 
Transcriber's Note:
A RIGHTED WRONG.
A RIGHTED WRONG.A Novel.
BYEDMUND YATES,AUTHOR OF | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
CONTENTS OF VOL. II. | |
| CHAP. | |
| I. | Day. |
| II. | Full Compensation. |
| III. | Three Letters. |
| IV. | Hayes Meredith's Revelation. |
| V. | Consultation. |
| VI. | The Return. |
| VII. | The Marriage. |
| VIII. | Shadows. |
| IX. | Family Affairs. |
| X. | Margaret's Presentiment. |
| XI. | After a Year. |
A RIGHTED WRONG.
CHAPTER I.
DAY.
It will probably be entirely unnecessary to inform the intelligent reader what was the nature of the contents of the letter which James Dugdale had handed to Mrs. Hungerford. Retrospect, present knowledge, or anticipation will convey a sufficiently accurate perception of it to all the readers of this story.
The writing of that letter was the result of a long and entirely unreserved conversation which had taken place between Lady Davyntry and her brother, after the last-recorded interview between the former and Margaret.
So entirely confident was Eleanor of Mr. Baldwin's feelings and intentions, that she no longer hesitated to speak to him on the matter nearest her heart from any apprehension of defeating her own purpose by precipitation.
In the doubts and fears, in the passionate and painful burst of reminiscence which had given her added insight into Margaret's nature. Lady Davyntry had seen, far more plainly than Margaret,--or at least than ever she had confessed to herself,--that a new love, a fresh hope, had come to her. The very strife of feeling which she confessed and described betrayed her to the older woman, whose wisdom, though rather of the heart than of the understanding, was true in this case.
"It will never do to let her brood over this sort of thing," said Lady Davyntry to herself with decision. "The more time she has to think over it, the more danger there is of her working herself up into a morbid state of mind, persuading herself that she ought to sacrifice her own happiness, and make Fitz wretched, because she had the misfortune to be married to a villain, and associated, through him, with some very bad people--the more she will tax her memory and torture her feelings, by trying to recall and realise all the past. I can see that nature and her youth are helping her to forget it all, and would do so, no doubt, if Fitz never existed; but she is trying to resist the influence of nature, and to train herself to a state of mind which is simply ruinous and absurd."
So Lady Davyntry spoke to her brother that evening, and had the satisfaction of finding that she had acted wisely in so doing. '"Don't speak to her, Fitz," she said, towards the conclusion of their conversation; "don't give her the chance of being impelled by such feelings as she has acknowledged to me, to say no,--let her have time to think about it."
It was a position in which few men would have failed to look silly, that of talking over a love affair, in the ante-proposal stage, with a sister. But Mr. Baldwin was one of those men who never can be made to look silly, who have about them an inborn dignity and entire singleness of purpose which are effectual preservatives against the faintest touch of the ridiculous in their words or actions.
He had spoken frankly of his hopes, and of his grounds for entertaining them, but the account his sister gave of Margaret's state of mind troubled him sorely. Here Lady Davyntry again proved her possession of sounder sense than many who knew her only slightly would have believed she possessed.
"It won't last," she assured her brother; "it is a false, phantasmal state of feeling, and though it might grow more and more strong if nothing were opposed to it, it will disappear before a true and powerful feeling--rely upon it she will wonder at herself some day, and be hardly able to realise that she ever gave way to this sort of thing."
Mr. Baldwin wrote the letter, the answer to which was to mean so much to him; and Lady Davyntry enclosed it in a cover directed by herself.
"I don't think my darling Margaret can have much doubt about how I should regard this affair," she said, as she sealed the envelope with such a lavish use of sealing wax in the enthusiasm of the moment, that it swelled up all round the seal like liliputian pie-crust; "but whatever she may have teased herself with fancying, she will know it is all right when she sees that I enclose your letter. Some women might take it into their heads to be annoyed because you had spoken to another person of your feelings; but Margaret is too high-minded for anything of that sort, and, rely upon it, she will be none the less happy, if she promises to become your wife, that she will make me as happy in proportion as yourself by the promise."
At this stage, the impulsive Eleanor gave vent to her emotion by hugging her brother heartily, and accompanying the embrace with a shower of tears.
Margaret remained where James Dugdale had left her standing with Mr. Baldwin's letter in her hand. She did not break the seal, she did not move, for several minutes,--then she picked up Lady Davyntry's envelope, which had fluttered to the ground, and went into the house.
Any one not so innocently absentminded as Mr. Carteret, or so cheerfully full of harmless self-content of youth, health, and unaccustomed leisure as Haldane Carteret, could hardly have failed to notice that there was something strange in the looks and manner of two of the little party who sat down that day to the dinner table at Chayleigh, shorn of much of its formality since Mrs. Carteret had ceased to preside over it.
Margaret was paler than usual, but not with the pallor of ill-health--the clear skin had no sallowness in its tint.
To one accustomed to read the countenance which had acquired of late so much new expression, and such a softening of the old one, the indication of strong emotion would have been plain, in the pale cheek, the lustrous, downcast eye, the occasional trembling of the small lips, the absent, preoccupied gaze, the sudden recall of her attention to the present scene, the forced smile when her father spoke to her, and the unusual absence of interest and pleasure in Haldane's jokes, which were sometimes good, but always numerous.
James Dugdale sat at the table, quite silent, and did not even make any attempt to eat. Margaret, with the superior powers of hypocrisy observable in the female, affected, unnecessarily, to have a very good appetite. The meal was a painful probation for them.
It was so far from unusual for James to be ill and depressed, that when Haldane had commented upon his silence and his want of appetite in his usual off-hand fashion, and Mr. Carteret had lamented those misfortunes, and digressed into speculation whether James had not better have his dinner just before going to bed, because wild beasts gorge themselves with food, and go to sleep immediately afterwards,--no further notice was taken.
It never occurred to Mr. Carteret or to Haldane that anything except illness could ail James. Neither did it occur to one or the other to notice that Margaret, usually so observant of James, so kind in her attention to him, so sympathetic, who understood his "good days" and his "bad days" so well, did not make the slightest remark herself, and suffered theirs to pass without comment.
She never once addressed James during dinner, nor did her glance encounter his. Why?
It had been Margaret's custom of late to sit with her father in his study during the evening. Mr. Carteret and she would adjourn thither immediately after dinner, and James and Haldane usually joined them after a while.
Margaret did not depart from her usual practice on this particular evening, but she was not inclined to talk to her father. She settled him into his particular chair, in his inevitable corner, and began to read aloud to him, with more than her usual promptness.
But somehow the reading was not successful, her voice was husky and uncertain, and her inattention so obvious that it soon became infectious, and Mr. Carteret found the effort of listening beyond him. An unusually prolonged and unmistakable yawn, for which he hastened to apologise, made the fact evident to Margaret.
