the man whose life he had saved.“He wishes to say something. Keep back, good people,” said Mr Bennett. “Is there anything you want, my poor fellow?”The pale lips parted and closed again.“He has not strength to bear questioning,” said the doctor, impatiently. He would have stopped it more decidedly if that look had not remained upon the man’s face, so terrible in its dumb language that it seemed as if something must be done to loosen its tension. And yet Anthony had drawn back into the shadows. After a moment’s thinking, Mr Bowles motioned him forward. “You had better speak and find out what is the matter,” he said in a low voice, “for something is exciting him more than he can long bear.”Side by side with Nat Wills, Anthony Miles knelt down by the bedside.“Do you know me, David?” he said, with the gentleness that death teaches us.Once more David tried to speak, once more the words failed him. His eyes turned away in piteous entreaty, and the doctor, passing his arm round him, got him to swallow a few drops of stimulant. Then those who were nearest heard his voice as if front far away.“I was going to you—next—that letter—”“The letter?” repeated Anthony in surprise. The shadow of his life was not touching him at that moment; he could not understand.“Have you given him a letter?” asked Mr Bennett.“The letter—- about the—will.”The blood rushed over Anthony’s face. He understood at last. For an instant it was like the lifting of an iron weight, for an instant his heart leaped up. Mr Bennett came closer and began to question eagerly,—“Do you mean the Cornish letter?—the one all the talk has been about?”“I ought to have told—O God, have mercy!”“Told what?—What do you mean?—Say it out, man!”“Give him time,” said the doctor, quietly.“It did come—I saw the postmark—Polmear—I gave it myself to—”“Hush!” said Anthony, very gravely and kindly. “You need not tell us any more, David, for I know it all.”“But—Anthony, Anthony, my dear fellow, for Heaven’s sake, let us hear what he means. Our coming here I consider quite providential. Here is this abominable story on the point of being cleared up. Don’t stop him for worlds.”“Mr Miles never had—it,” said Stephens, speaking more strongly. “You will find the bits—I picked up—and the date in my pocket-book. He tore it up—”“There is nothing more to be said,” interrupted the young man, much moved. “If this has been on your conscience, David, I am very sorry, for I knew that the letter reached Underham, although I never saw it. Your being able to tell these gentlemen so much ought to be a good thing for me, I suppose,” he went on with a touch of the old bitterness; “but as to other particulars, the way you can best repair any wrong is by keeping silence.” The dying man’s eyes met his once more with a mute look of anguish. Was the sin he had nursed to die with him without his being permitted to reveal it?“I thought—you hindered the—good work,” he said, lifting his feeble hands as if to ask for mercy.“And what troubles you now is, that you feel you have wronged Mr Miles?” said the doctor, who began to understand something.“David, listen,” said Anthony, speaking in a low gentle voice. “May God forgive me as I forgive you, freely, fully. May God forgive my hard thoughts of you. He is teaching us both something, and I think I have the most to learn. I wish there was one soul could cling to me as that poor boy is clinging now to you.”David’s eyes turned slowly towards Nat Wills, and softened into a look of great love.“Nat,” he said faintly,—“Nat!”“I’ll go just where you likes,” said the boy, eagerly looking up.“Then you’ll go to Thorpe—to Mr Salter—Mr Miles will, maybe, help you—and you’ll tell. There’s nothing like telling before it’s too late.” His voice had grown stronger, his eye brightened.“Do you know that it was Mr Miles who saved your life?” said Mr Bennett, who had been a good deal shocked by what he heard.But David was still looking at the boy.“The mist is lifting from the water,” he said slowly. “Does Faith see it?—Faith told me she would—look, look!”“He is wandering,” said the doctor, softly.What does the soul see when the cords are loosened for a moment, and it goes where our feeble pity follows, not knowing what we say? Do the mists lift indeed, and does the glory of the Day Dawn shine in its nearness? Whatever David may have beheld, something of its wonder touched his face, and brightened it with an intense joy, a joy which rested, and at which by and by they looked reverently as at something which had done with earth and its sin forever.

“But this I know, that not even the best and first,When all is done, can claim by desert what even to the last and worstOf us weak workmen, God from the depths of his infinite mercy giveth.These bones shall rest in peace, for I know that my Redeemer liveth.”Owen Meredith.

The short conversation between the two men did not leave the same impression upon Anthony as it had left upon David. Other thoughts had hold of him too completely to allow of much wandering from them. Although he had made no distinct resolution to do that which he had done, and permitted himself to believe that his words had not been premeditated, but were such as grew out of the situation, the possibility that they might be spoken had in truth lived in his heart, or had, rather, been lived upon, for some time past. He was too young not to feel that suffering was intolerable, that his own wrong must be righted, deliverance come in some unknown fashion. The hope was never altogether absent even in his moments of deepest dejection, and as yet he could scarcely grasp the fact that he had used the one resource which had seemed to him at once desperate and certain, and that—it had failed him.

When he reached the bridge a bark at his heels startled him. He stood still and whittled for Sniff, and meeting no return remembered that he had left the Bennetts hurriedly, and had forgotten to ask for the dog. He turned round at once, and more from a vague feeling that some pain haunted the road by which he had reached his present point, than from any actual choice, took the path by the canal, and passed the spot from which that day he had seen the sun sink, and watched the shades gather.

The Norwegian vessel lay still against the quay, its masts rising sharply against the softer darkness of the sky, in which tremulous stars were shining. Underneath the wall there was a blackness of water, where a plank or two floated and caught the faint light. Smoke was still pouring out of the little hooded funnel where the men had their fire, and there were three or four figures on the deck, and laughter which did not sound quite friendly. Anthony, as he came nearer, could distinguish words of broken English, and fancied that the men had been drinking and were quarrelsome. It was all shadowy and dusky, with here and there a little weird leaping light, and rough voices grating on the silence. But as he passed by the water’s edge he heard another voice which he recognised as David Stephens’s, and this made him look at the group with more curiosity, and wonder what the young man could be doing on board a foreign vessel. He could distinctly see him standing in the midst of the sailors, who were jeering or threatening, and presently he saw him turn away as if to jump on shore. Anthony lingered, he could scarcely tell why, when suddenly there was a cry and a splash; one of the men by accident or design had pushed violently against David, and he was in the water. The sailors, sobered in an instant, were crowding, looking, shouting, and in another moment Anthony was in the midst of them, had caught a rope, and swung himself down between the vessel and the quay. He was a good swimmer, the danger lay in the cramped space in which it was possible to move, and in the darkness which hid everything; but presently lights flashed, people were running and calling, and a gleam struck for a moment on something at which he clutched and missed, and clutched again, and dragged up at last on the slippery planks. Help came very quickly, men collected, two boats were jostling each other, and they lifted the burden from him, laid it in the boat, and rowed to the landing steps. There the men who were carrying poor David paused as if in doubt.

“Where shall us take un, sir?” asked one of the old sailors.

“It’s young Stephens, the preacher!” said another who had got a lantern, and held it up to the white face.

“You may carr’n over to my place, if you’m minded,” said a gruff voice out of the little throng. “It’s handy, and the mis’ess wouldn’t be willing for he to be drownded.”

“Take him to whichever house is nearest. And, here, one of you, go off for Mr Bowles,” said Anthony, recovering his breath.

They carried him very tenderly across the road to a door at which a little light was already shining. The foreign sailors were watching with alarmed faces, uncertain how far they would be held answerable for what had happened. One of them began explaining in broken English to Anthony that he had come on board to look for some boy whom he accused them of harbouring, and then the men made fun of him, not in the least intending what had happened, their spokesman declared. It was so impossible to say whether there had really been more than this, that Anthony could only listen in silence. He was a little confused himself, for it had all passed in a minute, and there was a strange flutter of unreality about the darkness and the trampling feet moving through the narrow door. A kind grave-looking woman was there, who came forward with wet eyes, and touched Davids hand gently; she had had but a moment of preparation, and yet it all seemed ready as the men came in with their dripping burden, and carried it up stairs and laid it on the bed. Her husband stopped the people who were pressing after, but a lad broke past him, ran up into the room, and fell on his knees by the bedside, crying bitterly.

“I’m Nat, David. I’ll go back with you where you please,” he said over and over, with a sharpness of appeal which touched them all. It seemed as if the heavy lids must lift themselves, the mouth unclose, in answer to this boyish cry; the men fell back a little, and waited in mute expectation. David had been right in tracking him to the ship. He had got one of the men to hide him for a lark, and then he had heard all the inquiries, the jerk, the sudden splash. They had some ado to keep him from flinging himself over the side, too.

But neither cries nor remorse touched the quiet of the face which lay unconscious of them all in that awful insensibility which affects us with a curious sympathy as something that one day must hold us also in thrall. They thought that he was dead, and when at last, after the doctor had tried all means of restoration, life struggled feebly back, it was so slight and so precarious that it scarcely seemed like life at all.

“I suspect some blow was received in the fall; but the poor fellow was weakly before, and the shock has proved too much for his rallying powers,” said Mr Bowles, under his breath.

“Do you mean that he will die?” said Anthony, shocked.

“You had better go and change your clothes, Mr Miles,” said the doctor, evading the question. “Can you find your way to my house?”

“I will go to the Bennetts’, and hurry back as soon as possible. Is anything wanted?”

“A little brandy for yourself. Nothing here, thank you.”

Anthony was quickly back again, and Mr Bennett with him, full of fussy good-nature. David had spoken a word or two, and the calm of his face had deepened into something that looked like happiness, as he lay with his eyes resting upon Nat Wills, who was burying his head in the bedclothes, and now and then lifting it to sob out remorseful words. But as his look turned towards Anthony, and lay there for a minute or two as if he were not sufficiently conscious to know who it was, those who were watching saw a sudden change pass over the still features. It might have been wonder, fear, even terror, which drew the muscles together and opened the eyes, but it was shown so sharply that every one turned at once to look in the same direction, and see what caused the movement.

“You may as well just slip behind, the sight of you seems to excite him,” said the young doctor, a little curious like the rest. As for Anthony, the intensity of the look fairly appalled him. He had disliked and opposed Stephens, but he was one of those people to whom it is always a shock to have ill-feeling returned, especially at a moment when he was full of kindly emotion towards the man whose life he had saved.

