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The major left Yrndale the next morning, saying now there was Mark to attend to, his room was better than his company. Vavasor would stay a day or two longer, he said, much relieved. He could not go until he saw Mark fairly started on the way of recovery.
But in reality the major went because he could no longer endure the sight of "that idiot," as he called Vavasor, and with design against him fermenting in his heart.
"The poltroon!" he said. "A fellow like that to marry a girl like cousin Helen's girl! A grand creature, by George! The grandest creature I ever saw in my life! Why, rather than wet his clothes the sneak would have let us both drown after I had got him to the bank! Calling to me to go to him, when I had done my best, and was at the last gasp!"
He was not fair to Vavasor; he never asked if he could swim. But indeed Vavasor could swim, well enough, only he did not see the necessity for it. He did not love his neighbor enough to grasp the facts of the case. And after all he could and did do without him!
The major hurried to London, assured he had but to inquire to find out enough and more than enough to his discredit, of the fellow.
He told them to tell Mark he was gone to fetch tiger-skins and a little idol with diamond eyes, and a lot of queer things that he had brought home; and he would tell him all about them, and let him have any of them he liked to keep for his own, as soon as he was well again. So he must make haste, for the moth would get at them if they were long lying about and not seen to.
He told Mr. Raymount that he had no end of business to look after; but now he knew the way to Yrndale, he might be back any day. As soon as Mark was well enough to be handed over to a male nurse he would come directly. He told Mrs. Raymount that he had got some pearls for her—he knew she was fond of pearls—and was going to fetch them.
For Hester he made her promise to write to him at the Army and Navy Club every day till Mark was well. And so he departed, much blessed of all the family for saving the life of their precious boy.
The major when he reached London hunted up some of his old friends, and through them sent out inquiry concerning Vavasor. He learned then some few things about him—nothing very bad as things went where everything was more or less bad, and nothing to his special credit. That he was heir to an earldom he liked least of all, for he was only the more likely to marry his beautiful cousin, and her he thought a great deal too good for him—which was truer than he knew.
Vavasor was relieved to find that Hester, while full of gratitude to the major, had no unfavourable impression concerning his own behaviour in the sad affair. As the days went on, however, and when he expected enthusiasm to have been toned down, he was annoyed to find that she was just as little impressed with the objectionable character of the man who by his unselfish decision, he called it his good luck, had got the start of him in rendering the family service. To himself he styled him "a beastly fellow, a lying braggart, a disgustingly vulgar ill-bred rascal." He would have called him an army-cad, only the word cad was not then invented. If there were any more such relations likely to turn up, the sooner he cut the connection the better! But that Hester should not be shocked with him was almost more than he could bear; that was shocking indeed!
He could not understand that as to the pure all things are pure, so the common mind sees far more vulgarity in others than the mind developed in genuine refinement. It understands, therefore forgives, nor finds it hard. Hester was able to look deeper than he, and she saw much that was good and honourable in the man, however he might have the bridle of his tongue too loose for safe riding in the crowded paths of society. Vavasor took care, however, after hearing the first words of defence which some remark of his brought from Hester, not to go farther, and turned the thing he had said aside. Where was the use of quarrelling about a man he was never likely to set eyes on again?
A day or two before the natural end of his visit, as Mrs. Raymount, Hester and he were sitting together in the old-fashioned garden, the letters were brought them—one for Vavasor, with a great black seal. He read it through, and said quietly:
"I am sorry I must leave you to-morrow. Or is there not a train to-night? But I dare say it does not matter, only I ought to be present at the funeral of my uncle, Lord Gartley. He died yesterday, from what I can make out. It is a tiresome thing to succeed to a title with hardly property enough to pay the servants!"
"Very tiresome," assented Mrs. Raymount; "but a title is not like an illness. If you can live without, you can live with one."
"True; very true! But society, you see. There's so much expected of a man in my position! What do you think, Miss Raymount?" he asked, turning towards her with a look that seemed to say whatever she thought would always be law to him.
"I think with mamma," replied Hester. "I do not see why a mere name should have any power to alter one's mode of life. Of course if the change brings new duties, they must be attended to; but if the property be so small as you say, it cannot want much looking after. To be sure there are the people upon it, but they cannot be many. Why should you not go on as you are?"