"I think we are both disinclined for reading to-night, papa," she said as she laid aside her book, and took a low seat by her father's side. "We will talk now for a while."
"Very well, my dear," said the acquiescent Mr. Carteret. But Margaret did not seem inclined to follow up her own proposition actively. She sat still, dreamily silent, and her fingers played idly with the fringe which bordered the chintz cover of her father's chair. At length she said:
"Papa, what do you think of Mr. Baldwin?"
"What do I think of Mr. Baldwin, my dear?" repeated Mr. Carteret slowly. "I think very highly of him indeed: a most accomplished young man I consider him, and excessively obliging, I'm sure. I don't flatter myself, you know, Margaret, with any notion that I am a particularly delightful companion for any one; indeed, since our great loss, I am best alone I think, or with you--with you, my dear," and her father patted Margaret's head just as he had been used to pat it when she was a little child; "and still, he seems to like being with me, and takes the greatest interest in my collection. Excessively liberal he is, too, and I can assure you very few collectors, however rich they may be, are that. He has shared his magnificent specimens of lepidoptera with me, and I have not another friend in the world who would do that. Think of him?" said Mr. Carteret again, returning to Margaret's question. "I think most highly of him. But why do you ask me? Don't you think well of him yourself?"
Margaret looked up hastily, dropped her eyes again, and said:
"O yes, papa; I--I do, indeed; but I wanted to ask you, because----" A quick tapping at the window interrupted her. Haldane stood outside, and his sister left her seat and went to him.
"Come out for a walk, Madge," he said. "James is queer this evening, and says he will just give the governor half-an-hour, and then go to bed. You don't want them both, do you, sir?" Haldane asked the question with his head inside, and his body outside the window. "I thought not. Here's James now." At that moment Mr. Dugdale entered the room. "Come on; you can get your bonnet and shawl; the door is open."
Margaret had not turned her face from the window, and she now stepped out into the verandah. She had not seen the expression on James Dugdale's face. Instinct caused her to avoid him. She had not yet faced the subject in her own mind, she had not yet reckoned with herself about it.
"Has she written to him? Is he coming here? How is it?"
These were the questions which repeated themselves in James's brain, as he tried to talk to Mr. Carteret, and tried not to follow the footsteps of the woman whose way was daily deviating more and more widely from his.
The brother and sister walked down the terrace, and into the pleasaunce together.
Haldane had been exposed to the fascinations of the eldest Miss Crofton for the last ten days or so, and, being rather defenceless under such circumstances, though not, as he said of himself, "lady's man," he was very likely to capitulate, unless some providential occurrence furnished him with a change of occupation, and thus diverted his mind.
At present the eldest Miss Crofton--her papa, her mamma, her little brother, a wonderfully clever child, and particularly fond of being "taken round the lawn" on Haldane's horse, with only Haldane on one side and his sister on the other to hold him on--her housekeeping science, and her equestrian feats, afforded Haldane topics of conversation of which Margaret showed no weariness. Her attention certainly did wander a little, but Haldane did not perceive it.
They had passed through the gate into the fields which bordered on Davyntry, and Haldane had just pleaded for a little more time out, the evening was so beautiful--adding his conviction that every woman in the world was greedy about her tea, and that Margaret would not be half so pale if she drank less of that pernicious decoction--when she started so violently that he could not fail to perceive it.
"What's the matter? he asked, in surprise.
"Nothing," said Margaret. "There's--there's some one coming."
"So there is," said Haldane, looking at a figure advancing quickly towards them from the direction of Davyntry; "and it is Baldwin."
The blood rushed violently into Margaret's cheeks, her feet were rooted to the ground for a moment, as she felt the whole scene around her grow indistinct; the next, she was meeting Mr. Baldwin with composure which far surpassed his own, and in the first glance of her candid eyes, which looked up at him shyly, but entirely with their owner's will, he read the answer to his letter.
"If you will take Margaret home to this important and ever-recurring tea, Baldwin," said Haldane Carteret, "I will go on a little farther, and smoke my cigar."
He went away from them quickly, and saying to himself, "It is to be, I think."
CHAPTER II.
FULL COMPENSATION.
It did not fall to Margaret Hungerford's lot to resume the topic of her interrupted conversation with her father. Mr. Baldwin took that upon himself, and so sped in his mission, that the old gentleman declared himself happier than he had ever been in his life before; and then, suddenly and remorsefully reminiscent of his late domestic affliction, he added, "If only poor Sibylla were here with us to share all this good fortune!" An aspiration which Mr. Baldwin could have found it in his heart to echo, so full was that heart of joy.
In the love of this man for Margaret there was so much of generous kindness, such an intense desire to fill her life with a full and compensating happiness, to efface the past utterly, and give her in the present all that the heart of the most exacting woman could covet, that he regarded his success with more than the natural and customary exultation of a lover to whom "yes" has been said or rather implied. That Margaret realised, or indeed understood, even in its broad outlines, the alteration in the external circumstances of her life which her becoming his wife would effect, he did not imagine; and he exulted to an extent which he would hitherto have believed impossible in the knowledge that he could give her wealth and position only inferior to his love.
Beyond a vague understanding that Mr. Baldwin was a very rich man for a commoner, and that, as the property was entailed on heirs general, Lady Davyntry would have it in the event of his dying childless, Mr. Carteret had no clear notions about the position in which his daughter's second marriage would place her, and Mr. Baldwin's explanations rather puzzled and confounded the worthy gentleman. He had shrunk as much as possible from realising to himself the circumstances of Margaret's life in Australia, the disastrous experiences of her first marriage, and he now showed his dread of them chiefly by the complacency, the delight with which he dwelt upon the happiness which he anticipated for her in the society of Mr. Baldwin, so accomplished a man, so perfect a gentleman, and withal such a lover of natural history. He was not disposed to take other matters deeply into consideration, and it was chiefly Haldane with whom the preliminaries of the marriage, which was to take place soon, and with as little stir or parade as possible, were discussed. The young man's exultation was extreme. He expressed his feelings pretty freely, after his usual fashion, to everybody; but he reserved the full flow of his delight for James Dugdale's special edification.
"It isn't the correct thing to talk to Baldwin about, of course," he said one day; "but I find it very hard to hold my tongue, when I think of that ruffian Hungerford, and that it was through me she first saw him, and got the chance of bringing misery on herself I long to tell Baldwin all about him. But it wouldn't do. I wonder if he knows much concerning him."
"Nothing, I should say," returned James shortly,--he never could be induced to say much when the topic of Margaret and her lover was in any way under discussion,--but the unsuspecting Haldane, in whose eyes James Dugdale, though a more interesting companion, was a contemporary of his father, and in the "fogey" category, did not notice this reluctance.
"Well, I suppose not," said Haldane musingly. "It's a pity; for he would understand what we all think about him, if he did; and I don't see how he is to realise that otherwise."
