"before you receive this letter, my dear dugdale," wrote hayes meredith, "you will have seen mrs. hungerford, and she will have told you all the news about me, in giving the history of herself--a history, by the bye, which has had a better ending than i expected, when first i made her out, according to your request.
"she is not much given to talking, i fancy, to any one, and i dare say she will not let you know much about her wretched life out here; but i can tell you it was wretched; and when i came to know her, and understand how superior a woman she is to the generality of women, such as i have known them, i was really grateful to you for giving me the chance of serving her. i don't think i was much more obliged to you in my life, and i have owed you a turn or two.
"hungerford was a regular blackguard, and an irredeemable snob as well, and she was only to be congratulated heartily on his death. the mode of it was rather horrible, to be sure; but if he had not been knocked on the head in the bush, the chances are he would have been hanged; and there's something to choose between the two, at all events.
"she is an interesting young woman, and i was sincerely glad to do her all the service in my power, which was not much, after all. i should like to know what becomes of her. i hope she has better days to see than any she lived through here; and i hope you will write to me when you can.
"but my letter does not solely concern mrs. hungerford. i have a selfish purpose in writing to you also, and the explanation of it needs some detail. you know that i am, and that i have been for some years, what i may safely call a prosperous man; and though i have a large family to provide for--five of them now (they were seven, but two little ones early succumbed to the climate)--i have never found that same very difficult to do. my children are all well, hearty, jolly, sturdy children, with the exception of our eldest boy--you have seen him, you may remember--robert. he is not exactly sickly, but he is not strong; but it is less his bodily than his mental health that troubles his mother and myself.
"the boy is not contented, not happy, not a born colonial, like the rest; he has ideas and fancies other than theirs; he has an unruly temper, a quick impressionable brain, and a great aptitude for the graces, refinements, and luxuries of life, which--as i need not tell you it has had no chance of cultivation here--must be natural to him.
"his mother and i are not people to have a favourite among our children; it is share and share alike with them all, in affection as in everything else; but robert is a discord somehow, and captious--in short, very hard to manage--and i have not the time to devote to an exceptional person in the family.
"he has a great notion that he is very superior to his brothers--quite an unfounded one--and thinks he should do no end of wonderful things in england, if he had the chance, by which, of course, he means the money. this i can give him; and as there is no doubt he can get a better education in england than here, and should his projects fail, or should he get tired of them, he can come back whenever he pleases, and still find a corner for himself here, i am quite disposed to let him try his own plans out.
"the others are true colonials; they have not the least desire to see the old country until they can do so in independent manhood; but i can plainly perceive that, for his own sake, and that of all the household, robert must be allowed to have his own way, as far as it lies in my power to give it him.
"there is some prospect of an improved and accelerated communication between us and england, and should it be realised by the spring of next year, i will probably bring the boy to england myself, and thus see you once more in this world, which i never had any hope of doing a little while ago.
"my wife does not like, nor, to tell the truth, do i, the notion of a whole year being taken out of our span of life together, which it must be if i make my proposed voyage; but neither does she like the idea of her son travelling alone to a strange country, and commencing his career without the assistance and the comfort of his father's presence and guidance in those important 'first steps.' we shall see, when the time comes, which of these feelings will prevail.
"in the mean time, my dear dugdale, i rely on your friendship, aided by your experience of english life, and all the changes in public opinion and manners which have taken place since my time, to guide me in this matter, to tell me what it will be best for me to do for and with the boy.
"robert is not ill educated, in as far as the limits of our colonial possibilities extend; but his education will aid him little in english life, and towards that his inclinations set.
"turn all i have said over, and write to me concerning it. then, by the time i get home, if i ever get home, and, if i do not, by the time i send my boy home, you will have made up your mind, which, in a matter of this kind will be, as it ought to be, equivalent to making up mine, as to the proper course to be pursued.
"with all his faults, robert will interest you, my dear dugdale, i am certain; in his industry, his ambition, and his adaptive nature you will find something to admire.
"i have almost forgotten the ways of the old country, so completely have i turned--not my mind only, but my heart and my tastes--to the life of the new. i daresay you remember the days in which i was rather a 'buck,' ran heavy accounts with our common tailor, and knew, or pretended to know, a lot about good dinners and wines.