“He wishes to say something. Keep back, good people,” said Mr Bennett. “Is there anything you want, my poor fellow?”

The pale lips parted and closed again.

“He has not strength to bear questioning,” said the doctor, impatiently. He would have stopped it more decidedly if that look had not remained upon the man’s face, so terrible in its dumb language that it seemed as if something must be done to loosen its tension. And yet Anthony had drawn back into the shadows. After a moment’s thinking, Mr Bowles motioned him forward. “You had better speak and find out what is the matter,” he said in a low voice, “for something is exciting him more than he can long bear.”

Side by side with Nat Wills, Anthony Miles knelt down by the bedside.

“Do you know me, David?” he said, with the gentleness that death teaches us.

Once more David tried to speak, once more the words failed him. His eyes turned away in piteous entreaty, and the doctor, passing his arm round him, got him to swallow a few drops of stimulant. Then those who were nearest heard his voice as if front far away.

“I was going to you—next—that letter—”

“The letter?” repeated Anthony in surprise. The shadow of his life was not touching him at that moment; he could not understand.

“Have you given him a letter?” asked Mr Bennett.

“The letter—- about the—will.”

The blood rushed over Anthony’s face. He understood at last. For an instant it was like the lifting of an iron weight, for an instant his heart leaped up. Mr Bennett came closer and began to question eagerly,—

“Do you mean the Cornish letter?—the one all the talk has been about?”

“I ought to have told—O God, have mercy!”

“Told what?—What do you mean?—Say it out, man!”

“Give him time,” said the doctor, quietly.

“It did come—I saw the postmark—Polmear—I gave it myself to—”

“Hush!” said Anthony, very gravely and kindly. “You need not tell us any more, David, for I know it all.”

“But—Anthony, Anthony, my dear fellow, for Heaven’s sake, let us hear what he means. Our coming here I consider quite providential. Here is this abominable story on the point of being cleared up. Don’t stop him for worlds.”

“Mr Miles never had—it,” said Stephens, speaking more strongly. “You will find the bits—I picked up—and the date in my pocket-book. He tore it up—”

“There is nothing more to be said,” interrupted the young man, much moved. “If this has been on your conscience, David, I am very sorry, for I knew that the letter reached Underham, although I never saw it. Your being able to tell these gentlemen so much ought to be a good thing for me, I suppose,” he went on with a touch of the old bitterness; “but as to other particulars, the way you can best repair any wrong is by keeping silence.” The dying man’s eyes met his once more with a mute look of anguish. Was the sin he had nursed to die with him without his being permitted to reveal it?

“I thought—you hindered the—good work,” he said, lifting his feeble hands as if to ask for mercy.

“And what troubles you now is, that you feel you have wronged Mr Miles?” said the doctor, who began to understand something.

“David, listen,” said Anthony, speaking in a low gentle voice. “May God forgive me as I forgive you, freely, fully. May God forgive my hard thoughts of you. He is teaching us both something, and I think I have the most to learn. I wish there was one soul could cling to me as that poor boy is clinging now to you.”

David’s eyes turned slowly towards Nat Wills, and softened into a look of great love.

“Nat,” he said faintly,—“Nat!”

“I’ll go just where you likes,” said the boy, eagerly looking up.

“Then you’ll go to Thorpe—to Mr Salter—Mr Miles will, maybe, help you—and you’ll tell. There’s nothing like telling before it’s too late.” His voice had grown stronger, his eye brightened.

“Do you know that it was Mr Miles who saved your life?” said Mr Bennett, who had been a good deal shocked by what he heard.

But David was still looking at the boy.

“The mist is lifting from the water,” he said slowly. “Does Faith see it?—Faith told me she would—look, look!”

“He is wandering,” said the doctor, softly.

What does the soul see when the cords are loosened for a moment, and it goes where our feeble pity follows, not knowing what we say? Do the mists lift indeed, and does the glory of the Day Dawn shine in its nearness? Whatever David may have beheld, something of its wonder touched his face, and brightened it with an intense joy, a joy which rested, and at which by and by they looked reverently as at something which had done with earth and its sin forever.

Chapter Thirty Two.Mr Mannering was sitting in his library the next morning, when Mr Bennett was announced. It was not yet twelve o’clock, and the Underham lawyer was generally deep in his work at that hour, so that Mr Mannering met him with a touch of wonder in his cordiality.“The more welcome because I should as soon have expected Thorpe to receive a visit from the Mayor and Corporation as from you at this time of day. Sit down, pray. My papers are all over the place, but I believe you can find a chair.”“If I had not known better, I should have said you were still in harness, I own,” said Mr Bennett, looking round upon the familiar signs of business.“Harness? I sometimes think that for men who have passed the greater part of their lives at work there is no getting out of it. There is a review in the last Quarterly which all the world is talking about, and I can assure you I have not yet found five minutes in which to look at it. The truth is that an unlucky mortal who has neither time, money, nor health, should make up his mind to endure a great deal in this world.”“What’s that, Charles?” said Mr Robert, coming in with a ruddy glow upon his face. “If you had Stokes for a gardener, you might begin to talk about endurance. Glad to see you, Bennett, this fine fresh morning. All well, I hope?”“All my household, thank you,” said Mr Bennett, settling himself to his story with great satisfaction. “But we had a sad accident in Thorpe last night. Anthony Miles had been dining with us, and had not left half an hour when back he came, and really it was fortunate that Ada had gone up stairs, or she might have been terribly alarmed to see him dripping from head to foot at that hour of the night. However, the ladies were out of the way, by a stroke of good fortune.”“Dripping! Had he tumbled into the water?”“Not at all, not at all. It was a foolish thing to do, but it seems he saw the man fall, and jumped in after him. And then, of course, he came to me for dry clothes.”Mr Mannering was leaning forward in a trim attitude of attention, with his legs crossed, and his head a little bent. Mr Robert was fidgeting as usual under Mr Bennett’s prose.“But who was drowned or dragged out, or what was the end of it?” he said hastily. “Bless the boy, he’ll be himself again, if people believe him to be a hero. Who was it, Bennett?”“Ah, there is the extraordinary coincidence. It was such a fortunate thing that I went back with Anthony, because, although it was not the case for a formal deposition, I am ready to prove that he made a voluntary declaration.”“He—who, who?”“The young man’s name is David Stephens,” said Mr Bennett in a tone of mild reproof. “He is a clerk at the post-office.”“Young Stephens, the humpback preacher! Deposition?—Do you mean there had been a quarrel or anything?”“My dear Mr Robert, if you were to guess for a week you would never imagine what he had to say,” said Mr Bennett, sitting back in his chair, and tapping one hand lightly with the other, too secure of his story to mind the little pokes and digs that were being administered. “I can assure you that in the whole course of my experience I have never met with anything I consider so strange. It just appeared the shadowy kind of accusation which is most difficult to rebut; and, although I was convinced that it might be explained in some perfectly honourable manner, it cannot be doubted that there were persons whom it did influence otherwise.”Mr Mannering looked as courteously attentive as ever, Mr Robert had sunk into a despairing silence.“My most sanguine hopes hardly amounted to an actual acquittal, owing, as I have said, to the difficulty of proving anything in the matter—”“You are talking about Anthony Miles,” cried Mr Robert, jumping up, and becoming very red in the face. “But what on earth had that young Stephens to do with it?”“Could you have imagined that he had in his hands this letter which made all the stir, that he gave it to a certain person, and that, it having been destroyed, Stephens was able to tell us where we might find one or two of its fragments, minute fragments I need not say, but sufficient for the purpose of identification, and such as under the circumstances may be considered conclusive.”“Conclusive?—but of what? The existence of that letter is the very fact to which we have all been trying to shut our eyes,” said Mr Mannering, dubiously joining his fingers.“The letter existed,” said Mr Bennett, leaning forward and speaking emphatically,—“the letter existed, but it never reached the owner to whom it was addressed. Another person received it from Stephens, and, as I have told you, apparently destroyed it. One or two things must have excited Stephens’s suspicions, for he managed to possess himself of a shred or two of the writing. I have them with me.”Nobody spoke for a moment. Mr Robert walked to the window and blew his nose violently. Mr Mannering took the tiny witnesses, and fitted them together with his long slender fingers.“Here are four,” he said at last, “one with only the word ‘will,’ which is valueless; another may be ‘proposal’ with the first letter and half of the second missing, and the remaining two are, I should say, unmistakably part of the signature. You are right, Bennett. They prove nothing, and yet under the circumstances they prove a great deal. I am heartily pleased.”“Who was the rascal?” asked his brother from the window.Mr Bennett pursed up his lips and did not answer until Mr Robert repeated his question, and then he said,—“That is the most unsatisfactory part of the business, I lament to say. Will you believe that Anthony Miles knew all that I have told you from the first, and would not speak, and that now he has prevented our becoming acquainted with the name of the person?”“Whew! That complicates the matter again. How can Anthony be such a fool!”“I have urged everything in my power,” Mr Bennett went on, rather pompously. “His position in regard to my family gave me the right to do so. But he is exceedingly determined. He says the information is not new to himself, and he even requests me to keep complete silence on the subject.”“Don’t pay any attention to his crotchets, Bennett,” said Mr Robert, marching back from the window. “Silence?—Tell everybody, everybody!—it’s the only thing to do. He has proved himself too incapable to be allowed any longer to manage his own affairs. Besides, for Miss Lovell’s sake—I’m delighted, more than delighted; that business has been a load on my mind ever since I first heard of it. We’ll give a dinner-party, Charles, and ask the whole neighbourhood; I’ll write to that dry old Pitt, and insist that he shall come down and eat his words before he has any other dinner. Poor boy, we’ve treated him shamefully. But, I say, Bennett, what of Stephens? It seems to me that he comes badly enough out of it. What has he got to say for himself, eh?”His kind, ugly face was radiant. Mr Bennett looked up nervously, for the tragedy of the night before had touched him more deeply than he knew himself.“I don’t think we had better say anything further about his part of the business, poor fellow,” he answered, a little apologetically. “He is dead now, and he did his utmost at the last. Perhaps it’s easier to judge than to understand.”“Dead! I thought that Anthony Miles had saved him?”“Bowles said from what he saw and heard from a miserable boy—who, by the way, belongs to your village—that Stephens had got down to a very low ebb with want of food and want of rest, and the shock was too great. It really was very affecting, the boy’s grief and all that, and this morning the house is besieged. I think the poor fellow must have had some good in him, in spite of the ugly look his silence has.”When Mr Bennett had gone, Mr Robert came back to the library, rubbing his hands.“Well, Charles,” he said.“Well, my dear Robert.”“I am going to the cottage at once.”“I would go with you if this lumbago only left me the power of moving. But let me forewarn you not to expect a very warm reception from Anthony.”“Warm or not, I couldn’t stay away an hour. I shall go on to Hardlands, and perhaps somehow or other get a lift to the Milmans or to Stanton. It seems a sin to leave that matter uncleared another day. You’ll write to Pitt, Charles,” added his brother, suddenly becoming grave. “I suppose we both guess who was the other person?”“I am afraid we do.”“It was sheer folly to have sacrificed himself, but, naturally, their relationship added to his reluctance. Well, we have no right to make other people acquainted with what is simply conjecture, but I shall be surprised if others besides ourselves do not put two and two together.”“Nevertheless, remember that as the story cannot be made altogether clear, we may expect incredulity yet.”“The story is clear enough,” said Mr Robert, indignantly. “Nobody can doubt it who is not wilfully malicious. Anthony’s statement was that on a certain date he had received no letter. People could not prove that he had, but it was just open to doubt,—upon my word, I don’t think I’ll ever doubt again to my dying day,—now comes a witness who can swear that Anthony is correct, who saw the letter in other hands, and produces a portion of that letter destroyed. What on earth can be asked for more? If you are not satisfied, Charles, I shall say you are as unreasonable as Stokes.”He went away laughing and rubbing his hands. The day was warm and damp, the clouds had a uniform tint of grey, drops clung to the beautiful bare boughs, which had so much cheerful undergrowth of green that they lost their wintry aspect, as Mr Robert started on his triumphal progress, which, however, like other triumphs, was not free from disappointment. Anthony was not at the cottage, and Mrs Miles would have resented any rejoicing over a proof which it seemed to her absolutely wickedness to demand. Mr Mannering could not be sure that her son had told her anything, and the only compensation of which he dared to avail himself was praise of Anthony’s courage the night before.“Which way has he gone?” he asked, as he stood at the door.“I think he has walked up to Hardlands. I wish he would have kept quiet to-day, after the shock and all,” said Mrs Miles, proudly.“I suspect the shock was in the right direction, in spite of my gentleman’s pride,” Mr Robert reflected, walking out of the gate. “It will not hurt me to trudge to the Milmans, and then he shall make his own revelations at Hardlands. If only the Squire could have seen the day!”