"Margaret will teach him how he is estimated," said James sadly.
"I hope so," was Haldane's hearty and emphatic reply. "By Jove! it's a wonderful thing, when you come to think of it, that anybody should have things made up to them so completely as Madge is going to have them made up. I don't mean only his money, you know. I wonder how she will get on in Scotland, how she will play her part among the people there. I daresay Baldwin's neighbours will not like her much; I suppose the mothers in that part of the world looked upon him as their natural prey."
"I don't know about that," said James, "but I fancy Margaret will be quite able to hold her own wherever she may go; she is the sort of woman who may be safely trusted with wealth and station."
This was by no means the only conversation which took place between the ex-tutor and the ex-pupil on the subject then engrossing; the attention of the families at Davyntry and Chayleigh; Haldane's exuberant delight was apt to communicate itself after a similar fashion very frequently, and altogether he subjected his friend just then to a not inconsiderable amount of pain.
During the few weeks which intervened before the period named, very shortly after their engagement, for the marriage of Margaret Hungerford and Fitzwilliam Baldwin, there was no approach on Margaret's part to any confidential intercourse with James Dugdale. By tacit mutual consent they avoided each other, and yet she never so wronged in her thoughts the man who loved her with so disinterested a love, as to believe him alienated from her, jealous of the good fortune of another, or grudging to her of the happiness which was to be hers.
In the experience of her own feelings, in the engrossment of her own heart and thoughts in the new and roseate prospects which had opened suddenly before her, after her long wandering in dreary ways, she had learned to comprehend James Dugdale. She knew now how patiently and constantly he had loved and still loved her; she knew now what had given him a prescient knowledge of her former self-sought doom; she knew what had inspired the efforts he had made to avert it from her. Inexpressible kindness and pity for him, painful gratitude towards this man whom she never could have loved, filled Margaret's heart; but she kept aloof from him. Explanation between them there could not be--it would be equally bad for both. He who had so striven to avert her misery would be consoled by her perfect happiness; in the time to come, the blessed peaceful time, he should share it.
So she and James lived in the usual close relation, and Mr. Carteret and Haldane talked freely of the coming event, of the splendid prospects opening before Margaret; but never a word was spoken directly between the two.
A strongly appreciative friendship had sprung up between Mr. Baldwin and James Dugdale. The elder man regarded the younger without one feeling of envy of the good looks, the good health, the physical activity,--in all which he was himself deficient,--but with a thorough comprehension of the difference between them which they constituted, and an almost womanish admiration of one so richly dowered by nature.
Since Mr. Baldwin's engagement to Margaret,--though James had loyally forced himself to utter the congratulations of whose truth and meaning none could form a truer estimate than he,--there had been little intercourse between them. Mr. Baldwin now claimed Margaret as his chief companion during his daily and lengthy visits to Chayleigh; and she, with all a woman's tact and instinctive delicacy, quietly aided the unobserved severance between himself and James, of which her lover was wholly unconscious.
So the time--a time of such exceeding and incredible happiness to Margaret, that not all her previous experience of the delusions of life could avail to check the avidity with which she enjoyed every hour of it, and listened with greedy ears to every promise and protestation for the future--went on.
On one point only she found she was not to have her own wishes carried out, wishes shared to the utmost by Mr. Baldwin. Her father did not take kindly to the idea of leaving Chayleigh. His reasons were amusingly characteristic.
"You see, my dear," he said, when the matter had been urged upon him, with every kind of plea and prayer by Margaret, and with respectful earnestness by Mr. Baldwin, "I should never feel quite myself, I should never feel quite comfortable away from my collection. You, my dear Margaret, never had any great taste in that way, and of course you don't understand it; but there's Baldwin, now. You wouldn't like to part with your collection, would you? You have a great many other reasons for liking the Deane, of course, besides that; but considering only that, you would not like it?"
"Good heavens, sir!" exclaimed Mr. Baldwin, "how could you imagine such a thing as that we ever dreamed of parting you and your collection? Why, we should as soon have thought of asking you to leave your arms or legs after you. Of course you'll move your collection to the Deane; there's room for a dozen of the size."
Mr. Carteret was a little put out, not exactly annoyed, but gÊnÉ; and Margaret, who understood him perfectly, stopped her lover's flow of protestation and proposal by a look, and they soon left him to himself; whereupon Mr. Carteret immediately summoned James, and imparted to him the nature of the conversation which had just taken place.
"Baldwin is the very best fellow in the world, James," said the old gentleman in a confidential tone; "but, between you and me, we collectors and lovers of natural history are rather odd in our ways; we have our little peculiarities, and our little jealousies, and our little envies. You know I would not deny Baldwin's good qualities; and he has been very generous too in giving me specimens; but I have a kind of notion, for all that, that he would have no objection to my collection finding its way to the Deane."
Here Mr. Carteret looked at James Dugdale, as if he had made a surprisingly deep discovery; and James Dugdale had considerable difficulty in concealing his amusement.
"Now you can, I am sure, quite understand that, however I may appreciate Baldwin, I have no fancy for seeing my collection, after working at it all these years, merged in another--merged, my dear James!"
And Mr. Carteret's tone grew positively irate, while he tapped Dugdale's arm impatiently with his long fingers.
"But, sir," said James, "I quite understand all that; but how about parting with Margaret? If she is to be at the Deane, hadn't you better be there also? She is of more importance to you than even your collection, is she not?"
"Well, yes, in a certain sense," said the old gentleman, rather dubiously and reluctantly; "in a certain sense, of course she is; but, then, I can go to the Deane when I like, and she can come here when she likes; and so long as I know she is happy (and she cannot fail to be happy this time), I don't so much mind. But I really could not part with my collection; and if it were moved and merged, I should feel I had parted with it. No, no, Margery and Baldwin will be great companions for each other, and they will do very well without us, James; we will just stay quietly here in the old place, and I am sure Haldane will undertake not to move my collection when I am gone."
Immediately after this conversation, Mr. Carteret applied himself with great assiduity to the precious pursuit which, in the great interest of the domestic discussions then pending, he had somewhat neglected, and showed his jealous zeal for his beloved specimens by a thousand little indications which Margaret perceived, and which she interpreted to Mr. Baldwin, very much to his amusement.
"Haldane," said James Dugdale to Captain Carteret, "I think you had better give Margaret a hint that she had better not urge her father's leaving Chayleigh; depend upon it, he will never consent, except it be very much against his will; and if she presses him, she will only run the risk of making him like Baldwin very much less than he does at present."
"You are quite right," said Haldane, who was busily engaged in mending the eldest Miss Crofton's riding-whip; "but why don't you tell her so yourself?"
James was rather embarrassed by the question; but he said, "It would come better from you."
"Would it? I don't see it. However, I don't mind. I'll speak to her. All right."