"ask mrs. hungerford what sort of rough and gruff old fellow i am now, and you will understand, from her description, the difficulty i should have in getting into, or even comprehending, the ways of the other side of the world again. but, remembering what i once did know, and thinking of what i have heard and seen since i ceased to know, i think robert is cut out for success in england. mind, he will not have it all to do unaided; he will have a little money, enough to keep him respectable, to back him.
"i feel i am unwise in thus talking to you so much beforehand of robert--time enough when we meet, as i hope we shall do; but i have a notion you might hit upon some plan for him for the future more easily and successfully if you had an idea of the sort of person he is.
"if his mother could see this letter, and recognise the very moderate colours in which i have sketched her eldest son, i don't think i should hear the last of it between this and the date at which i and he are to start for england. i am such a dolt in these matters, i do not rightly know what to ask you to think about, or advise me upon; but you will know generally. shall it be private tuition, or public school, or business life at once combined with education?
"my other boys never give me the least anxiety. i know they will take to the sheep-walk or the counting-house as readily as to their food, and plod on as comfortably and as cheerily as possible. and, indeed, while i am anxious about robert, it would be giving you an unfair impression to say that i am uneasy about him. i am not that; but he is so different a stamp, i hardly know how to manage him.
"i have written all this to you with as much ease and confidence as if we were smoking together in the old quarters, velveteen-coated and slippered, as in the time i remember so well. i wonder if you--who have remained in england, to whom, at all events, life cannot have brought such physical changes as it has brought to me--remember it half so well as i do.
"there are hours even yet, when i am alone and thinking, when all that has intervened seems utterly unreal, and those old days, with their old associations, the one true and living period in my life. do you remember the day after you, poor little shivering youngster as you were then, came to school, when i was a great hulking fellow, and my mother, god bless her! came to visit me, and, being taken by old maddox to see the playground, was just in time to behold me tumble from the very top of the forbidden pear-tree and break my arm?
"i can see her face and hear her voice now, as plainly as if i could see the one and hear the other by going into the next room. and how you cried! well, well, i suppose something of the boy remains until the last in every man's nature, and that more of it has the chance of remaining in our lives here than in yours at home.
"the progress of this place is extraordinary, and there are rumours of discoveries in metals, and so forth, which, if verified, will give it very great impetus. i don't mind them much; they don't disturb and they don't excite me even in this go-ahead colonial life. i carry my old steadiness about with me, and am go-ahead in my own business only.
"there is much in the political and social world here which would interest, but little which would please you, unless you are very much changed.
"i never could arrive at a very clear notion of you from mrs. hungerford; she was not communicative on any point, and she never told me anything about you, except that your health was delicate, which i could have told her from your letter. the sort of life we lead here is certainly calculated to give one the power of feeling acutely for a man to whom bodily exertion is forbidden; but you were always a patient fellow."
the letter was a very long one; the above is but an extract from it. james dugdale had recognised the handwriting of his friend with pleasure, and had opened the letter with delighted eagerness. it would tell him something of margaret; it would give him an insight into the troubles of her life; it would give him a clue to the enigma which lived and moved within his sight and his reach daily.
but his calculations were overthrown; he perceived at once that he was destined to gain no further knowledge of margaret's past life from hayes meredith. the disappointment was so keen that at first he hardly had power to feel the interest in his friend's communication which it was calculated to evoke; and, when he had read half through the letter, he returned to the earlier portion in which margaret was mentioned, and reperused it.
"i wish he had even told me more about hungerford's death," said james dugdale to himself. he was lying on a couch drawn close to the window of his own room, and he allowed the letter to drop by his side, and his gaze fixed itself on the landscape as he spoke. "i wish he had said more about him. what were the circumstances of his death? the little he says here, and one sentence of margaret's--'when i first heard that my husband had been murdered by the black fellows'--comprise all i know--all any one knows--for her father would not mention his name, and i verily believe has forgotten that the man ever existed. i wish he had told me more."
he resumed the letter and read it again, this time through to the end, steadily and attentively.
then he said slowly, and with a despondent shake of the head:
"i am very much afraid my old friend's son, robert, is a bad boy."
