The Three Brides
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“Now then, my dear,” she said, “I have known a talk must soon come. You have all been very good to me to leave it so long.”
“I am come now without poor Miles’s knowledge or consent,” said Julius, “because it is necessary for him to know what to do.”
“He will give up the navy,” said his mother. “O, Julius! does he require to be told that he—?” and she laid her head on her son’s shoulder.
“It is what he cannot bear to be told; but what drives me on is that Whitlock tells me that the Wil’sbro’ people want to bring him in at once, as the strongest proof of their feeling for Raymond.”
“Yes,” she raised her head proudly, “of course he must come forward. He need have no doubt. Send him to me, Julius, I will tell him to open letters, and put matters in train. Perhaps you will write to Graves for me, if he does not like it, poor boy.”
She had roused herself into the woman of business, and when Miles, after some indignation at her having been disturbed, obeyed the summons, she held out her arms, and became the consoler.
“Come, my boy,” she said, “we must face it sooner or later. You must stand foremost and take up his work for him.”
“Oh, mother! mother! you know how little I am able,” said Miles, covering his face with his hands.
“You do not bring his burthened heart to the task,” she said. “If you had watched and felt with him, as perhaps only his mother could, you would know that I can be content that the long heartache should have ceased, where the weary are at rest. Yes, Miles, I feel as if I had put him to sleep after a long day of pain, as when he was a little child.”
They hardened themselves to the discussion, Mrs. Poynsett explaining what she thought the due of her eldest son, only that Cecil’s jointure would diminish the amount at her disposal. Indeed, when she was once aroused, she attended the most fully; but when Miles found her apologizing for only affording him the little house in the village, he cried out with consternation.
“My dear,” she said, “it is best so; I will not be a burthen on you young ones. I see the mistake.”
“I know,” stammered Miles, “my poor Anne is not up to your mark—not clever like you or Jenny—but I thought you did like her pretty handy ways.”
“I feel them and love them with all my heart; but I cannot have her happiness and yours sacrificed to me. Yes, you boys love the old nest; but even Julius and Rose rejoice in their own, and you must see what she really wishes, not what she thinks her duty. Take her out walking, you both need it badly enough.”
They ventured to comply, and eluding Mr. Charnock, went into the park, silvery with the unstanched dews, and the leaves floating down one by one like golden rain. “Not much like the Bush,” said Miles.
“No,” was all Anne durst say.
“Poor Nan, how dreary it must have looked to you last year!”
“I am afraid I wrote very complaining letters!”
“Not complaining, but a direful little effort at content, showing the more piteously, because involuntarily, what a mistake I had made.”
“No, no mistake. Indeed, Miles, it was not. Nothing else would have cured me of the dreadful uncharitableness which was the chief cause of my unhappiness, and if I had not been so forlorn, I should never have seen how good and patient your mother was with me. Yes, I mean it. I read over my old diary and saw how tiresome and presumptuous I was, and how wonderfully she bore with me, and so did Julius and Rosamond, while all the time I fancied them—no Christians.”
“Ah! you child! You know I would never have done it if I had known you were to be swamped among brides. At any rate, this poor old place doesn’t look so woefully dismal and hateful to you now.”
“It could not, where you are, and where I have so many to know and love.”
“You can bear the downfall of our Bush schemes?”
“Your duty is here now.”
“Are you grieved, little one?”
“I don’t know. I should like to have seen mamma; but she does not need me now as your mother does.”
“Then you are willing to be her daughter?”
“I have tried hard, and she is very kind; but I am far too dull and ignorant for her. I can only wait upon her; but when she has you and Julius to talk to, my stupidity will not matter.”
“Would you be content to devote yourself to her, instead of making a home of our own?”
“She can’t be left alone in that great house.”
“The question is, can you be happy in it? or do you wish for a house to ourselves?”
“You don’t, Miles, it is your own home.”
“That’s not the question.”
“Miles, why do you look at me so?”
“I was told to ascertain your wishes.”
“I don’t wish anything—now I have you—but to be a comfort to your mother. That is my first earthly wish just now.”
“If that be earthly, it has a touch of the heavenly,” muttered Miles to himself. “You will make it clear to mother then that you like to go on with her?”
“If she does not mind having me.”