Haldane did speak to Margaret; and she acquiesced in James's opinion, and conformed to his advice. The subject dropped, and Mr. Carteret entirely recovered his spirits. Haldane had another little matter to negotiate with his sister, in which he was not so successful. He knew the wedding was to be very quiet indeed; but everybody either then knew, or soon would know, that such an event was in contemplation; and he could not see that it could make any difference to Margaret just to have the eldest Miss Crofton for her bridesmaid. He could assure his sister the eldest, "Lucy, you know," was "an extremely nice girl," and her admiration of Margaret quite enthusiastic.
Margaret was quite sure Lucy Crofton was a very nice girl indeed; and she would have her for her bridesmaid, had she any intention of indulging in such an accessory, but she had none; and Haldane (of course men did not understand such matters) had not reflected that to invite Miss Lucy in such a capacity must imply inviting all her family as spectators, and entail the undying enmity of the "neighbourhood" at their exclusion.
"O, hang it, Madge," said Haldane in impatient disdain of this reasoning, "we are not people of such importance that the neighbourhood need kick up a row because we are married or buried without their assistance."
"We are not," said Margaret gently, "but Fitzwilliam is; and don't you suppose, you dear stupid boy, that there are plenty of people to envy me my good fortune, of which they only know the flimsy surface, and to find me guilty of all sorts of insolences that I never dreamt of, if they only get the chance?"
"I never thought of that. You're quite right, after all, Madge," said Haldane ruefully.
"There's a good deal you have never thought of, and which my life has made plain to me," said Margaret; and then she added in a lower tone, "Can you not understand, Hal, how terribly trying my wedding will be to me, how many painful thoughts it must bring me? Can you not see that I must wish to get through it as quietly as possible?"
This was the first word of reference, however distant, to the past which her brother had heard from Margaret's lips; this was the first time he had ever seen the hard, lowering, stern, self-despising look upon her face, which had been familiar to all the other dwellers at Chayleigh before his return, and before she had accepted her new life and hope.
She looked gloomily out over the prospect as she spoke. She and Haldane were walking together, and were just then opposite to the beeches. She caught Haldane's arm, and turned him sharply round, then walked rapidly away from the spot.
"What's the matter?" said her brother. He felt what she had just said deeply, notwithstanding his insouciance. "What are you walking so fast for? You look as if you saw a ghost!"
"What, in the daylight, Hal?" said Margaret with a forced laugh. "No, we are rather late; let us go in."
The pleasure of Lady Davyntry in the perfect success of all her most cherished wishes would have been delightful to witness to any observer of a philosophic tendency. It is so rarely that any one is happy and grateful in proportion to one's anxiety and effort. Such purely disinterested pleasure as was hers is not frequently desired or enjoyed.
"If anybody had told me I could ever feel so happy again in a world which my Richard has left, I certainly would not have believed them," said Eleanor, as Margaret strove to thank her for the welcome she gave her to the proud and happy position soon to be hers; "and you would hardly believe me, Madge, if I were to tell you how short a time after the day I tried to make Fitz spy you through the glass there, and he was much too proper and genteel to do anything of the kind, I began to look forward to this happy event."
To do Lady Davyntry justice, it was some time before she admitted minor considerations in support of her vast and intense satisfaction; it was actually twenty-four hours after her brother had informed her that Margaret had accepted him, when she found herself saying aloud, in the gladness of her heart and the privacy of her own room, "How delightful it is to think that now there is no danger of his marrying a Scotchwoman! How savage Jessie MacAlpine will be!"
The dew was shining on the grass and the flowers, the birds had hardly begun their morning hymn, on a morning in the gorgeous month of June, when Margaret Hungerford, wrapped in a white dressing-gown, and leaning out of the passion-flower-framed window of her room, looked out towards the woods of Davyntry. The tall, fantastic, twisted chimneys and turrets, rich with the deep red of the old brickwork, showed through the leaf-laden trees. Margaret's pale, clear, spiritual face was turned towards them, her hands were clasped upon the window-sill; she leaned more forward still, and her long hair was stirred by the light wind.
"The one only thing he asks me for his sake," she murmured; "but O, how difficult, how impossible, never to look back, never voluntarily to look back upon the past again! To live for the present and the future, to live only in his life, as he lives only in mine. Ah, that is easy for him, or at least easier; and it may be so--but for me, for me." She swayed her slight figure to and fro, and wrung her hands. It was long since the gesture had ceased to be habitual now. "I will try, I will keep my word to you, in all honest intention at least, my darling, my love, my husband!" She slightly waved one hand towards the woods, and a beautiful flush spread itself over her face. "I will turn all my heart for ever from the past, if any effort of my will can do it, and live in your life only."
A few hours later, the quietest wedding that had ever been known in that part of the country took place in the parish church of Chayleigh, very much to the dissatisfaction of the few spectators who had had sufficient good fortune to be correctly informed of the early hour appointed for the ceremony.
"Gray silk, my dear, and a chip bonnet, as plain as you please," said Miss Laughton, the village dressmaker, to Miss Harland, the village milliner. "I should like to know what poor Mrs. Carteret, that's dead and gone, but had as genteel a taste in dress as ever I knew, would say to such a set-out as that."
"I expect, Jemima," replied Miss Harland, who had a strong dash of spite in her composition, and felt herself aggrieved at the loss of Mrs. Hungerford's modest custom in the article of widow's caps--"I expect madam would not have caught Mr. Baldwin easy, if Mrs. Carteret was alive; and gray silk and chip is good enough for her. I wonder what she wore at her wedding, when she ran away with Mr. Hungerford--which he was a gay chap, whatever they had to say against him."
In these days, the avoidance of festive proceedings on the occasion of a marriage is not unusual; but when Margaret was married, that the bride and bridegroom should drive away from the church-door was an almost unheard-of proceeding. Nevertheless, Mr. Baldwin and Margaret departed after that fashion; and Lady Davyntry only returned to Chayleigh to console Mr. Carteret, who really did not seem to need consolation.
A few days later, as Margaret and her husband were strolling arm-in-arm in the evening along the sea-shore of a then almost unknown village in South Wales,--now a prosperous and consequently intolerable "watering-place,"--Mr. Baldwin said to her--they had been talking of some letters he had had from his steward:
"I wonder if you have any doubts in your mind about liking the Deane, Margaret. I am longing to see you there, to watch you making acquaintance with the place, taking your throne in your own kingdom."
"And I," she said with a smile and a wistful look in her gray eyes, "sometimes think that when I am there I shall feel like Lady Burleigh."
CHAPTER III.
THREE LETTERS.