Mr Mannering was sitting in his library the next morning, when Mr Bennett was announced. It was not yet twelve o’clock, and the Underham lawyer was generally deep in his work at that hour, so that Mr Mannering met him with a touch of wonder in his cordiality.

“The more welcome because I should as soon have expected Thorpe to receive a visit from the Mayor and Corporation as from you at this time of day. Sit down, pray. My papers are all over the place, but I believe you can find a chair.”

“If I had not known better, I should have said you were still in harness, I own,” said Mr Bennett, looking round upon the familiar signs of business.

“Harness? I sometimes think that for men who have passed the greater part of their lives at work there is no getting out of it. There is a review in the last Quarterly which all the world is talking about, and I can assure you I have not yet found five minutes in which to look at it. The truth is that an unlucky mortal who has neither time, money, nor health, should make up his mind to endure a great deal in this world.”

“What’s that, Charles?” said Mr Robert, coming in with a ruddy glow upon his face. “If you had Stokes for a gardener, you might begin to talk about endurance. Glad to see you, Bennett, this fine fresh morning. All well, I hope?”

“All my household, thank you,” said Mr Bennett, settling himself to his story with great satisfaction. “But we had a sad accident in Thorpe last night. Anthony Miles had been dining with us, and had not left half an hour when back he came, and really it was fortunate that Ada had gone up stairs, or she might have been terribly alarmed to see him dripping from head to foot at that hour of the night. However, the ladies were out of the way, by a stroke of good fortune.”

“Dripping! Had he tumbled into the water?”

“Not at all, not at all. It was a foolish thing to do, but it seems he saw the man fall, and jumped in after him. And then, of course, he came to me for dry clothes.”

Mr Mannering was leaning forward in a trim attitude of attention, with his legs crossed, and his head a little bent. Mr Robert was fidgeting as usual under Mr Bennett’s prose.

“But who was drowned or dragged out, or what was the end of it?” he said hastily. “Bless the boy, he’ll be himself again, if people believe him to be a hero. Who was it, Bennett?”

“Ah, there is the extraordinary coincidence. It was such a fortunate thing that I went back with Anthony, because, although it was not the case for a formal deposition, I am ready to prove that he made a voluntary declaration.”

“He—who, who?”

“The young man’s name is David Stephens,” said Mr Bennett in a tone of mild reproof. “He is a clerk at the post-office.”

“Young Stephens, the humpback preacher! Deposition?—Do you mean there had been a quarrel or anything?”

“My dear Mr Robert, if you were to guess for a week you would never imagine what he had to say,” said Mr Bennett, sitting back in his chair, and tapping one hand lightly with the other, too secure of his story to mind the little pokes and digs that were being administered. “I can assure you that in the whole course of my experience I have never met with anything I consider so strange. It just appeared the shadowy kind of accusation which is most difficult to rebut; and, although I was convinced that it might be explained in some perfectly honourable manner, it cannot be doubted that there were persons whom it did influence otherwise.”

Mr Mannering looked as courteously attentive as ever, Mr Robert had sunk into a despairing silence.

“My most sanguine hopes hardly amounted to an actual acquittal, owing, as I have said, to the difficulty of proving anything in the matter—”

“You are talking about Anthony Miles,” cried Mr Robert, jumping up, and becoming very red in the face. “But what on earth had that young Stephens to do with it?”

“Could you have imagined that he had in his hands this letter which made all the stir, that he gave it to a certain person, and that, it having been destroyed, Stephens was able to tell us where we might find one or two of its fragments, minute fragments I need not say, but sufficient for the purpose of identification, and such as under the circumstances may be considered conclusive.”

“Conclusive?—but of what? The existence of that letter is the very fact to which we have all been trying to shut our eyes,” said Mr Mannering, dubiously joining his fingers.

“The letter existed,” said Mr Bennett, leaning forward and speaking emphatically,—“the letter existed, but it never reached the owner to whom it was addressed. Another person received it from Stephens, and, as I have told you, apparently destroyed it. One or two things must have excited Stephens’s suspicions, for he managed to possess himself of a shred or two of the writing. I have them with me.”

Nobody spoke for a moment. Mr Robert walked to the window and blew his nose violently. Mr Mannering took the tiny witnesses, and fitted them together with his long slender fingers.

“Here are four,” he said at last, “one with only the word ‘will,’ which is valueless; another may be ‘proposal’ with the first letter and half of the second missing, and the remaining two are, I should say, unmistakably part of the signature. You are right, Bennett. They prove nothing, and yet under the circumstances they prove a great deal. I am heartily pleased.”

“Who was the rascal?” asked his brother from the window.

Mr Bennett pursed up his lips and did not answer until Mr Robert repeated his question, and then he said,—

“That is the most unsatisfactory part of the business, I lament to say. Will you believe that Anthony Miles knew all that I have told you from the first, and would not speak, and that now he has prevented our becoming acquainted with the name of the person?”

“Whew! That complicates the matter again. How can Anthony be such a fool!”

“I have urged everything in my power,” Mr Bennett went on, rather pompously. “His position in regard to my family gave me the right to do so. But he is exceedingly determined. He says the information is not new to himself, and he even requests me to keep complete silence on the subject.”

“Don’t pay any attention to his crotchets, Bennett,” said Mr Robert, marching back from the window. “Silence?—Tell everybody, everybody!—it’s the only thing to do. He has proved himself too incapable to be allowed any longer to manage his own affairs. Besides, for Miss Lovell’s sake—I’m delighted, more than delighted; that business has been a load on my mind ever since I first heard of it. We’ll give a dinner-party, Charles, and ask the whole neighbourhood; I’ll write to that dry old Pitt, and insist that he shall come down and eat his words before he has any other dinner. Poor boy, we’ve treated him shamefully. But, I say, Bennett, what of Stephens? It seems to me that he comes badly enough out of it. What has he got to say for himself, eh?”

His kind, ugly face was radiant. Mr Bennett looked up nervously, for the tragedy of the night before had touched him more deeply than he knew himself.

“I don’t think we had better say anything further about his part of the business, poor fellow,” he answered, a little apologetically. “He is dead now, and he did his utmost at the last. Perhaps it’s easier to judge than to understand.”

“Dead! I thought that Anthony Miles had saved him?”

“Bowles said from what he saw and heard from a miserable boy—who, by the way, belongs to your village—that Stephens had got down to a very low ebb with want of food and want of rest, and the shock was too great. It really was very affecting, the boy’s grief and all that, and this morning the house is besieged. I think the poor fellow must have had some good in him, in spite of the ugly look his silence has.”

When Mr Bennett had gone, Mr Robert came back to the library, rubbing his hands.

“Well, Charles,” he said.

“Well, my dear Robert.”

“I am going to the cottage at once.”

“I would go with you if this lumbago only left me the power of moving. But let me forewarn you not to expect a very warm reception from Anthony.”

“Warm or not, I couldn’t stay away an hour. I shall go on to Hardlands, and perhaps somehow or other get a lift to the Milmans or to Stanton. It seems a sin to leave that matter uncleared another day. You’ll write to Pitt, Charles,” added his brother, suddenly becoming grave. “I suppose we both guess who was the other person?”

“I am afraid we do.”

“It was sheer folly to have sacrificed himself, but, naturally, their relationship added to his reluctance. Well, we have no right to make other people acquainted with what is simply conjecture, but I shall be surprised if others besides ourselves do not put two and two together.”