james dugdale had not been more than an hour at chayleigh when he had read hayes meredith's letter. his return was unexpected, and he had been told by the servant who admitted him that the "ladies" were out. this was true, inasmuch as neither was in the house, but incorrect in so far as it seemed to imply that they were together.
mrs. carteret had departed in her pony-carriage, arrayed in handsome apparel, the materials and tints whereof were a clever combination of the requirements of the season then expiring and the season just about to begin, with a genteel recognition of the fact that an individual connected with the family had died within a period during which society would exact a costume commemorative of the circumstance. mrs. carteret had gone out, in high good humour with herself, and her dress, and her pony-carriage, with her smart servant, her pretty harness, her visiting-list, and the state of her complexion.
this latter was a subject of unusual self-gratulation, for mrs. carteret's complexion was changeable: it needed care, and, on the whole, it caused her more uneasiness, and occupied more of her attention, than any other mundane object. she was by no means a plain woman, and she had once been pretty--but her prettiness had been of a sunny, commonplace, exasperating, self-complacent kind; and now that it existed no longer, the expression of self-satisfaction was rather increased than lessened, for there was no delicacy of feature and no genuine bloom to divert attention from it.
if mrs. carteret believed anything firmly, it was that she was indisputably and incomparably the best, and very nearly the handsomest, of created beings; and she had a way of talking solemnly about her personal appearance,--taking careful note of its every peculiarity and variation, and bestowing upon it the minutest and most vexatious care,--which was annoying to her friends in general, and to james dugdale in particular.
mrs. carteret was a woman who would be totally unmoved by any kind or degree of human suffering brought under her notice, but who would speak of a cold in her own head, or a pimple on her own face, as a calamity calculated to alarm and grieve the entire circle of her acquaintance. she was almost amusing in her transparent, engrossing, uncontrolled selfishness--amusing, that is, to strangers. it was not so pleasant to those who lived in the house or came into constant contact with her; they failed to perceive the humorous side of her character.
her husband, who, with all his oddity and absence of mind, was not destitute of a degree of tact, in which there was a soup?on of cunning, and which he aired whenever there was any risk of his dearly-prized "quiet life" being endangered, had invented a kind of vocabulary of compliments of simulated solicitude and exaggerated sympathy, which was wonderfully efficacious, and really gave him very little trouble. to be sure he was rather apt to adhere to it with a parrot-like fidelity, and on her "pale days" to congratulate mrs. carteret on her bloom, and on her "dull days" to discover that it was difficult to leave her, she talked so charmingly--"but those new specimens must be seen to," &c. &c.
but these were mere casualties, and, as intense vanity is frequently accompanied by dense stupidity, they never endangered the good understanding between the husband--who was not nearly so tired of his wife as a more clever and practical man must inevitably have been--and the wife, whose wildest imaginings could never have extended to the possibility of any one's finding her less than perfectly admirable, or her husband otherwise than supremely enviable.
in the days when mrs. carteret had been pretty, her prettiness was of the corset-maker's model description, a prettiness which consisted in straight features, a high and well-defined colour, and a figure which required, and could bear, a good deal of tight-lacing.
women did lace tightly in the golden prime of mrs. carteret's days, and she was not behindhand in that or any other fashion; indeed, she had a profound and almost religious respect for fashion, and she had, in consequence, a stiffness of figure suggestive of her being obliged to turn round "all at once" when it was necessary for her to turn at all, which gave her whole person an air and attitude of stiff and starched stupidity, highly provoking to an observer endowed with taste.
the paying of morning visits was an occupation especially congenial to mrs. carteret's taste, and well suited to her intellectual capacity, which answered freely to the demand made on it on such occasions. she was not by any means a vulgar gossip, but she possessed a satisfactory enough knowledge of the affairs and "ways" of all the "visitable" people within reach, and she found discussing them a very agreeable pastime.
she was not so stupid a woman as to be unaware that she and her affairs were discussed in their turn; but her invariable conviction that, in all respects, she was a faultless being, rendered the knowledge painless.
thus, when mrs. carteret set out on a round of visits, in the aforesaid equipage and in her customary choice apparel, she was as happy as it was in her not expansive nature to be.
all the happier that margaret did not accompany her, for, though margaret's heavy mourning dress was not a bad foil to the taste and elegance, as she believed, of her own, people were apt to be too much interested in, too curious about, the young widow--always rather an interesting object--for the fancy of mrs. carteret, who did not admire her stepdaughter herself, and to whom it was neither intelligible nor pleasant that other people should admire her.