Eighteen months had elapsed since the marriage of Fitzwilliam Baldwin and Margaret Hungerford,--a period which had brought about few changes at Chayleigh, beyond the departure, at an early stage of its duration, of Haldane Carteret to join his regiment, and which had been productive of only one event of importance. The eldest Miss Crofton had terminated at her leisure, after Margaret's departure, the capture of the young captain, as he was called by a courteous anticipation of the natural course of events, and there was every reason to suppose that the ensuing year would witness a second wedding from Chayleigh, in the parish church, which should be by no means obnoxious to public sentiment, on the score of quiet, if the eldest Miss Crofton should have her own way, which, indeed, the fair Lucy generally contrived to procure in every affair in which she was interested.
Her parents entirely approved of the engagement. She had no fortune, and Haldane's prospective independence was certain. It was a very nice thing for her to be wife to the future Mr. Carteret of Chayleigh, and almost a nicer thing for her to be sister-in-law to Mrs. Meriton Baldwin of the Deane.
Margaret had become a wonderfully important personage in the neighbourhood she had left. Every particular of her household, every item of her expenditure, and--when she stayed a month at her father's house after her little daughter's birth, prior to going abroad for an indefinite period, now more than six months ago,--every article of her dress, was a subject of discussion and interest to people who had taken no particular notice of her in her previous stages of existence. The eldest Miss Crofton had a little ovation when she returned from a visit to the Deane, and simple Mr. Carteret was surprised to find how many friends he was possessed of, how many inquirers were unwearyingly anxious to learn the latest news of "dear Mrs. Baldwin."
The quiet household at Chayleigh pursued its usual routine course, and little change had come to the two men, the one old, the other now elderly, who were its chief members. Of that little, the greater portion had fallen to the share of James Dugdale. His always bent and twisted figure was now more bent and twisted, his hair was grayer and scantier, his eyes were more hollow, his face was more worn, his quiet manner quieter, his rare smile more seldom seen. Any one familiar with his appearance eighteen months before, who had seen him enter the cheerful breakfast-room at Chayleigh one bright winter's morning, when Christmas-day was but a week off, would have found it difficult to believe that the interval had been so short.
James Dugdale stood by the fire for a few minutes, then glancing round at the breakfast-table, he muttered, "The post is not in--behind time--the snow, I suppose," and went to the large window, against which he leaned, idly watching the birds as they hopped about on the snow-laden ground, and extracted bits of leaves and dry morsels of twig from its niggard breast. He was still standing there when Mr. Carteret came in, closely followed by a servant with a small tray laden with letters, which he duly sorted and placed before their respective claimants.
There was a large foreign letter among those addressed to James Dugdale, but he let it lie beside his plate unnoticed; all his attention was for the letter which Mr. Carteret was deciphering with laborious difficulty.
"From Margaret," said the old gentleman at length, taking off his double glasses with an air of relief, and laying them on the table. "She does write such a scratchy hand, it quite makes my head ache to read it."
"Where are they now?" asked James.
"At Sorrento. Margaret writes in great delight about the place and the climate, and the people they meet there, and the beauty and health of little Gerty. And Baldwin adds a postscript about the cicale, which is just what I wanted to know; he considers there's no doubt about their chirp being much stronger and more prolonged than our grasshopper's, and he has carefully examined the articulations."
"Does Margaret say anything about her own health?" interrupted James, so impatiently that he felt ashamed of himself the next minute, although Mr. Carteret took the sudden suppression of his favourite topic with perfect meekness, as he made answer:
"Yes, a good deal. Here it is, read the letter for yourself, James,"--and he handed over the document to his companion, and betook himself to the perusal of a scientific review,--a production rarer in those days than now,--and for whose appearance Mr. Carteret was apt to look with eagerness.
James Dugdale read the letter which Margaret Baldwin had written to her father from end to end, and then he turned back to the beginning, and read it through again. No document which could come from any human hand could have such a charm and value for him as one of her letters.
His feelings had undergone no change as regarded her, though, as regarded himself, they had become purified from the little dross of selfishness and vain regret that had hung about them for a little after she had left Chayleigh. He could now rejoice, with a pure and true heart, in her exceeding, her perfect happiness; he could think of her husband, whom she loved with an intense and passionate devotion which had transformed her character, as it seemed at times to transfigure her face, illumining it with a heavenly light--with ardent friendship and gratitude as the giver of such happiness, and with sincere and ungrudging admiration as the being who was capable of inspiring such a love. He could thank God now, from his inmost heart, for the change which had been wrought in, and for, the woman he loved with a love which angels might have seen with approval. All he had longed and prayed and striven for, was her good--and it had come--it had been sent in the utmost abundance; and he never murmured now, ever so lightly, that he had not been suffered to count for anything in the fulfilment of his hope, in the answer to his prayer.
He read, with keen delight, the simple but strong words in which Margaret described to her father the peace, happiness, companionship and luxury of her life. Only the lightest cloud had cast a shade over the brightness of Margaret's life since her marriage. She had been rather delicate in health after the birth of her child, and a warmer climate than that of Scotland had been recommended for her. Mr. Baldwin had not been sorry for the opportunity thus afforded him of indulging Margaret and himself by visiting the countries so well known to him, but which his wife had never seen. Her experience of travel had been one of wretchedness; in this respect, also, he would make the present contrast with and efface the past. The "Lady Burleigh" feeling which Margaret had anticipated had come upon her sometimes, in the stately and well-ordered luxury of her new home; she had sometimes experienced a startling sense of the discrepancy between the things she had seen and suffered, and her surroundings at the Deane; but these fitful feelings had not recurred often or remained with her long, and she had become deeply attached to her beautiful home. Nevertheless, she, too, had welcomed the prospect of a foreign tour; and during her visit, en route, to Chayleigh, she had spoken so freely and frequently to James of her anticipations of pleasure, of the delight she took in her husband's cultivated taste, and in his manifold learning, that James perceived how rapidly and variously her intellect had developed in the sunshine of happiness and domestic love.
"Though she has always been the first of women in my mind," James Dugdale had said to himself then, "I would not have said she was either decidedly clever or decidedly handsome formerly, and now she is both beautiful and brilliant."
And so she was. It was not the praise of prejudice which pronounced her so. There were many who would, if they could, have denied such attributes to Mrs. Baldwin of the Deane, but they might as well have attempted to deny light to the sunshine.
In this letter, which James Dugdale read with such pleasure, Margaret said she was stronger, "much stronger," and that every one thought her looking very well. "Fitzwilliam is so much of that opinion," she wrote, "that he thinks this is a favourable opportunity of having a life-size portrait taken of me, especially as a first-rate artist has just been introduced to us,--if the picture be successful, a replica shall be made for you. The long windows of our sitting-rooms open on a terrace overhanging the sea, and the walls are overrun with passion-flower--just like those at home, which James used to take such care of. I mean to have my picture taken standing in the centre window, with my little Gertrude in my arms. If you don't like this, or prefer any other pose, say so when you write. Eleanor is delighted with the notion."