“Nevertheless, remember that as the story cannot be made altogether clear, we may expect incredulity yet.”

“The story is clear enough,” said Mr Robert, indignantly. “Nobody can doubt it who is not wilfully malicious. Anthony’s statement was that on a certain date he had received no letter. People could not prove that he had, but it was just open to doubt,—upon my word, I don’t think I’ll ever doubt again to my dying day,—now comes a witness who can swear that Anthony is correct, who saw the letter in other hands, and produces a portion of that letter destroyed. What on earth can be asked for more? If you are not satisfied, Charles, I shall say you are as unreasonable as Stokes.”

He went away laughing and rubbing his hands. The day was warm and damp, the clouds had a uniform tint of grey, drops clung to the beautiful bare boughs, which had so much cheerful undergrowth of green that they lost their wintry aspect, as Mr Robert started on his triumphal progress, which, however, like other triumphs, was not free from disappointment. Anthony was not at the cottage, and Mrs Miles would have resented any rejoicing over a proof which it seemed to her absolutely wickedness to demand. Mr Mannering could not be sure that her son had told her anything, and the only compensation of which he dared to avail himself was praise of Anthony’s courage the night before.

“Which way has he gone?” he asked, as he stood at the door.

“I think he has walked up to Hardlands. I wish he would have kept quiet to-day, after the shock and all,” said Mrs Miles, proudly.

“I suspect the shock was in the right direction, in spite of my gentleman’s pride,” Mr Robert reflected, walking out of the gate. “It will not hurt me to trudge to the Milmans, and then he shall make his own revelations at Hardlands. If only the Squire could have seen the day!”

Chapter Thirty Three.“For Love himself took part against himselfTo warn us off, and Duty loved of Love.”Tennyson.That afternoon Winifred was at home alone, rather an unusual thing for her, but Mrs Orde had occasion to go to Aunecester, and her son and Bessie had gone with her, while Winifred was glad of some excuse for staying at home, not having yet become accustomed to the sight of the street where her eyes were constantly picturing what had happened such a little time ago. A large fire was blazing, and she opened the long window, and sat down with some pretence of work in her hand, but after a few minutes’ attention her eyes wandered away to the grey familiar view before her. The firs to the left looked thin and dreary, the grass of the field which stretched beyond the lawn had grown a little coarse, no lights flashed from a mass of low heavy-lying clouds, all colours except cold greys and browns seemed to, have been drawn from the distant trees, the cottages, the little line of sea, the sad hills. Winifred’s eyes filled with tears as she looked out. It would have been so natural for the Squire’s strong figure to have made the foreground of the picture, his voice might so well have been heard calling the dogs, and gathering around him a little circle of cheery life, that the blank solitude smote her with desolate pain. It is, however, possible that when such a sad and unacknowledged jar has grown into a girls life as had come to Winifred, there is a certain luxury in a permitted sorrow. It seems at the time as if trouble were being heaped upon trouble, but it really takes away that hard feeling of repression which is like an iron band on a wound. Perhaps there is hardly a grief over which we mourn, but has those hidden behind it of which the world knows nothing. How imperceptibly do other memories weave themselves round the one remembrance that is so sad and yet so dear! How heavy with longing may be the thoughts which creep softly back to days not very long ago, except for that drag which makes time seem interminable! It was not only over her father’s image that Winifred was crying softly when she heard a sound, and Anthony Miles came in.It may have been that he was too preoccupied with his own feelings to notice her tears, or that he did not dare to notice them. Winifred herself rose hastily, and sat down again a little hastily too, taking care to turn her back to the light which she had before been facing. She knew that her hand was trembling, and although it might have been caused by the momentary surprise, the feeling of weakness it produced unnerved her, and she was thankful that Anthony, when he sat down, sat leaning forward with his elbow on his knee, and his face on his hand, looking straight before him through the open window at the dull greyness, as if he saw nothing on either side.A minute before Winifred had not felt as if it were possible to speak, but it is often necessary to fly from silence and take refuge in commonplaces, and she gathered up the work which lay in her lap and said,—“I hope you did not want to see the others, for they have driven to Aunecester.”“I did not want to see any one but you, Winifred,” said Anthony, without changing his position.The words were so unlike what she expected, that she trembled again with a thrill that was neither joy nor fear, but something more exquisitely painful. Anthony went on after a moment’s pause,—“I suppose you do not know what happened last night?”“Last night? No.”“That poor fellow of whom we were speaking the other evening, David Stephens, fell into the water, and died in a few hours.”“O poor Faith!” said Winifred, touched by an instantaneous sympathy.“Yes,” said Anthony, gravely. “We would have sent her home, but she has begged my mother to let her stay.”“Were you there?—how did you know about it?—where was it?”“Yes, I was there. It was in Underham,” said Anthony. He had spoken throughout in the same short abstracted tone, as if a fit of absence were upon him; but what he had told her was sufficient to account for it, and she had forgotten herself in its sadness, and was looking at him with compassionate eyes, when he turned round for the first time, and said slowly, “I wished to see you alone, because you may as well know that it is proved—sufficiently, I suppose, for the satisfaction of my friends—that I am not quite the rogue they made me out to be. I can’t answer any questions, and it is not possible now, any more than then, to explain exactly what did take place. Therefore, there is, of course, still room for doubt. At the same time David, before he died, poor fellow, declared that the letter never reached my hand, so—you may take the evidence for what it is worth. You are the only person to whom I shall repeat it.”Passionate tears sprang into Winifred’s eyes. This clearing of Anthony’s honour, for which she had prayed and yearned, had all gladness frozen out of it by the coldness of his words and the want of trust they implied. Her fate crimsoned, and when she tried to speak her voice was choked. Anthony, who had expected congratulations instead of this silence, turned towards her in surprise, and met her look intensely reproachful. He started up and walked quickly to the window. That look thrilled him suddenly with a doubt that carried sweet anguish and bitter joy. Had her faith been, after all, unshaken? Had it been he who had thrust her from him?—his pride which had separated them forever? He turned round and looked at Winifred again; burning words rose to his lips, and died away: if he had found a voice I do not know what he might not have said, but for a moment it was impossible to speak, and Winifred, although she was trembling under his eyes, was bravely holding back her own emotion.“I am so thankful,” she said. “Now all that has past will lose its pain. I don’t want to ask any questions, but it has been very cruel for you,—for us all,” she added softly.“Pain does not go away so easily as you believe. I think it has only just begun,” said poor Anthony. “Answer me one thing, Winifred. Does this that I have told you make no difference in your thoughts of me?”“How should it!—how should it!” she cried out with an impetuosity of rejection which startled him. “O, how could you think so! Do we not know each other?—are we not friends?—can you suppose that for one moment I ever doubted you?” She stood up and looked at him with reproachful eyes, only eager to repel the accusation. He, looking also, knew for the first time that he, not she, had failed; that the want of trust, the want of friendship, had been on his side, not hers. And yet she said that now the past would lose its pain! He turned away with something like a groan.“What is the use of it all then?” he said.“One thinks of other people, I suppose,” said Winifred, trying to understand his mood. “So many people are ready to believe evil. If you are not glad for your own sake, you must be for those for whom you care—”She stopped trembling, for he was facing her again, with his eyes fixed upon her, and a depth in their gaze before which her heart fluttered and leapt up. For an instant she felt as if it had met his own; for an instant the happiness that flooded her carried her on its triumphant tide; for an instant the world was full of a sweet joy, beyond either measurement or control,—for an instant and no more. Her voice had scarcely faltered, and she might have been only completing the sentence when she said in a low tone,—“For Miss Lovell, especially.”She was looking away from him and did not know whether he had changed his position or not, for he did not answer. There was a strange heavy silence in which she could hear a watch ticking, the sigh of the wind among the fir-trees, a scream from the distant train, the throbbing of her heart. All her strength seemed to have gone out in those four words.“Yes,” said Anthony, at last, hoarsely, “for Miss Lovell, especially.”Something in his voice or in the mechanical repetition of her words brought back Winifred’s courage.“For her sake and your mother’s,” she said, earnestly. “However insignificant an accusation may be, its falseness must be a grief to the friends who best know how very false it is. I hope you will not try to prevent our being glad, although I dare say the poor man’s fate makes rejoicing seem heartless.”“It makes me believe that failure is the end of our best hopes,—of all that is best in us,” said Anthony, standing with his back to her and speaking in a tone of deep despondency.“Not failure, really,” said Winifred, with a flush of lovely eager colour rising in her cheeks. “Surely it is not possible that what is best can fail. It may seem so even to ourselves, but it cannot be the thing itself, only our way of thinking of it. Don’t you believe that failure and victory are sometimes one?” Anthony was silent. Was it so indeed? Sometimes one, triumph and defeat, death and life, the end and the beginning? Was it now—when he was ready to cry out that all was at its dreariest, with pangs of which he was tasting the most utter sharpness—now that he caught, through the clouds, a glimpse of something beyond change and beyond sorrow? He came and stood in front of Winifred, and put out his hand.“I can’t tell,” he said. “It may be so, and I think you are more lively to be right than I. At all events, one has to learn how to accept failure, and perhaps—some day—one will understand better. God bless you, Winifred.”She sat where he left her; she heard doors open and shut, and, turning round, saw him presently go quickly down the little path, pass under the fir-trees, and disappear from sight. Her breath came and went rapidly, a light was in her eyes. With all her struggle, those minutes had not been so bitter to her as to him; there was a joy in knowing that he loved her, it seemed to lift a secret reproach off her heart; and though this knowledge might bring sharper sadness to her by and by, for the moment the relief was so great as to make all sadness seem endurable.

“For Love himself took part against himselfTo warn us off, and Duty loved of Love.”Tennyson.