“And Julius says it really cheered our dear Raymond to think you would be the one to look after her! But that’s not all, Nanny, I’ve only till to-morrow to decide whether I am to be Member for Wil’sbro’.”
“Is that a duty?”
“Not such a duty as to bind me if it were altogether repugnant to you. I was not brought up for it, and may be a mere stop-gap, but it is every man’s duty to come to the front when he is called for, and do his utmost for his country in Parliament, I suppose, as much as in action.”
“I see; but it would be leaving your mother alone a great deal.”
“Not necessarily. You could stay here part of the time, and I go backwards and forwards, as Raymond did before his marriage.”
“It would be better than your being at sea.”
“But remember,” he added, “there is much that can’t be shirked. I don’t mean currying popularity, but if one is in that position, there’s no shutting oneself up. It becomes a duty to keep society going, and give it the sort of tone that a nice woman can do. Do you see?”
“I think I do. Julius said so once.”
“So if we are to have such tears and despair as there were about the ball in the Chimæra, then—”
“I was wrong then,” said Anne. “I did not behave at all well to you all that time, dear Miles; I have been sorry for it ever since I understood.”
“It was not you, little one, it was Mr. Pilgrim.”
“No, it was not Mr. Pilgrim who made me cross.”
“Yes, it was. He exacted pledges that he had no right to lay on your conscience, and your poor little conscience was in terrible straits, and I was too angry to feel for it. Never mind all that; you have done with the fellow, and understand better now.”
“He thought he was right, and that only such abstinence could guard me. And, Miles, a promise is a promise, and I do not think I ought to dance or play at cards. It is not that I think them wrong for others, but I cannot break my word. Except those—I will do whatever is fitting for your wife.”
“Spoken like a heroine!”
“I don’t think I could ever give a tone. Rosamond could, if she tried, but I have no readiness and no training; but I do see that there is more good in being friendly like Jenny Bowater, than in avoiding everything, and as long as one does it because it is right and loving, it can’t be the world or worldliness.”
It was not lucidly expressed, but it satisfied the Captain.
“All right, my bonnie Nance, I’ll promise on my side never to ask you to go against your real conscience, and if you must have a Pope, I had rather it were Pope Julius than Pope Pilgrim.”
“Don’t, Miles. Popes are all wrong, and I don’t know whether Mr. Pilgrim would give the right hand of fellowship to Julius.”
Miles chuckled. “You may think yourself lucky you have not to adjust that question, Madame Nan.”
“There’s the quarter chiming, Frank will want his beef-tea.”
Presently after Miles laid his hand on his mother’s shoulder, and said, “Mother, here’s a daughter who thinks you want to turn us out because she is too slow and stupid for your home child.” And he drew Anne up blushing as if she were his freshly-won bride.
“My dear, are you sure you don’t want to go away from the old woman? Should you not be happier with him all to yourself?”
“I could not be happy if you were left,” said Anne. “May I go on as we did last winter? I will try to do better now I have him to help me.”
“My own dear child!”
That was the way Anne forgot her own people and her father’s house.
CHAPTER XXXIII
Herbert’s Victory
And of our scholars let us learnOur own forgotten lore.—KEBLE“Joan, Jenny, dearest old Joanie!” It was eagerly spoken, though the voice was strangely altered that came from behind the flowered curtain of that big bed, while the fingers drew it back, and Rollo raised his black muzzle near at hand. “Oh, Jenny! have you come to me?”
“My dear, dear, poor boy!”
“No kissing—it’s not safe,” and he burrowed under the sheet.
“As if I did not mean to do more for you than that! Besides, it is not catching.”
“So I said, till it caught me. What a jolly cold hand! You’ve not come in cold and hungry though?”
“No, indeed, Rosamond forced me to sit down to a whole spread. As if one could eat with a knot in one’s throat.”
“Mind you do, Jenny—it was what did for me. The Rector ordered me never to go about unfed; but one could not always—and there was something I have to tell you that drove all the rest out—”
“Dear Herbs! Papa can’t talk of what you have done without tears. He longed to come, but we could not leave mamma without one of us, and he thought I could do the most for you. I have a note for you.”
“Forgiving me?”
“I should think so. It is in my bag—”
“No, not this moment; I like to know it. And mammy—poor mammy—”
“She is as comforted as she can be that you have Cranky and me; and then papa’s being proud of you has cheered her—oh! so much.”