The tone of the whole letter was that of happiness, full, heartfelt, not wanting in anything. James Dugdale held it still in his hands, when he had read it through for the second time, and fell into one of the reveries which were habitual to him. It showed him Margaret, as he had seen her on the day of her unexpected return, pale, stern, defiant of the bitterness of her fate,--her slight form, clad in its heavy mourning robes, framed by the passion-flower tendrils, the woman in whose face he read more than confirmation of all he had ever feared or prophesied of evil for her, and in whose letter there was such a story of happiness as it falls but rarely to the lot of any mortal to have to tell. He had never felt so entirely, purely, unselfishly happy about Margaret as he felt at that moment.
"You have no letter from Haldane, have you?" asked Mr. Carteret, as he relinquished his review for his coffee-cup. "I have not, and Margery complains that he has not written."
The question reminded James of his hitherto disregarded letters. He turned to the table and took them up:
"No, sir, there's no letter from Haldane."
Mr. Carteret uttered a feeble sound of dissatisfaction, but made no farther remark, and James opened the foreign letter, which was, as he expected, from Hayes Meredith. It announced the writer's intended departure from Melbourne by the first ship after that which should carry the present letter, and named the period at which the writer hoped to reach England.
"The Yarra is a quick sailer," wrote Hayes Meredith, "and we expect to be in Liverpool a few weeks later than the Emu. My former letters will have explained how all difficulties subsided, but up to the last I have not felt quite confident of being able to get away, and thought it was well to write only one ship in advance."
There was a good deal of expression of pleasure at the prospect of seeing his old friend again, and introducing his son to him, on Hayes Meredith's part, some anxiety about his son's future, and warm thanks to James for certain propositions he had made concerning him.
"My friend Meredith and his son have sailed at last, sir," said James, addressing Mr. Carteret. "He will be here soon, I fancy, if they have had fine weather."
"Indeed," said Mr. Carteret. "I hope he is bringing the opossum and wombat skins, and the treeworm and boomerang you asked him for. I should like to have them really brought from the spot, you know. One can buy such things from the dealers, of course, but they are never so interesting, and often not genuine."
"I have no doubt, sir, they will all arrive quite safely."
"You have asked Mr. Meredith and his son to come here direct, I hope, James?"
"Yes, I obeyed your kind instructions in that."
"What a pity Margery is not here," said Mr. Carteret, with a placid little sigh, "to see her kind friend!"
"Never mind, sir; Margaret mil have plenty of opportunity for seeing Meredith. He will not remain less than six months in England."
In the pleasure and the excitement caused by the prospect of his friend's arrival (it was not customary or possible then for people to drop in from Melbourne for a week or two, and be heard of next at Salt Lake), James did not immediately remember what Margaret had said when Hayes Meredith's coming had first been talked of--that if he or any one came from the place which had witnessed her suffering and degradation, to her father's house, she should feel it to be an evil omen to her. When at length he did recall her expression of feeling about it, he smiled.
"How she would laugh at herself if I were to remind her now that she once said that! What could be an ill omen to her now? What could bring evil near her now?--God bless her!"
Some weeks later the Yarra, having encountered boisterous weather in the Channel, arrived at Liverpool. On the day but one following its arrival, James Dugdale received a short note from Hayes Meredith, which contained these words:
Liverpool, Jan. 24.
"MY DEAR DUGDALE,--We have arrived, and Robert and I hope to get to Chayleigh by Thursday. Should Mrs. Baldwin be in Scotland, endeavour to induce her to see me, at her father's house, in preference to any other place, as soon as possible. Do this, if you can, without alarming her, but at all events, and under all risks, do it. Circumstances which occurred immediately before my departure make it indispensable that I should see her at once on important and, I regret to add, unpleasant business. I am too tired and dizzy to write more.--Yours, HAYES MEREDITH."
CHAPTER IV.
HAYES MEREDITH'S REVELATION.
It had seldom fallen to the lot of James Dugdale to experience more painful mental disquietude than that in which he passed the interval between the receipt of Hayes Meredith's letter and the arrival of his friend, accompanied by his son, at Chayleigh. Mr. Carteret, always unobservant, did not notice the preoccupation of James's manner, and James had decided, within a few minutes after he had read the communication which had so disturbed him, that he would not mention the matter to the old gentleman at all, if concealment were practicable--certainly not before it should become indispensable, if it should ever prove to be so.
An unpleasant communication to be made to Margaret! What could it be? The vain question whose solution was so near, and yet appeared to him so distant, in his impatience repeated itself perpetually in every waking hour, and he would frequently start from his sleep, roused by a terrible sense of undefined trouble impending over the woman who never ceased to occupy the chief place in his thoughts. The problem took every imaginable shape in his mind. The little knowledge he had of the circumstances of Margaret's life in Australia left him scope for all kinds of conjectures, and did not impose superior probability on any. Was there a secret reason beyond, more pressing than her natural, easily explicable shrinking from the revival of pain and humiliation, which kept Margaret so absolutely and resolutely silent concerning the years of her suffering and exile? Was there something which she knew and dreaded, which might come to light at any time, which was soon to come to light now, in the background of her memory? Was there some transaction of Hungerford's, involving disgraceful consequences, which had been dragged into publicity, in which she, too, must be involved, as well as the dead man's worthless memory? This might be the case; it might be debts, swindling, anything; and the brilliant and happy marriage she had made, might be destined to be clouded over by the shadow of her former life.
James Dugdale suffered very keenly during the few days in which he pondered upon these things. He tortured himself with apprehension, and knew that, to a certain extent, it must be groundless. The only real, serious injury which could come out of the dark storehouse of the past, into the present life of Fitzwilliam Baldwin's wife, must be one of a nature to interfere with her relations towards her husband. She could afford to defy every other kind of harm. She was raised far above the influence of all material evil, and removed from the sphere in which the doings of people like Hungerford and his associates were ever heard of. Her marriage bucklered her no less against present than past evil; on all sides but one. When James weighed calmly the matter of which he never ceased to think, he called in "the succours of thought" to the discomfiture of "fear," which in its vague has greater torment than in its most defined shape, and drew upon their resources largely. Margaret had indeed been reticent with him, with her father, with Haldane, even, he felt persuaded, with her sister-in-law Lady Davyntry; but had she been equally reticent with Baldwin? He thought she had not; he hoped, he believed she had not; that the confidence existing between her and her husband was as perfect as their mutual love, and that, however strictly she might have maintained a silence, which Baldwin would have been the last man in the world to induce or wish her to break, up to the period of her marriage, he did not doubt that Margaret's husband was now in possession of all the facts of her past life, so that no painful intelligence could find him more or less unprepared than his wife to meet it.