That afternoon Winifred was at home alone, rather an unusual thing for her, but Mrs Orde had occasion to go to Aunecester, and her son and Bessie had gone with her, while Winifred was glad of some excuse for staying at home, not having yet become accustomed to the sight of the street where her eyes were constantly picturing what had happened such a little time ago. A large fire was blazing, and she opened the long window, and sat down with some pretence of work in her hand, but after a few minutes’ attention her eyes wandered away to the grey familiar view before her. The firs to the left looked thin and dreary, the grass of the field which stretched beyond the lawn had grown a little coarse, no lights flashed from a mass of low heavy-lying clouds, all colours except cold greys and browns seemed to, have been drawn from the distant trees, the cottages, the little line of sea, the sad hills. Winifred’s eyes filled with tears as she looked out. It would have been so natural for the Squire’s strong figure to have made the foreground of the picture, his voice might so well have been heard calling the dogs, and gathering around him a little circle of cheery life, that the blank solitude smote her with desolate pain. It is, however, possible that when such a sad and unacknowledged jar has grown into a girls life as had come to Winifred, there is a certain luxury in a permitted sorrow. It seems at the time as if trouble were being heaped upon trouble, but it really takes away that hard feeling of repression which is like an iron band on a wound. Perhaps there is hardly a grief over which we mourn, but has those hidden behind it of which the world knows nothing. How imperceptibly do other memories weave themselves round the one remembrance that is so sad and yet so dear! How heavy with longing may be the thoughts which creep softly back to days not very long ago, except for that drag which makes time seem interminable! It was not only over her father’s image that Winifred was crying softly when she heard a sound, and Anthony Miles came in.

It may have been that he was too preoccupied with his own feelings to notice her tears, or that he did not dare to notice them. Winifred herself rose hastily, and sat down again a little hastily too, taking care to turn her back to the light which she had before been facing. She knew that her hand was trembling, and although it might have been caused by the momentary surprise, the feeling of weakness it produced unnerved her, and she was thankful that Anthony, when he sat down, sat leaning forward with his elbow on his knee, and his face on his hand, looking straight before him through the open window at the dull greyness, as if he saw nothing on either side.

A minute before Winifred had not felt as if it were possible to speak, but it is often necessary to fly from silence and take refuge in commonplaces, and she gathered up the work which lay in her lap and said,—

“I hope you did not want to see the others, for they have driven to Aunecester.”

“I did not want to see any one but you, Winifred,” said Anthony, without changing his position.

The words were so unlike what she expected, that she trembled again with a thrill that was neither joy nor fear, but something more exquisitely painful. Anthony went on after a moment’s pause,—“I suppose you do not know what happened last night?”

“Last night? No.”

“That poor fellow of whom we were speaking the other evening, David Stephens, fell into the water, and died in a few hours.”

“O poor Faith!” said Winifred, touched by an instantaneous sympathy.

“Yes,” said Anthony, gravely. “We would have sent her home, but she has begged my mother to let her stay.”

“Were you there?—how did you know about it?—where was it?”

“Yes, I was there. It was in Underham,” said Anthony. He had spoken throughout in the same short abstracted tone, as if a fit of absence were upon him; but what he had told her was sufficient to account for it, and she had forgotten herself in its sadness, and was looking at him with compassionate eyes, when he turned round for the first time, and said slowly, “I wished to see you alone, because you may as well know that it is proved—sufficiently, I suppose, for the satisfaction of my friends—that I am not quite the rogue they made me out to be. I can’t answer any questions, and it is not possible now, any more than then, to explain exactly what did take place. Therefore, there is, of course, still room for doubt. At the same time David, before he died, poor fellow, declared that the letter never reached my hand, so—you may take the evidence for what it is worth. You are the only person to whom I shall repeat it.”

Passionate tears sprang into Winifred’s eyes. This clearing of Anthony’s honour, for which she had prayed and yearned, had all gladness frozen out of it by the coldness of his words and the want of trust they implied. Her fate crimsoned, and when she tried to speak her voice was choked. Anthony, who had expected congratulations instead of this silence, turned towards her in surprise, and met her look intensely reproachful. He started up and walked quickly to the window. That look thrilled him suddenly with a doubt that carried sweet anguish and bitter joy. Had her faith been, after all, unshaken? Had it been he who had thrust her from him?—his pride which had separated them forever? He turned round and looked at Winifred again; burning words rose to his lips, and died away: if he had found a voice I do not know what he might not have said, but for a moment it was impossible to speak, and Winifred, although she was trembling under his eyes, was bravely holding back her own emotion.

“I am so thankful,” she said. “Now all that has past will lose its pain. I don’t want to ask any questions, but it has been very cruel for you,—for us all,” she added softly.

“Pain does not go away so easily as you believe. I think it has only just begun,” said poor Anthony. “Answer me one thing, Winifred. Does this that I have told you make no difference in your thoughts of me?”

“How should it!—how should it!” she cried out with an impetuosity of rejection which startled him. “O, how could you think so! Do we not know each other?—are we not friends?—can you suppose that for one moment I ever doubted you?” She stood up and looked at him with reproachful eyes, only eager to repel the accusation. He, looking also, knew for the first time that he, not she, had failed; that the want of trust, the want of friendship, had been on his side, not hers. And yet she said that now the past would lose its pain! He turned away with something like a groan.

“What is the use of it all then?” he said.

“One thinks of other people, I suppose,” said Winifred, trying to understand his mood. “So many people are ready to believe evil. If you are not glad for your own sake, you must be for those for whom you care—”

She stopped trembling, for he was facing her again, with his eyes fixed upon her, and a depth in their gaze before which her heart fluttered and leapt up. For an instant she felt as if it had met his own; for an instant the happiness that flooded her carried her on its triumphant tide; for an instant the world was full of a sweet joy, beyond either measurement or control,—for an instant and no more. Her voice had scarcely faltered, and she might have been only completing the sentence when she said in a low tone,—

“For Miss Lovell, especially.”

She was looking away from him and did not know whether he had changed his position or not, for he did not answer. There was a strange heavy silence in which she could hear a watch ticking, the sigh of the wind among the fir-trees, a scream from the distant train, the throbbing of her heart. All her strength seemed to have gone out in those four words.

“Yes,” said Anthony, at last, hoarsely, “for Miss Lovell, especially.”

Something in his voice or in the mechanical repetition of her words brought back Winifred’s courage.

“For her sake and your mother’s,” she said, earnestly. “However insignificant an accusation may be, its falseness must be a grief to the friends who best know how very false it is. I hope you will not try to prevent our being glad, although I dare say the poor man’s fate makes rejoicing seem heartless.”

“It makes me believe that failure is the end of our best hopes,—of all that is best in us,” said Anthony, standing with his back to her and speaking in a tone of deep despondency.

“Not failure, really,” said Winifred, with a flush of lovely eager colour rising in her cheeks. “Surely it is not possible that what is best can fail. It may seem so even to ourselves, but it cannot be the thing itself, only our way of thinking of it. Don’t you believe that failure and victory are sometimes one?” Anthony was silent. Was it so indeed? Sometimes one, triumph and defeat, death and life, the end and the beginning? Was it now—when he was ready to cry out that all was at its dreariest, with pangs of which he was tasting the most utter sharpness—now that he caught, through the clouds, a glimpse of something beyond change and beyond sorrow? He came and stood in front of Winifred, and put out his hand.

“I can’t tell,” he said. “It may be so, and I think you are more lively to be right than I. At all events, one has to learn how to accept failure, and perhaps—some day—one will understand better. God bless you, Winifred.”

She sat where he left her; she heard doors open and shut, and, turning round, saw him presently go quickly down the little path, pass under the fir-trees, and disappear from sight. Her breath came and went rapidly, a light was in her eyes. With all her struggle, those minutes had not been so bitter to her as to him; there was a joy in knowing that he loved her, it seemed to lift a secret reproach off her heart; and though this knowledge might bring sharper sadness to her by and by, for the moment the relief was so great as to make all sadness seem endurable.