“I’m glad they can comfort themselves—”
“But, Herbert, dear, you must be much better; I did not expect to see you so well.”
“I am not so bad between whiles,” said Herbert, wearily. “And, while I can, I’ve got something to tell you that will make it up to you, and a great deal more.”
“Make it up?” said Jenny, looking with bewildered eyes at the dear face.
“Yes, I made Gadley consent. The Rector has it in writing, and it will do quite as well if I die. O, Jenny, woman, think of my never knowing what you had gone through!”
“Is it about Archie?” said Jenny, beginning to tremble.
“Yes. It will clear him.”
“I always knew he was clear.”
“Yes, but he can come back now all right. Eh! what an ass I am! I’ve begun at the wrong end. He wasn’t drowned—it was all a mistake; Miles saw him in Africa—Cranky, I say, come to her.”
“Yes, Master Herbert, you’ve been talking a great deal too much for your sister just off a journey. You’ll get the fever on again. Miss Joanna, you ought to know better than to let him run on; I sha’n’t be able to let you do nothing for him if this is the way.”
“Was it too sudden, Joan?” said Herbert, wistfully, as she bent to kiss his brow with trembling lips. “I couldn’t let any one tell you but myself, while I could; but I don’t seem able to go on. Is the Rector there, Cranky?”
“Yes, sir, waiting in the parlour.”
“Rector,” and Julius hurried in at once, “take her and tell her. I can’t do it after all.”
“Is he alive?” whispered Jenny, so much overcome that Julius had to hold her up for a moment as he led her into the other room.
“Really! She thinks me delirious,” said Herbert, rather amused. “Tell her all, Rector.”
“Really, Joan,” said Julius, putting her into the great chair, and holding her trembling hand. “Miles has seen him, has had him in his ship.”
“And you never told me!”
“He made Miles promise not to tell.”
“But he told you!”
“Yes, because it was Anne who gave the clue which led to his discovery; but when he found we all thought him dead, he laid Miles under the strictest charge to say nothing. He is on an ostrich farm in Natal, Jenny, well, and all that he ever was, and more too. He took your photograph from Miles’s book.”
“And I never knew,” moaned Jenny, quite overcome.
“He would not be persuaded that it was not more for your peace not to know of his life, and when Miles was put on honour, what could we do? But now it is all changed. Since Herbert’s discovery he need not be a banished man any more.” And Julius told Jenny the manner of the discovery. She listened, evidently gathering all in, and then she asked: “And what have you done?”
“Nothing as yet.”
“Nothing! while there is this blot on Archie’s name, and he is living in exile, and that Moy is revelling in prosperity. Nothing! Why don’t you publish it to every one?”
“My dear Jenny, I have only known it a week, and I have not been able to find out where Mr. Moy is.”
“What, to have him taken up?”
“Taken up, no; I don’t imagine he could be prosecuted after this length of time and on this kind of evidence. No, to give him warning.”
“Warning? To flee away, and never clear Archie! What are you about, Julius? He ought to be exposed at once, if he cannot be made to suffer otherwise.”
“Nay, Jenny, that would be hard measure.”
“Hard measure!” she interrupted; “what has my innocent Archie had?”
“Think of the old man, his wife and daughter, Jenny.”
“She’s a Proudfoot.—And that girl the scandal of the country! You want to sacrifice Archie to them, Julius?”
“You are tired and shaken, Jenny, or you would see that all I want to do is to act with common consideration and honour.”
She interrupted again. “What honour do you mean? You are not making it a secret of the confessional?”
“You are misunderstanding me, Joanna,” Julius gently said. “Herbert’s vigil spared me from that difficulty, but—”
“Then you would have sacrificed Archie to this imaginary—”
“Hush, Jenny! I fear he is wandering again. Alas! it is the sad old refrain!”
As they came to the door together, Herbert’s voice, under that strange change which wandering brings, was heard muttering, “Give an account of thy stewardship, for thou mayest be no longer steward.” And Mrs. Cranstoun received them, with her head shaking, and tearful eyes. “It has come on again, sir; I was afraid it would be too much for him.”