as to lady davyntry and mr. baldwin (for she had been forced to include the brother with the sister in the category of margaret's friends), she had, as we have seen, resolved to find her account in that intimacy, and she did not trouble herself about it.
at the same hour in which mrs. carteret was giving way to her self-complacent sentiments, margaret was taking leave of lady davyntry. she had been at davyntry since the morning, and was then going home. mr. baldwin was ready, according to his now almost invariable custom, to offer her his escort.
it was quite the end of october, a soft, shadowy, beautiful day, the air full of the faint perfume of the fallen leaves and of the golden gleam of the sunshine, which lingered as if regretfully. lady davyntry accompanied margaret to the little garden-gate which opened into the demesne, and then took leave of her.
when her friend and her brother had left her, she stood for a few minutes looking after them, then walked up the garden-path, saying to herself:
"i hope i shall be able to hold my tongue about it, and not spoil all by letting her see that such an idea has ever entered into my head!"
in many respects lady davyntry was a sensible woman.
margaret and her companion went on their way, slowly. they were talking of a projected journey on the part of mr. baldwin. he was going to visit his scotch estates.
"i have not been much there," he said; "my time has mostly been passed abroad. my longest stay at the deane was when poor nelly was there with sir richard; and, of course, i can't expect her to go back to the scene of all her trouble so soon; so i must go alone."
"can't you?" said margaret, with a sudden flush on her cheek; "i should have thought it would have been her greatest, her best consolation. but people feel so differently," she said absently; and then made some remark about the beauty of the day. her companion wondered at her strange manner. he took the hint to change the subject.
"shall you be long away?" margaret asked him.
he would have been only too happy to tell her that the duration of his absence would depend entirely on her pleasure--to tell her what was the truth, that he was leaving her now because he loved her, and hoped the day might come when he might try to make her love him; when respect for her position should no longer bind him to silence.
he felt he could not remain in her vicinity during the time that must elapse before he could venture to acknowledge his feelings, without the risk of offending her, perhaps losing her by their premature betrayal, and he had determined to go to scotland and remain there until the time should be near when she thought of leaving chayleigh.
then he would return and take his chance. if she would accept the love, the home, the fortune he had to offer her, he almost dreaded to think what happiness life---which had never been adorned with any very brilliant hues of imagination by him before--would have in store for him.
when she asked him, in her clear, sweet voice, whose tones were to-day as pure and untroubled as if she had never spoken any words but those of the gladness which should so well have beseemed her youth, that careless question, he felt all the difficulty of the restraint he had imposed upon himself.
"i am not quite certain," he replied; "i daresay i shall find a great deal to do at the deane, and a good deal will be expected from me in the way of sociability--a tribute, by the way, which i render very unwillingly. i--i suppose you will not leave chayleigh this winter?"
"i don't think my father has any intention of going anywhere," margaret said; "and i shall remain with him until i leave him 'for good;'--as people say when they leave for the equal chance of good or evil. i believe, too, there is a chance of my brother's coming home."
"indeed," said mr. baldwin; "that is good news. i didn't hear anything of it."
"no. i told lady davyntry this evening, before you came in. i should like to be here when haldane comes"--and her face was overcast by the mournful, musing expression he knew and loved so well. "he and i quarrelled before he went away--but i suppose he will not keep that up with me now."
she looked round with a forlorn kind of smile actually painful to see. in it there was an appeal to the dreariness of her lot, to the terrible blight which had settled on her youth, against harsh judgment of the wilfulness and folly which had led her to such a doom, inexpressibly affecting.
the strong restraint, the habitual patience which she maintained over all her emotions, seemed to forsake her quite suddenly. her companion might have taken it as a good omen for him that it was in his company alone the control was loosened; but he did not think of himself, only of her.
the forlorn smile was succeeded by an ominous twitching of the lips, and the next moment margaret had covered her face with her hands and burst into tears.
mr. baldwin watched her with inexpressible pangs of love and pity. he dared not speak. what could he say? he knew nothing, though he could surmise much, of the past which had given rise to this burst of emotion.
to try to console, was to seem to question her. he stood by her in the keenest distress, and could only entreat her to remember that it was all over now. the paroxysm passed over as he uttered the words for the second time.
margaret took her hands away from her face, and looked at him, and there was an angry sparkle in her eye which he had never seen before, but which he thought very beautiful.