Chapter Thirty Four.Thanks in a great measure to Mr Robert’s policy, the news of Anthony’s clearing spread rapidly through the neighbourhood. The Milmans had a luncheon party about a week afterwards, and as Lady Milman said to her daughter beforehand, it was really quite a comfort to have something to talk about. She contrived, very skilfully, to keep the welcome topic out of the desultory conversation before luncheon, feeling that it was too valuable to be broken into fragments, as would then have been its fate. But in the first pause after they were seated in the dining-room, Mrs Featherly’s voice was heard emphatically declaring,—“A very strange and unsatisfactory story this, about Anthony Miles. Not that I ever expected the matter to be cleared up in the manner one has a right to desire, but with his father vicar and all, I often told Mr Featherly that I should make a point of hoping against hope.”“Well, I don’t know about its being unsatisfactory,” said Lady Milman, looking very handsome, and inclined to take a kindlier view of things. “It’s odd, of course, and unlucky that we can’t hear the whole affair, but so long as he did not receive the letter it is really no difference who did. I always liked Anthony Miles, and I think his jumping into the water and saving the man who had done him so much harm was a very fine thing.”“O, but it was in the dark, so he could not possibly have known. I can tell you precisely how it all occurred,” said Mrs Featherly, who would have scorned to have been unable to give a precise account of anything which happened within a circuit of ten miles. “He had that minute left the Bennetts’, and heard a scream and a splash, and saw some one in the water, so of course he could do nothing less than jump in. There were the steps close by, and there was no possible danger.”“Ah, it’s a capital thing to be able to economise one’s neighbours’ virtues,” said old Mr Wood of the Grange, helping himself to mayonnaise.“Well, if Anthony Miles knew who it was,” said Mrs Featherly, tartly, “he showed a very proper spirit, a dissenter and all. Dissenters are never to be trusted, and this one behaved in a most reprehensible manner, going about in my husband’s parish and making himself exceedingly troublesome,—though I should be the last person to speak ill of the dead.”“It is unsatisfactory, as you say, because they can’t feel it,” put in Mr Wood again, in a tone of assent, which Mrs Featherly accepted as a tribute to her argument.“I have no doubt that it is all true so far as that David Stephens acted very wrongly,” she continued, “but then I do feel that if one hears part one should hear all. I should like to know, if Anthony Miles did not get the letter, who did?”Mr Mannering had already laid down his knife and fork, and joined the tips of his fingers together, divided between a desire to speak and a fear of impoliteness.“Excuse me,” he said, in his pleasant, courteous tones, “but I cannot but feel with Lady Milman that here we open another subject. I am sure Mrs Featherly, with her usual candour, will admit that Anthony Miles’s conduct may be considered blameless in the matter?”“Indeed, I am not so presumptuous as to call any human being’s conduct blameless,” said Mrs Featherly aggressively, “especially that of a young man who has the snare of no profession. Not that anything seems to have any effect nowadays. There is that young Warren, good for nothing but to dance attendance upon Miss Ada Lovell. I have told Mr Featherly he really must make a point before long of speaking to Mr Bennett.”“Warren?” said Sir Thomas Milman, joining in from the end of the table. “That will be his cousin whose death was in yesterday’s paper. It must have been sudden, very sudden. He only came to the title about four months ago, and now it goes, I should say, to this young fellow’s father. Isn’t it so, Mannering?—you’re up in all this sort of thing.”“Sir Henry Warren is undoubtedly dead, and if this young man’s father is his uncle, it must be as you say,” said Mr Mannering, a little startled. “But I always understood theirs to be a family of great possessions. I had no idea this young Warren belonged to them.”“Well, as often as not there’s a poor branch hanging on to the big stem, though they don’t very often get such a puff of good luck as this to set them straight. But there’s no doubt about the money.”“O, they creak of money,” said Mr Wood. “Their pedigree is not long enough to have given them time to spend it as yet. They must wait for that till they get a little good blood into the family.”“I shall make a point of calling upon Mrs Bennett this afternoon,” said Mrs Featherly, who had been listening in blank amazement, “so that I may learn exactly what has happened. Mr Warren the son of a baronet! Well, I must say he has always performed his duties in an exemplary manner, and I shall be quite glad to show him a little attention, that he may see we appreciate it. It is certainly one’s duty to do so. I shall make a point of it.” Even Mrs Bennett had been raised to something like excitement, when her husband told her of Mr Warren’s sudden prosperity.“So much happens every day that it quite takes away my breath,” she said comfortably from the soft chair in which she was sitting. “Then, my dear Tom, Mr Warren will not stay with you? Dear me, Ada, you and I shall be quite sorry to lose him, he has really always made himself so pleasant and so attentive. I hope he will come and tell us all about it. And the poor young man who is dead, how sudden for him! Only three-and-twenty, too!”“He takes it very properly,” said Mr Bennett, rubbing his hands. “Of course it puts me to a little inconvenience, and he spoke very well about it, very well. Offered to stay, and said quite the right thing. But I should not take any advantage of that sort, as you may suppose. He’ll go to the University, I imagine, and probably to the bar afterwards. Odd world, Ada, my dear, isn’t it?” As for Ada, the tears had rushed suddenly into her eyes. She murmured something in reply, but the weight of disappointment which she felt almost frightened herself, and when she made a faint attempt to assure herself that Mr Warren was nothing to her, it was only to become conscious that he was truly the embodiment of those things for which she most cared,—brightness, compliments, admiration, attention; and now—how much more besides! Ada was only romantic when romance did not interfere with more solid comforts, but to have all within her reach, and yet to be obliged to turn away, was a trial which touched her sorely. It seemed to develop a vein of bitterness, as opposed as possible to the petty prettinesses of her life, which made her thoroughly uncomfortable, and which she tried to dignify by the name of misery, although her feelings were at no time deep enough to admit of strong names. It added to her vexation that, so short a time ago, Anthony should himself have offered to free her from her engagement. Her vanity found so pleasant an excuse for his words in setting them down to a fear on his part that she should not be fully satisfied, that she felt no anger towards him for what he had said, but it provoked her that it should not have been later, when she might have been guided by these new circumstances. Marriage with Mr Warren had hitherto been out of the question; and now that its possibility was suddenly presented to her, Ada wept the bitterest tears of disappointment she had ever shed in her life. People with whom life has gone smoothly are not disposed to admit of any course of events whereby they are defrauded, as they think, of the good things that yet should fall to their share; the very shadow of withdrawal astonishes them in a manner which is not without its pathetic side to those who have tasted draughts out of the depths. There is, too, in these natures, often a curious power of centralisation, so that their own life becomes the point round which all others revolve, and in relation to which all others are considered. Ada would have understood the sin of another girl acting in what the world would call a heartless fashion; yet, so far as Anthony’s heart was concerned, she looked at it only as made for the satisfaction of her own; so that it would not have entered her head that suffering which seemed wrong and unendurable for herself might not properly have fallen to his share, and indeed there was, perhaps, a feeling as if a balance were struck with Providence, by admitting the necessity of tribulation for other people. It was not the pain she might inflict which weighed upon her now, but a vague dissatisfied conviction that her uncle and aunt would not permit her to throw over Anthony; a kind of dim sense, it might be, of honour, growing out of an atmosphere which, if easily selfish, was not dishonourable. Marrying him, she would feel all her life long that a great injury had been done her, yet she was aware that, cruel as it was, she might be called upon to endure this wrong.Things seemed so harshly upset that, for the first time in her life, Ada caught sight of her tear-stained face in the glass, and her pretty eyes swollen and discoloured, without any answering impulse being awakened to put aside what so greatly marred her beauty, as easily crushed as a flower by a storm. On the contrary, she was touched by a sort of despair that the prettiness of which she was wholly conscious could not, after all, give her what she had a right to expect from it. It was a curious petty turmoil, yet for one of Ada’s nature it marked serious disturbance that she should have gone down stairs after only languidly pushing back her hair, without the usual marks of trim order which characterised her, and that she should have been pettish in her answers to her aunt. She was so evidently out of spirits when Anthony came in, that it was impossible for him not to remark it, but he was almost grateful for the change. Her constant flow of smiles grew at times to be full of weariness, the weariness which makes people feel conscience-stricken at the little repulsion that rises up. He looked very ill, and unlike a man from whom a heavy burden had just been lifted. Is it not so often?—what we want comes, and it is no longer what we want,—the load is taken off, but we would fain have it back again, if its weight might only be exchanged for the aching pain that has grown up elsewhere; we rail at the present, and lo, it passes away, and in its vanishing shadow we see the glory of an angel’s face, and stretch out our hands with vain weeping.Anthony Miles had come that day with a determination to press his marriage, and to take Ada away from Underham. They would settle in London, by which he knew that he should fulfil one of Ada’s dreams, and there he would fling himself into work with a will, if not with much heart. Something of that shame of disappointment which scourges into fresh energy was upon him. He had resolved to be very gentle with Ada, and the change in her manner made it more easy than usual. She was sitting listlessly in an arm-chair near the fire, for her grief would never be likely to interfere with her comforts, and at this moment a sense of injury was uppermost, for which she instinctively felt compensations to be her due.“I am afraid you have another headache,” said Anthony, standing before her, and looking down, with a vague compassion in his heart.“Nobody thinks anything about my headaches,” said Ada, in a complaining voice. “When Aunt Henrietta is ill herself, she makes a great fuss about it, but she never cares about other people. This place does not agree with me; Dr Fletcher has always said so, but they will not believe him.”“Will you let me take you away from it, then?” said Anthony, speaking sadly, but kindly, and trying to put away all thoughts but care for her. “London, you know, might suit you better.”“Are you talking about our marrying?” Ada’s face lit up for a moment with a vision of her wedding-dress, but dropped again into its new expression of dissatisfied listlessness. “My uncle must settle all that.”“But you do not object?”“I don’t know,—I have a headache,—there can’t be any hurry.”The indifference of the tone struck him, but it was too much an echo of his own feeling to seem as if it were anything strange.“Then I will speak to him?” he said.“Very well,” said Ada, turning away with tears in her eyes.“Is there nothing I can do for you?” said Anthony, still touched with the feeling that it was bodily suffering she was experiencing.“No,—nothing. I can’t talk. There is a ring, who is it?”“I think I hear Warren’s voice.”He did not expect to see her jump up, and turn with a smiling face to greet the new-comer. Not a trace of her languor remained; she talked, laughed, and congratulated, all in a breath. “What does it mean?” thought Anthony, looking at her sparkling eyes in wonder. Sniff had stolen in unperceived behind Mr Warren, and crept under his master’s chair; but seeing his hand hanging down could not, even at the risk of detection, refrain from a rapturous lick. Anthony got the dog’s head in his hand and fondled it, while he sat and wondered mutely.“And you are really going away?” Ada was saying. “We shall all miss you so much.”“You may be certain I shall come back again.”“O yes, you must. Still—I don’t know—I am afraid there will be something different, and I dare say you will have forgotten all about us.”“I am sure I shall never forget,—how could I?” said Mr Warren, turning very red, and almost stammering in his eagerness. “I have met with so much kindness in this house, I do not believe I shall be so happy anywhere as I have been in Underham.”“O, but you will live in the country, and in such a beautiful place!” Ada said, shaking her curl, and sighing involuntarily as she thought of what her lot might have been.“I like a sociable place like this better,” said the young fellow honestly, “and as to that, it’s the people—”He stopped suddenly, with a perception that Anthony was sitting and looking grimly at him. He had a soft heart, and the idea of going away from Ada was solidifying his feelings, which had hitherto scarcely taken shape beyond the amusement of the moment, so that for the first time it gave him an actual pang to remember that the real separation lay in this engagement of Ada’s. One or two discoveries were made in that moment. Anthony awakened to the perception that another mistake must be added to the list, and it was a mistake which, whatever may be a man’s feelings, is sure to gall him. An apparently transparent affection, such as Ada’s, had been grateful to him at a time when he was very sore with all the world, and the fact of this soreness and of his own changed position gave it an air of reality which he had never thought of questioning. Even if he had discovered that her heart held no great depths, what was there he believed to be all his own; and Mr Warren would have been the last person presented to his thoughts as a possible rival until now, when Ada’s manner and sudden change from gloom to gaiety made him very wroth, with the anger not of jealousy, but of wounded pride. Nor did his own failure towards her soften him, for he satisfied himself by thinking that he had at least told her the truth, and put the matter into her own choice, while she had deliberately deceived him by liking this young idiot, and showing her preference unblushingly the instant the fellow’s position was changed. Anthony’s face grew blacker and blacker, and Ada, perhaps desirous of driving him to desperation, put out all her charms for Mr Warren. There was a certain comfortable prettiness about the room, about the cheerful colouring, and the big fire which looked brighter and brighter as the afternoon shortened, and in the midst of it all one of those half-absurd, half-tragic complications, which sometimes seem to get inextricably knotted round a life. Anthony jumped up at last.“I am glad your headache is better,” he said shortly.“Are you going? Good bye, then,” said Ada, in an indifferent voice.He stood still, and looked at her for a moment, so that her eyes fell under his. But she recovered herself immediately, and glanced up as if she were waiting for him to speak. He said no more, however, but went out of the room, Sniff barking with delight the instant he found himself safely in the hall.As he walked home, his feelings could scarcely be called enviable, the less so because, turn which way he would, there seemed no line of action which he could take. It was impossible for him to find fault with Ada, who, indeed, had done nothing against which he could bring a serious complaint; it was more manner than words, and to fall foul of manner requires a lover’s quarrel, and a lover’s quarrel a lover. He could no more go seriously to Ada and blame her than he could fight smoke with a sword. And after his one failure he said to himself that come what would there should be no further attempt on his part to loosen the bond which bound them to each other. But he was very miserable. For until now he had felt that, although the deepest love was wanting which happiest marriages need, something they both had towards a happiness which, if not the greatest, might serve instead,—on her part a simple unreasoning affection, on his a certain gratitude and tenderness. He had not thought of these failing until this new turn of the wheel. Now he could no longer feel the gentle kindliness to which he had trusted as the foundation of a moderate happiness; and even at that, insufficient as it once seemed, he looked back as a drowning man looks at the harsh rock from which he has been torn. He could do nothing except wait, and there was a passiveness about his future which made it seem utterly dark and hateful to poor Anthony.As he came near the Red House, the day brightened in some degree; the faint beauty of the sun had gained strength, little cold lovelinesses were creeping into life, a poor little pool of water was shining away, and a scarlet glory of berries flamed from the hedge where a tiny wren slipped in and out, scarcely moving the grass. Mr Robert was just riding out of the gate, and pulled up to greet Anthony.“This rainy weather has knocked poor Charles over altogether,” he said, “and I’m going to fetch Bowles. He always gets moped when he can’t go out. Ah, Anthony, in old days you would have been up to see us long ago.”There was a little tone of sadness in Mr Robert’s cheery voice, which Anthony detected in a moment, and it may have been a proof that the young man’s own troubles were no longer hardening him, that it touched him in the way it did.“The old days—?” he said, his words almost failing him. Mr Robert looked at him in an odd, questioning way.“My dear fellow,” he said, putting out his hand and grasping Anthony’s, “I’m ready to admit that I didn’t stand by you as stoutly as you’d a right to expect, and I ask your pardon for it. If you knew the story of my life, for even red-faced old bachelors have stories, perhaps you’d see some sort of reason for my feeling about it. But then we none of us take what we don’t see for granted.” Anthony was utterly shamed and overcome. “Don’t, don’t!” he said, putting up his hand to his face, for he had a generous temper, quick to respond to kindness, and he felt now, somehow, as if he had been in the wrong throughout. Mr Robert went on in his kind grave voice,—“Perhaps I’d no claim to it, but I wish you could have treated me as your friend, and let me know how matters stood exactly. You’ll not be angry at my saying that I guess now what a painful position you were in. I’m not sure that you were right, mind you, but I am sure that not one man in twenty would have behaved as you did.”He wrung his hand again, and went on. The two men understood each other at last; it is sometimes a little odd to think how a few minutes and a word or two will mend or mar enough for a lifetime. Things did not seem quite so sad to Anthony after that little interview. He would try to do what was right to Ada, to everybody. The bitterness which made him refuse to accept friendship, because it had disappointed him once, was gone; for he had been too blind himself to demand that others should see perfectly, and he felt as if he owed them all amends, if only for the sake of Winifred, whom he had so misjudged.