It needed the frequent repetition of this belief to himself, the frequent repetition of the grounds on which it was founded, to enable James Dugdale to subdue the apprehensions inspired by Hayes Meredith's letter. His delicate health, his nervous susceptibility, the almost feminine sensitiveness of his temperament, made suspense, anxiety, and apprehension peculiarly trying to him; and the servants at Chayleigh, keener observers than their master, quickly found out that something was wrong with Mr. Dugdale, and that the arrival of the two gentlemen from foreign parts, for whose reception preparations were being duly made, would not be a cause of unalloyed pleasure to him.
The urgency of Meredith's request, that there might be no delay in a meeting between himself and Margaret, gave James much uneasiness, because, in addition to the general vagueness of the matter, he did not in this particular instance know what to do. Hayes Meredith did not wish her to be alarmed (which looked as if he believed her to be ignorant of the unpleasant intelligence to which he alluded, as if he contemplated the necessity of its being broken to her with caution), but he laid stress on the necessity of an immediate meeting. How was this to be accomplished? Meredith had not thought of such a contingency as that which actually existed. He had supposed it probable Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin would be in Scotland when his letter should reach James Dugdale, which must create a delay of a few days indeed, but he had not contemplated their absence at such a distance as must imply the postponement of a meeting for weeks.
James did not know what to do. To summon Margaret and Mr. Baldwin to return at once, without any clue to the meaning of the communication awaiting them, would be to alarm them to an extent, which, under any circumstances within the reach of his imagination, must be unnecessary; and from the possible responsibility involved in not procuring their return he naturally shrank. He could not communicate with Meredith, whose letter bore no address but "Liverpool;" there was nothing for it but the painful process of patience.
Mr. Carteret talked of Margaret more than usual in the interval between the arrival of Meredith's letter and the day on which he was expected at Chayleigh; the association of ideas made him garrulous, and he expatiated largely to James upon the pleasure which Mr. Meredith would feel on seeing his protÉgÉe of the bad old times so differently circumstanced, and the splendid hospitality with which he would certainly be entertained at the Deane. Baldwin would return sooner than he had intended, no doubt, in consequence of Mr. Meredith's visit to England.
When Mr. Carteret expressed his opinion, apparently oblivious of the fact that the state of Margaret's health rendered her remaining abroad peculiarly desirable, James heard him with a sense of partial relief. It would be much gained, let the unpleasant business before them be what it might, if Mr. Carteret could be kept from alarm or pain in connection with it. If he could be brought to regard the sudden return of Margaret as a natural event, considering his placid nature and secluded habits, it might be readily practicable to secure him from all knowledge of what had occurred.
There was strong anticipative consolation for James Dugdale in this reflection. Reason with himself as he would, strive against it as he might, there was a presentiment of evil upon James's heart, a thrill of dread of the interruption of that happiness in which he found such pure and disinterested delight, and he dared not think of such a dread extending itself to the old man, who had built such an edifice of pride and contentment on his daughter's fortunes, and would have so little strength to bear, not alone its crumbling, but any shock to its stability.
"Let it be what it may, I think it can be hidden from him," said James Dugdale, as he bade Mr. Carteret good-night for the last time before all his suspense should be resolved into certainty.
That particular aspect of nature, to which the complacent epithets "good old English" have been most frequently applied by poets and novelists, presented itself at Chayleigh, in perfection, on the day of Hayes Meredith's arrival. "Our English summer" has become rather mythical in this generation, and the most bearable kind of cold weather, keen, bright, frosty, kindly (to those who can afford ubiquitous fires and double windows), occurs in miserably small proportion to the dull, damp, despairing; winter of fogs and rain. It was not so between twenty and thirty years ago, however, and the eyes of the long-expatriated Englishman were refreshed, and those of his colonial-born son astonished, by the beauty and novelty of the scenery through which they passed on their journey southwards.
Chayleigh was one of those places which look particularly beautiful in winter. It boasted splendid evergreens, and grassy slopes carefully kept, and the holly trees, freshly glistening after a fall of snow, which had just disappeared, were grouped about the low picturesque house like ideal trees in a fancy sketch of the proper home of Christmas. It was difficult to realise that the only dwellers in the pleasant house, from whose long low windows innumerable lights twinkled brightly, were two men, the one old in years, and older still in his quiet ways, in his deadness of sympathy with the outer world, the other declining also in years, and carrying, in a frail and suffering body, a heart quite purged of self, but heavy-laden with trouble for one far dearer than self had ever been to him.
Fair women and bright children should have tenanted such a home as that to which Mr. Carteret, a little later than the hour at which they were expected, bade Hayes Meredith and his son a hearty if somewhat old-fashioned welcome.
When the post-chaise which brought the travellers stopped, James Dugdale met his old friend as he stepped out, and the two looked at each other with the contending feelings of pain and pleasure which such a meeting was calculated to produce. Time had so altered each that the other would not have recognised him, had their meeting been a chance one; but when, a little later, they regarded each other more closely, many familiar looks and expressions, turns of feature and of phrase, made themselves observed in both, which restored the old feeling of familiarity.
Then James Dugdale saw the strong, frank, hopeful young man, with his vivacious black eyes, and his strong limbs, his cheery laugh, and his jovial self-reliant temper once more, and found all those qualities again in the world-taught, and the world-sobered, but not world-worn man whose gray hair was the only physical mark of time set upon him.
Then Hayes Meredith saw the pale, stooped student, with form awry and spiritual sensitive face, bearing upon it the inexplicable painful expression which malformation gives,--the keen intelligence, the sadly strong faculty of suffering--the equally keen affections and firm will. Time had set many a mark upon James. He had had rich brown curls, the only gift of youth dealt lavishly to him by nature, but they were gone now, and his hair was thin and gray, and the lines in his face were more numerous and deeper than might have been fitting at twenty additional years. But Hayes Meredith saw that same face under the lines, and in a wonderfully short time he found himself saying to himself--"I should feel as if we were boys together again, only that Dugdale, poor fellow, never was a boy."
"Is Mrs. Baldwin here?" was Meredith's first question to his friend, after the undemonstrative English greeting, which said so little and meant so much.
"No, she is abroad."
"How unfortunate!"
"What is the matter? Is anything very wrong?"
"No, no, we'll put it right--but we cannot talk of it now. When can I have some time with you quite alone?"
"To-night, if you are not too tired," returned James, who was intensely impatient to hear what had to be told, but to whose sensitive nerves the strong, steady, almost unconcerned manner of his friend conveyed some little assurance.
"To-night, then."