Herbert’s prayer had been granted, inasmuch as the horrible ravings that he feared repeating never passed his lips. If he had gone down to the smoke of Tartarus to restore his sister’s lover, none of its blacks were cleaning to him; but whether conscious or wandering, the one thought of his wasted year seemed to be crushing him. It was a curious contrast between poor Mr. Fuller’s absence of regret for a quarter of a century’s supineness, and this lad’s repentance for twelve months’ idleness. That his follies had been guileless in themselves might be the very cause that his spirit had such power of repentance. His admiration of Lady Tyrrell had been burnt out, and had been fancy, not heart, and no word of it passed his lips, far less of the mirth with the Strangeways. Habit sometimes brought the phrases of the cricket-field, but these generally ended in a shudder of self-recollection and prayer.
The delirium only came with the accesses of fever, and when sensible, he was very quiet and patient, but always as one weighed down by sense of failure in a trust. He never seemed to entertain a hope of surviving. He had watched too many cases not to be aware that his symptoms were those that had been almost uniformly fatal, and he noted them as a matter of course. Dr. Easterby came to see him, and was greatly touched; Herbert was responsive, but it was not the ordinary form of comfort that he needed, for his sorrow was neither terror nor despair. His heart was too warm and loving not to believe that his heavenly Father forgave him as freely as did his earthly father; but that very hope made him the more grieved and ashamed of his slurred task, nor did he view his six weeks at Wil’sbro’ as any atonement, knowing it was no outcome of repentance, but of mere kindliness, and aware, as no one else could be, how his past negligence had hindered his full usefulness, so that he only saw his failures. As to his young life, he viewed it as a mortally wounded soldier does, as a mere casualty of the war, which he was pledged to disregard. He did perhaps like to think that the fatal night with Gadley might bring Archie back, and yet Jenny did not give him the full peace in her happiness which he had promised himself.
Joanna had suffered terribly, far more than any one knew, and her mind did not take the revulsion as might have been expected. Her lighthouse was shining again when she thought it extinguished for ever, but her spirits could not bear the uncertainty of the spark. She could not enter into what Miles and Julius both alike told her, of the impossibility of their mother beginning a prosecution for money embezzled ten years back, when no living witness existed, nothing but the scrap of paper written by Herbert, and signed by him and Margaret Strangeways, authorizing Julius Charnock to use what had been said by the dying, half-delirious man. What would a jury say to such evidence? And when Julius said it only freed himself morally from the secrecy, poor Jenny was bitter against his scruples, even though he had never said more than that he should have been perplexed. The most bitter anti-ritualist could hardly have uttered stronger things than she thought, and sometimes said, against what seemed to her to be keeping Archie in banishment; while the brothers’ reluctance to expose Mr. Moy, and blast his reputation and that of his family, was in her present frame of mind an incomprehensible weakness. People must bear the penalty of their misdeeds, families and all, and Mrs. and Miss Moy did not deserve consideration: the pretensions of the mother had always been half scorn, half thorn, to the old county families, and the fast airs of the daughter had been offensive enough to destroy all pity for her. If an action in a Court of Justice were, as Miles and Julius told her, impossible,—and she would not believe it, except on the word of a lawyer,—public exposure was the only alternative for righting Archie, and she could not, or would not, understand that they would have undergone an action for libel rather than not do their best to clear their cousin, but that they thought it due to Mr. Moy to give him the opportunity of doing the thing himself; she thought it folly, and only giving him time and chance for baffling them.
The strange thing was, that not only when she argued with the two brothers, but when she brooded and gave way to these thoughts as she kept her watch, it probably made her less calm—for an access of restlessness and fever never failed to come on—with Herbert. Probably she was less calm externally, and the fret of face and manner communicated itself to him, for the consequences were so invariable that Cranstoun thought they proved additionally what she of course believed, that Miss Joan could not be trusted with her brother. At last Jenny, in her distress and unwillingness to abandon Herbert to Cranky’s closed windows, traced cause and effect, and made a strong resolution to banish the all-pervading thought, and indeed his ever-increasing weakness and danger filled her mind so as to make this easier and easier, so that she might no longer have to confess to herself that Rollo was a safer companion, since Herbert, with a hand on that black head, certainly only derived soothing influences from those longing sympathetic eyes. And he could not but like the testimony of strong affection that came to him. The whole parish was in consternation, and inquiries, and very odd gifts, which he was supposed to ‘fancy,’ came from all over Compton as well as from Strawyers, and were continually showering upon his nurses, so that Mrs. Hornblower and Dilemma spent their lives in mournful replies over the counter, and fifty times a day he was pronounced to be ‘as bad as he could be to be alive.’ Old servants and keepers made progresses from Strawyers, to see Master Herbert, and were terribly aggrieved because Miss Bowater kept them out of his room, as much for their sake as his; and Mrs. Cranstoun pointed to the open lattice which she believed to be killing him, as surely as it gave aches to her rheumatic shoulder.