Thanks in a great measure to Mr Robert’s policy, the news of Anthony’s clearing spread rapidly through the neighbourhood. The Milmans had a luncheon party about a week afterwards, and as Lady Milman said to her daughter beforehand, it was really quite a comfort to have something to talk about. She contrived, very skilfully, to keep the welcome topic out of the desultory conversation before luncheon, feeling that it was too valuable to be broken into fragments, as would then have been its fate. But in the first pause after they were seated in the dining-room, Mrs Featherly’s voice was heard emphatically declaring,—

“A very strange and unsatisfactory story this, about Anthony Miles. Not that I ever expected the matter to be cleared up in the manner one has a right to desire, but with his father vicar and all, I often told Mr Featherly that I should make a point of hoping against hope.”

“Well, I don’t know about its being unsatisfactory,” said Lady Milman, looking very handsome, and inclined to take a kindlier view of things. “It’s odd, of course, and unlucky that we can’t hear the whole affair, but so long as he did not receive the letter it is really no difference who did. I always liked Anthony Miles, and I think his jumping into the water and saving the man who had done him so much harm was a very fine thing.”

“O, but it was in the dark, so he could not possibly have known. I can tell you precisely how it all occurred,” said Mrs Featherly, who would have scorned to have been unable to give a precise account of anything which happened within a circuit of ten miles. “He had that minute left the Bennetts’, and heard a scream and a splash, and saw some one in the water, so of course he could do nothing less than jump in. There were the steps close by, and there was no possible danger.”

“Ah, it’s a capital thing to be able to economise one’s neighbours’ virtues,” said old Mr Wood of the Grange, helping himself to mayonnaise.

“Well, if Anthony Miles knew who it was,” said Mrs Featherly, tartly, “he showed a very proper spirit, a dissenter and all. Dissenters are never to be trusted, and this one behaved in a most reprehensible manner, going about in my husband’s parish and making himself exceedingly troublesome,—though I should be the last person to speak ill of the dead.”

“It is unsatisfactory, as you say, because they can’t feel it,” put in Mr Wood again, in a tone of assent, which Mrs Featherly accepted as a tribute to her argument.

“I have no doubt that it is all true so far as that David Stephens acted very wrongly,” she continued, “but then I do feel that if one hears part one should hear all. I should like to know, if Anthony Miles did not get the letter, who did?”

Mr Mannering had already laid down his knife and fork, and joined the tips of his fingers together, divided between a desire to speak and a fear of impoliteness.

“Excuse me,” he said, in his pleasant, courteous tones, “but I cannot but feel with Lady Milman that here we open another subject. I am sure Mrs Featherly, with her usual candour, will admit that Anthony Miles’s conduct may be considered blameless in the matter?”

“Indeed, I am not so presumptuous as to call any human being’s conduct blameless,” said Mrs Featherly aggressively, “especially that of a young man who has the snare of no profession. Not that anything seems to have any effect nowadays. There is that young Warren, good for nothing but to dance attendance upon Miss Ada Lovell. I have told Mr Featherly he really must make a point before long of speaking to Mr Bennett.”

“Warren?” said Sir Thomas Milman, joining in from the end of the table. “That will be his cousin whose death was in yesterday’s paper. It must have been sudden, very sudden. He only came to the title about four months ago, and now it goes, I should say, to this young fellow’s father. Isn’t it so, Mannering?—you’re up in all this sort of thing.”

“Sir Henry Warren is undoubtedly dead, and if this young man’s father is his uncle, it must be as you say,” said Mr Mannering, a little startled. “But I always understood theirs to be a family of great possessions. I had no idea this young Warren belonged to them.”

“Well, as often as not there’s a poor branch hanging on to the big stem, though they don’t very often get such a puff of good luck as this to set them straight. But there’s no doubt about the money.”

“O, they creak of money,” said Mr Wood. “Their pedigree is not long enough to have given them time to spend it as yet. They must wait for that till they get a little good blood into the family.”

“I shall make a point of calling upon Mrs Bennett this afternoon,” said Mrs Featherly, who had been listening in blank amazement, “so that I may learn exactly what has happened. Mr Warren the son of a baronet! Well, I must say he has always performed his duties in an exemplary manner, and I shall be quite glad to show him a little attention, that he may see we appreciate it. It is certainly one’s duty to do so. I shall make a point of it.” Even Mrs Bennett had been raised to something like excitement, when her husband told her of Mr Warren’s sudden prosperity.

“So much happens every day that it quite takes away my breath,” she said comfortably from the soft chair in which she was sitting. “Then, my dear Tom, Mr Warren will not stay with you? Dear me, Ada, you and I shall be quite sorry to lose him, he has really always made himself so pleasant and so attentive. I hope he will come and tell us all about it. And the poor young man who is dead, how sudden for him! Only three-and-twenty, too!”

“He takes it very properly,” said Mr Bennett, rubbing his hands. “Of course it puts me to a little inconvenience, and he spoke very well about it, very well. Offered to stay, and said quite the right thing. But I should not take any advantage of that sort, as you may suppose. He’ll go to the University, I imagine, and probably to the bar afterwards. Odd world, Ada, my dear, isn’t it?” As for Ada, the tears had rushed suddenly into her eyes. She murmured something in reply, but the weight of disappointment which she felt almost frightened herself, and when she made a faint attempt to assure herself that Mr Warren was nothing to her, it was only to become conscious that he was truly the embodiment of those things for which she most cared,—brightness, compliments, admiration, attention; and now—how much more besides! Ada was only romantic when romance did not interfere with more solid comforts, but to have all within her reach, and yet to be obliged to turn away, was a trial which touched her sorely. It seemed to develop a vein of bitterness, as opposed as possible to the petty prettinesses of her life, which made her thoroughly uncomfortable, and which she tried to dignify by the name of misery, although her feelings were at no time deep enough to admit of strong names. It added to her vexation that, so short a time ago, Anthony should himself have offered to free her from her engagement. Her vanity found so pleasant an excuse for his words in setting them down to a fear on his part that she should not be fully satisfied, that she felt no anger towards him for what he had said, but it provoked her that it should not have been later, when she might have been guided by these new circumstances. Marriage with Mr Warren had hitherto been out of the question; and now that its possibility was suddenly presented to her, Ada wept the bitterest tears of disappointment she had ever shed in her life. People with whom life has gone smoothly are not disposed to admit of any course of events whereby they are defrauded, as they think, of the good things that yet should fall to their share; the very shadow of withdrawal astonishes them in a manner which is not without its pathetic side to those who have tasted draughts out of the depths. There is, too, in these natures, often a curious power of centralisation, so that their own life becomes the point round which all others revolve, and in relation to which all others are considered. Ada would have understood the sin of another girl acting in what the world would call a heartless fashion; yet, so far as Anthony’s heart was concerned, she looked at it only as made for the satisfaction of her own; so that it would not have entered her head that suffering which seemed wrong and unendurable for herself might not properly have fallen to his share, and indeed there was, perhaps, a feeling as if a balance were struck with Providence, by admitting the necessity of tribulation for other people. It was not the pain she might inflict which weighed upon her now, but a vague dissatisfied conviction that her uncle and aunt would not permit her to throw over Anthony; a kind of dim sense, it might be, of honour, growing out of an atmosphere which, if easily selfish, was not dishonourable. Marrying him, she would feel all her life long that a great injury had been done her, yet she was aware that, cruel as it was, she might be called upon to endure this wrong.