There was no farther private conversation between the two. Hayes Meredith devoted himself to Mr. Carteret, whose placid character afforded him considerable amusement, in its contrast with those of the bustling and energetic companions of his ordinary life. To Mr. Carteret, Hayes Meredith was an altogether new and delightful trouvaille. That he came from a new world, of infinite interest and importance to England; that he could tell of his own personal experience, particulars of the great events, political, commercial, and social, to which colonial enterprise had given rise; that, as a member of a strange community, with all the interest of a foreign land, and all the sympathy of fellowship of race attaching to them, Mr. Carteret knew, if he had cared to think about it, and he might perhaps, merely as an intellectual exercise, have comprehended, that there was something remarkable about his guest in that aspect. But he did not care about it in the least. The political, social, and commercial life of either this half of the world or the other half was a matter of entire indifference to him. He was eminently desirous to ascertain, as soon as politeness warranted the inquiry, whether Mr. Meredith had brought to England the "specimens" which James Dugdale had bespoken, and that point satisfactorily disposed of, and an early hour on the following day appointed for their disinterment from the general mass of luggage, he turned the conversation without delay on the cranial peculiarities of "black fellows," the number of species into which the marsupial genus may be divided, and the properties of the turpentine tree. On all these matters Hayes Meredith sustained a very creditable examination, and during its course rapidly arrived at a very kindly feeling towards his gentle and eccentric but eminently kind-hearted entertainer. There was a curious occult sympathy between the minds of James Dugdale and Hayes Meredith, as the latter thought:
"If it could be hidden from the poor old gentleman, and I really see no reason why he should ever know it, what a good thing it will be!"
Mr. Carteret had taken an early opportunity of expressing, not ungracefully, his sense of the kindness which his daughter had received at the hands of Mr. Meredith and his family, and his regret that she was not then at Chayleigh to welcome him. The embarrassment with which his guest received his courteous observations, and the little allusion which he afterwards made to Margaret, though it would have been natural that she should have been the prevailing subject of their conversation, did not strike Mr. Carteret in the least, though James Dugdale perceived it plainly and painfully, and it rendered the task which he had set himself--that of entertaining Robert Meredith--anything but easy. The mere notion of such a possibility as taking any notice of a boy, after having once shaken hands with him, and told him he was very happy to see him, and hoped he would make himself quite at home at Chayleigh, would never have occurred to Mr. Carteret. About boys, as boys, he knew very little indeed; but if the word aversion could ever be used with propriety in describing a sentiment entertained by Mr. Carteret, he might be said to regard them with aversion. They made noises, they opened doors unnecessarily often, and they never shut them; they trod on people's feet, and tore people's dresses; they did not wash their hands with decent frequency; and once a terrible specimen of the genus, having been admitted to a view of his precious case of Cape butterflies, thrust his plebeian and intrusive elbow through the glass. This was final.
"I don't like boys," said Mr. Carteret; "I don't understand them. Keep them away from me, please."
He had listened with a mild shudder to Haldane's praises of that "wonderfully clever child," the eldest Miss Crofton's "little brother;" and had turned a desperately deaf ear to all hints that an invitation for the urchin to inspect the wonders of the "collection" might be regarded by the Crofton family as an attention.
"Wonderfully clever, is he?" said Mr. Carteret musingly; "what a nuisance he must be!"
Haldane did not mention the talented creature again, and no boy had ever troubled Mr. Carteret from that hour until now. He had the satisfaction of knowing, when his prompt invitation was extended to James Dugdale's friends, that Robert Meredith was a big boy--not an objectionable child, with precocious ideas, prying eyes, and fingers addicted to mischief--had it been otherwise, his patience and hospitality would have been sorely tried.
"You will see to the young gentleman, Foster," he had said to his confidential servant; "I daresay he will like a good deal to eat and drink, and you can see that he does not wear strong boots in the house, and--ah--hem, Foster, you can make him understand--politely, you know--that people in general don't go into my rooms. You understand, Foster?"
"O yes, sir; I understand," said Foster, in a tone which to Mr. Carteret's sensitive ears implied an almost unfeeling indifference, but Foster acted on the hint for all that, and the result was remarkable.
Mr. Carteret never once had reason to complain of Robert Meredith. The boy never vexed or worried him; he seemed to have an intuitive comprehension of his feelings and prejudices, of his harmless little oddities, and in a silent, distant kind of way--for though a wonderful exception, Robert was still a boy, and therefore to be avoided--Mr. Carteret actually came to like him. In which particular he formed an exception to the entire household as then assembled at Chayleigh, and even when it received the accession of Mr. Baldwin, Margaret, and their little daughter. No one else in the house liked Robert Meredith.
The preoccupation of James Dugdale's mind, the anxiety and suspense of some days, which grew stronger and less endurable now when a few hours only divided him from learning, with absolute certainty, the evil tidings which Hayes Meredith had to communicate, rendered his friend's son and his affairs objects of very secondary interest to him. When he thought of the business which had induced Meredith to undertake such a voyage to England, such an absence from home, he roused himself to remember the keen interest he had taken in the father's projects for, and on account of, the son. But he could only remember it; he could not feel it again. When he should know the worst, when he and Meredith should have had their private talk that night, then things would resume their proper proportion, then he should be able to fulfil all his friend's behests, with the aid of his hand and his heart alike. But now, only the face of Margaret, pale, wan, stern, with the youth and bloom gone from it, as he had seen her when she first came home; only the face of Margaret, transfigured in the light of love and joy, of pride and pleasure, as he had seen her last, held his attention. Her form seemed to flit before him in the air. The sound of her voice mingled, to his fancy, with all other sounds. The effort to control his feelings, and bide his time, almost surpassed his strength. Afterwards, when he recalled that day, and tried to remember his impressions of Robert Meredith, James recollected him as a quiet, gentlemanly, self-possessed boy, with a handsome face, a good figure, and an intelligent expression--a little shy, perhaps, but James did not see that until afterwards. A boy without the objectionable habits of boys, but also without the frankness which beseems boyhood. A boy who watched Mr. Carteret's conversation with his father, and rapidly perceived that gentleman's harmless eccentricities, and who, when he found that a total absence of observation was one of them, marked each fresh exhibition of them with a contemptuous sneer, which would not have been out of place on the countenance of a full-grown demon. He had a good deal of the early-reached decision in opinion and in manner which is a feature in most young colonials, but he was not unpleasantly "bumptious;" and James Dugdale, had his mind been free to permit him to find pleasure in anything, would have enjoyed making the acquaintance of his old friend's son.
At length the two men found themselves alone in James Dugdale's room.
"Our consultation is likely to be a long one, Dugdale," said Meredith, as he seated himself close by the fire. "Is there any danger of our being interrupted or overheard?"
"None whatever," James answered. He felt unable to speak, to ask a question, now that the time had come.
Meredith looked at him compassionately, but shrugged his shoulders at the same time, imperceptibly. He understood his friend's sensitiveness; his weakness he could not understand. "I may as well tell you at once," he said, "about this bad business." He took a paper from a pocket-book as he spoke. "Tell me the exact date of Mr. Baldwin's marriage."
James named it without adding a word. Then Meredith handed him the paper he held, and James, having read it hastily, looked up at him with a pale horrified face.