"you don't believe what you say," she said quickly, and walking on hurriedly as she spoke; "you don't believe what you say. you know there are things in life which are never over--sorrows and experiences which time can never change. when you say to me that it is all over now, you say what is not true, and you know it, or you guess it; you might know it if you would. do you think i am like other women, like your sister, for instance, with nothing but pure and sanctifying grief for the dead, to ripen my mind? do you think i am like her, or like any other woman, whose quiet life, however sad, has been led in decency, and has been sheltered and guarded by the protections which may be found in honest poverty? do you think i can come home here, and find myself once more among the people and places i knew when i was a girl, and not feel like a cheat? i tell you the past is not all over; it will stand as long as i live between me and other people--not my employers, for there will be no associations in their case; but every one who knew me once, and who knows me now. why does no one speak to me, in even a casual way, of the places i have seen, or the people i have been amongst? do you think i imagine it is because they are unwilling to awaken a slumbering sorrow? no! you know, and i know, it is because they feel that i have seen sights unfit for women's eyes, and heard words unfit for women's ears; and can i ever forget it while others remember it whenever they see me? no, no, no! i never, never can!"
she pressed her small hands together and slightly wrung them; a gesture habitual to her in distress, but which he had never seen before. he caught her right hand in his, and drew it within his arm. she walked on with him, but was, as he knew, almost unconscious of his presence.
how he loved her! how he hated the dead man who had caused her to suffer thus! a young man himself, and she no more than a girl; and yet how little of the aspect, how little of the sense of youth there was about either as they walked together through the woods and fields that day!
this sudden revelation of margaret's feelings brought a sense of despair to fitzwilliam baldwin. if the spectre of the past haunted her thus, if she were divided from all the present by this drear shade, then was she divided from him too.
how should he hope to lay the ghost which thus walked abroad in the noonday beside her? had he had a little more experience, had not margaret been so completely a new type of womanhood to him, had he had a little less humility, he would have taken courage from the fact that she had given utterance to such feelings before him.
that he had seen margaret as no other human being had ever seen her, ought to have been an indication to him that, however unconsciously to her, he was to margaret what no other human being was. the time was to come in which he was to make that discovery; but that time was not yet, and he left her that day with profound discouragement.
she recovered herself after a little, and when they reached the confines of the demesne of chayleigh they were talking in their ordinary manner of ordinary subjects, but margaret's arm still rested on that of her companion, nor was it removed until they reached the little gate between the wood and the pleasaunce.
as they crossed the lawn, margaret's dress swept the fallen leaves rustling after her. she was very near the house now, and the sound caught james dugdale's ear as he lay on his couch in the window. he raised himself on his elbow and looked out. the letter from hayes meredith was still in his hand. margaret looked up and greeted him with a smile.
the next moment she was in the verandah, and he heard her laugh as she spoke to her father. her voice thrilled his heart as it had done on the first day of her return. her laugh had something like the old sound in it, which he had not heard since she was a girl. good god! how long ago! she was looking better than when he went away. she was happy again in her old home.
he went downstairs, and they had a pleasant meeting. margaret was kindly interested in his oxford news. mr. baldwin and mr. carteret talked together. james and margaret remained in the verandah until after mr. baldwin had taken his leave, and the sharp trot of mrs. carteret's ponies was audible. then margaret said:
"i must go and get ready for dinner."
and james detained her for a moment, saying:
"i have a letter which will interest you. it is from a friend of yours."
"a friend of mine?" said margaret, in surprise. "who can it be? i have but two or three friends in the world."
"a cynic would tell you you were exceptionally rich in friends, according to that calculation. how do you count them?"
"yourself," said margaret, with more frank kindness of tone than he had ever before recognised in her manner towards him.
"après?"
"well, lady davyntry."
"and hayes meredith? that is it, is it not? the letter is from him. you shall hear all about it, after dinner."
margaret left him and went to her room. she felt rather vexed with herself. when she answered james dugdale's question, she had not been thinking of hayes meredith.