Things seemed so harshly upset that, for the first time in her life, Ada caught sight of her tear-stained face in the glass, and her pretty eyes swollen and discoloured, without any answering impulse being awakened to put aside what so greatly marred her beauty, as easily crushed as a flower by a storm. On the contrary, she was touched by a sort of despair that the prettiness of which she was wholly conscious could not, after all, give her what she had a right to expect from it. It was a curious petty turmoil, yet for one of Ada’s nature it marked serious disturbance that she should have gone down stairs after only languidly pushing back her hair, without the usual marks of trim order which characterised her, and that she should have been pettish in her answers to her aunt. She was so evidently out of spirits when Anthony came in, that it was impossible for him not to remark it, but he was almost grateful for the change. Her constant flow of smiles grew at times to be full of weariness, the weariness which makes people feel conscience-stricken at the little repulsion that rises up. He looked very ill, and unlike a man from whom a heavy burden had just been lifted. Is it not so often?—what we want comes, and it is no longer what we want,—the load is taken off, but we would fain have it back again, if its weight might only be exchanged for the aching pain that has grown up elsewhere; we rail at the present, and lo, it passes away, and in its vanishing shadow we see the glory of an angel’s face, and stretch out our hands with vain weeping.

Anthony Miles had come that day with a determination to press his marriage, and to take Ada away from Underham. They would settle in London, by which he knew that he should fulfil one of Ada’s dreams, and there he would fling himself into work with a will, if not with much heart. Something of that shame of disappointment which scourges into fresh energy was upon him. He had resolved to be very gentle with Ada, and the change in her manner made it more easy than usual. She was sitting listlessly in an arm-chair near the fire, for her grief would never be likely to interfere with her comforts, and at this moment a sense of injury was uppermost, for which she instinctively felt compensations to be her due.

“I am afraid you have another headache,” said Anthony, standing before her, and looking down, with a vague compassion in his heart.

“Nobody thinks anything about my headaches,” said Ada, in a complaining voice. “When Aunt Henrietta is ill herself, she makes a great fuss about it, but she never cares about other people. This place does not agree with me; Dr Fletcher has always said so, but they will not believe him.”

“Will you let me take you away from it, then?” said Anthony, speaking sadly, but kindly, and trying to put away all thoughts but care for her. “London, you know, might suit you better.”

“Are you talking about our marrying?” Ada’s face lit up for a moment with a vision of her wedding-dress, but dropped again into its new expression of dissatisfied listlessness. “My uncle must settle all that.”

“But you do not object?”

“I don’t know,—I have a headache,—there can’t be any hurry.”

The indifference of the tone struck him, but it was too much an echo of his own feeling to seem as if it were anything strange.

“Then I will speak to him?” he said.

“Very well,” said Ada, turning away with tears in her eyes.

“Is there nothing I can do for you?” said Anthony, still touched with the feeling that it was bodily suffering she was experiencing.

“No,—nothing. I can’t talk. There is a ring, who is it?”

“I think I hear Warren’s voice.”

He did not expect to see her jump up, and turn with a smiling face to greet the new-comer. Not a trace of her languor remained; she talked, laughed, and congratulated, all in a breath. “What does it mean?” thought Anthony, looking at her sparkling eyes in wonder. Sniff had stolen in unperceived behind Mr Warren, and crept under his master’s chair; but seeing his hand hanging down could not, even at the risk of detection, refrain from a rapturous lick. Anthony got the dog’s head in his hand and fondled it, while he sat and wondered mutely.

“And you are really going away?” Ada was saying. “We shall all miss you so much.”

“You may be certain I shall come back again.”

“O yes, you must. Still—I don’t know—I am afraid there will be something different, and I dare say you will have forgotten all about us.”

“I am sure I shall never forget,—how could I?” said Mr Warren, turning very red, and almost stammering in his eagerness. “I have met with so much kindness in this house, I do not believe I shall be so happy anywhere as I have been in Underham.”

“O, but you will live in the country, and in such a beautiful place!” Ada said, shaking her curl, and sighing involuntarily as she thought of what her lot might have been.

“I like a sociable place like this better,” said the young fellow honestly, “and as to that, it’s the people—”

He stopped suddenly, with a perception that Anthony was sitting and looking grimly at him. He had a soft heart, and the idea of going away from Ada was solidifying his feelings, which had hitherto scarcely taken shape beyond the amusement of the moment, so that for the first time it gave him an actual pang to remember that the real separation lay in this engagement of Ada’s. One or two discoveries were made in that moment. Anthony awakened to the perception that another mistake must be added to the list, and it was a mistake which, whatever may be a man’s feelings, is sure to gall him. An apparently transparent affection, such as Ada’s, had been grateful to him at a time when he was very sore with all the world, and the fact of this soreness and of his own changed position gave it an air of reality which he had never thought of questioning. Even if he had discovered that her heart held no great depths, what was there he believed to be all his own; and Mr Warren would have been the last person presented to his thoughts as a possible rival until now, when Ada’s manner and sudden change from gloom to gaiety made him very wroth, with the anger not of jealousy, but of wounded pride. Nor did his own failure towards her soften him, for he satisfied himself by thinking that he had at least told her the truth, and put the matter into her own choice, while she had deliberately deceived him by liking this young idiot, and showing her preference unblushingly the instant the fellow’s position was changed. Anthony’s face grew blacker and blacker, and Ada, perhaps desirous of driving him to desperation, put out all her charms for Mr Warren. There was a certain comfortable prettiness about the room, about the cheerful colouring, and the big fire which looked brighter and brighter as the afternoon shortened, and in the midst of it all one of those half-absurd, half-tragic complications, which sometimes seem to get inextricably knotted round a life. Anthony jumped up at last.

“I am glad your headache is better,” he said shortly.

“Are you going? Good bye, then,” said Ada, in an indifferent voice.

He stood still, and looked at her for a moment, so that her eyes fell under his. But she recovered herself immediately, and glanced up as if she were waiting for him to speak. He said no more, however, but went out of the room, Sniff barking with delight the instant he found himself safely in the hall.

As he walked home, his feelings could scarcely be called enviable, the less so because, turn which way he would, there seemed no line of action which he could take. It was impossible for him to find fault with Ada, who, indeed, had done nothing against which he could bring a serious complaint; it was more manner than words, and to fall foul of manner requires a lover’s quarrel, and a lover’s quarrel a lover. He could no more go seriously to Ada and blame her than he could fight smoke with a sword. And after his one failure he said to himself that come what would there should be no further attempt on his part to loosen the bond which bound them to each other. But he was very miserable. For until now he had felt that, although the deepest love was wanting which happiest marriages need, something they both had towards a happiness which, if not the greatest, might serve instead,—on her part a simple unreasoning affection, on his a certain gratitude and tenderness. He had not thought of these failing until this new turn of the wheel. Now he could no longer feel the gentle kindliness to which he had trusted as the foundation of a moderate happiness; and even at that, insufficient as it once seemed, he looked back as a drowning man looks at the harsh rock from which he has been torn. He could do nothing except wait, and there was a passiveness about his future which made it seem utterly dark and hateful to poor Anthony.

As he came near the Red House, the day brightened in some degree; the faint beauty of the sun had gained strength, little cold lovelinesses were creeping into life, a poor little pool of water was shining away, and a scarlet glory of berries flamed from the hedge where a tiny wren slipped in and out, scarcely moving the grass. Mr Robert was just riding out of the gate, and pulled up to greet Anthony.

“This rainy weather has knocked poor Charles over altogether,” he said, “and I’m going to fetch Bowles. He always gets moped when he can’t go out. Ah, Anthony, in old days you would have been up to see us long ago.”

There was a little tone of sadness in Mr Robert’s cheery voice, which Anthony detected in a moment, and it may have been a proof that the young man’s own troubles were no longer hardening him, that it touched him in the way it did.

“The old days—?” he said, his words almost failing him. Mr Robert looked at him in an odd, questioning way.

“My dear fellow,” he said, putting out his hand and grasping Anthony’s, “I’m ready to admit that I didn’t stand by you as stoutly as you’d a right to expect, and I ask your pardon for it. If you knew the story of my life, for even red-faced old bachelors have stories, perhaps you’d see some sort of reason for my feeling about it. But then we none of us take what we don’t see for granted.” Anthony was utterly shamed and overcome. “Don’t, don’t!” he said, putting up his hand to his face, for he had a generous temper, quick to respond to kindness, and he felt now, somehow, as if he had been in the wrong throughout. Mr Robert went on in his kind grave voice,—

“Perhaps I’d no claim to it, but I wish you could have treated me as your friend, and let me know how matters stood exactly. You’ll not be angry at my saying that I guess now what a painful position you were in. I’m not sure that you were right, mind you, but I am sure that not one man in twenty would have behaved as you did.”

He wrung his hand again, and went on. The two men understood each other at last; it is sometimes a little odd to think how a few minutes and a word or two will mend or mar enough for a lifetime. Things did not seem quite so sad to Anthony after that little interview. He would try to do what was right to Ada, to everybody. The bitterness which made him refuse to accept friendship, because it had disappointed him once, was gone; for he had been too blind himself to demand that others should see perfectly, and he felt as if he owed them all amends, if only for the sake of Winifred, whom he had so misjudged.

Back to Index Next