Julius thought almost as much as Jenny could do of the means of recalling Archie; but it was necessary to wait until he could communicate with Mr. Moy, and his hands were still over-full, for though much less fatal, the fever smouldered on, both in Wil’sbro’ and Compton, and as St. Nicholas was a college living which had hitherto been viewed as a trump card, it might be a long time going the round of the senior fellows.
Julius had just been at poor Mrs. Fuller’s, trying to help her to put her complicated affairs in order, so as to be ready for a move as soon as one daughter, who had the fever slightly, could be taken away, and he was driving home again, when he overtook Mrs. Duncombe and offered her a lift, for her step was weary. She was indeed altered, pale, with cheek-bones showing, and all the lustre and sparkle gone out of her, while her hat was as rigidly dowdy as Miss Slater’s.
She roused herself to ask feebly after the remaining patients.
“Cecil is really getting better at last,” he said. “Her father wants to take her to Portishead next week.”
“And young Bowater?”
“No change. His strength seems to be going.”
“I wouldn’t pity him,” sighed Bessie Duncombe; “he has only seen the best end of life, and has laid it down for something worth! I’m sure he and your brother are the enviable ones.”
“Nay, Mrs. Duncombe, you have much to work for and love in this life.”
“And I must go away from everything just as I had learnt to value it. Bob has taken a house at Monaco, and writes to me to bring the children to join him there!”
“At Monaco?”
“At Monaco! Yes, and I know that it is all my own fault. I might have done anything with him if I had known how. But what could you expect? I never saw my mother; I never knew a home; I was bred up at a French school, where if one was not a Roman Catholic there was not a shred of religion going. I married after my first ball. Nobody taught me anything; but I could not help having brains, so I read and caught the tone of the day, and made my own line, while he went on his.”
“And now there is a greater work for you to do, since you have learnt to do it.”
“Ah! learnt too late. When habits are confirmed, and home station forfeited—What is there left for him or my poor boys to do?”
“A colony perhaps—”
“Damaged goods,” she said, smiling sadly.
“Then are you going?”
“As soon as I have seen this fever out, and can dispose of the things here. I have just been to Moy’s office to see about getting rid of the lease.”
“Is Mr. Moy come home?”
“Yes. Have you not heard?”
“What?—Not the fever?”
“No. Worse I should say. Gussie has gone off and got married to Harry Simmonds.”
“The man at the training stables?”
“Yes. They put up their banns at the Union at Brighton, and were married by the Registrar, then went off to Paris. They say it will kill her mother. The man is a scoundrel, who played Bob false, and won largely by that mare. And the girl has had the cheek to write to me,” said Mrs. Duncombe, warming into her old phraseology—“to me!—to thank me for opportunities of meeting, and to tell me she has followed up the teaching of last year.”
“What—the rights of women?”
“Ay. This is a civil marriage—not mocking her with antiquated servile vows,” she says. “Ah, well, it was my doing, I suppose. Clio Tallboys held forth in private, I believe, to poor Gussie, on theories that were mere talk in her, but which this poor girl has taken in earnest.”
“Very sad earnest she may find it, I fear. Can I do anything for you?” as they reached the gate of Aucuba Villa.
“No, thank you, unless to get the house off my hands.”
“You are alone. Will you not come and spend the evening with us?”
“That is very kind, but I have too much to do, and besides, Sister Margaret is coming to spend the night with me.”
“I am glad to hear it.”
“Yes, Mr. Charnock, I trust I have learnt something in this spell of work. I’ve not been for nothing in such scenes with those Sisters and young Bowater. I’m more ignorant than half the poor things that I’ve heard talk of their faith and hope; but I see it is not the decorous humbug it once looked like. And now that I would have learnt, here I go to Monaco.”