"I must go a good deal by what my aunt thinks best. She has a sort of right, you see. All her life her one fixed idea, knowing I was likely to succeed, has been the rehabilitation of the earldom, and all her life she has been saving for that."
"Then she is going to make you her heir?" said Hester, who, having been asked her opinion, simply desired the grounds on which to give it.
"My dear Hester!" said her mother.
"I am only too much delighted Miss Raymount should care to ask me anything," said Vavasor. "My aunt does mean to make me her heir, I believe, but one must not depend upon that, because, if I were to displease her, she might change her mind any moment. But she has been like a mother to me, and I do not think, for any small provocation such as I am likely to give her, she would yield the dream of her life. She is a kind-hearted woman, though a little peculiar; true as steel where she takes a fancy. I wish you knew my aunt, Mrs. Raymount."
"I should be much pleased to know her."
"She would be delighted with this lovely place of yours. It is a perfect paradise. I feel its loveliness the more that I am so soon to hear its gates close behind me. Happily there is no flaming sword to mount guard against the expelled!"
"You must bring your aunt some time, Mr. Vavasor. We should make her very welcome," said Mrs. Raymount.
"Unfortunately, with all her good qualities, my aunt, as I have said, is a little peculiar. For one thing she shrinks from making new acquaintances."
He should have said—any acquaintances out of her own world. All others, so far as she was concerned, existed only on the sufferance of remoteness.
But by this time Vavasor had resolved to make an attempt to gain his aunt, and so Hester. He felt sure his aunt could not fail to be taken with Hester if only she saw her in fit surroundings: with her the frame was more than half the picture. He was glad now that she had not consented to call on the family in Addison Square: they would be of so much more importance in her eyes in the setting of Yrndale. He had himself also the advantage of being now of greater importance, the title being no longer in prospect but in possession: he was that Earl of Gartley for whom she had been saving all the time he was merely the heir, who might die, or be kept waiting twenty years for the succession. She must either be of one mind with him now, or lose the cherished purpose of so many years. If he stood out, seeming to prefer poverty and the woman of his choice, she would be compelled to give in.
That same evening he left them in high spirits, and without any pretence of decent regret for the death of one whom he had never seen, and who had for many years lived the life of an invalid and a poor man—neither of much account in his world.
He left behind him one child—a lovely but delicate girl, of whom no one seemed to think in the change that had arrived.
It would be untrue to say that Hester was not interested in the news. They had been so much thrown together of late, and in circumstances so favourable to intimacy, to the manifestation of what of lovable was in him, and to the revelation of how much her image possessed him, that she could hardly have been a woman at all and not care for what might befall him. Neither, although her life lay, and she felt that it lay, in far other regions, was she so much more than her mother absorbed in the best, as to be indifferent to the pleasure of wearing a distinguished historical name, or of occupying an exalted position in the eyes of the world. Her nature was not yet so thoroughly possessed with the things that are as distinguished from the things that only appear, as not to feel some pleasure in being a countess of this world, while waiting the inheritance of the saints in light. Of course this was just as far unworthy of her as it is unworthy of any one who has seen the hid treasure not to have sold all that he has to buy it—not to have counted, with Paul, everything but dross to the winning of Christ—not even worth being picked up on the way as he presses towards the mark of the high calling; but I must say this for her, that she thought of it first of all as a buttressing help to the labours, which, come what might, it remained her chief hope to follow again among her poor friends in London. To be a countess would make many things easier for her, she thought. Little she knew how immeasurably more difficult it would make it to do anything whatever worth doing!—that, at the very first, she would have to fight for freedom—her own—with hidden crafts of slavery, especially mighty in a region more than any other under the influences of the prince of the power of the air! She had the foolish notion that, thus uplifted among the shows of rule, she would be able with more than mere personal help to affect the load of injustice laid upon them from without, and pressing them earthwards. She had learned but not yet sufficiently learned that, until a man has begun to throw off the weights that hold him down, it is a wrong done him to attempt to lighten those weights. Why seek a better situation for the man whose increase of wages will only go into the pocket of the brewer or distiller? While the tree is evil, its fruit will be evil.
So again the days passed quietly on. Mark grew a little better. Hester wrote regularly, but the briefest bulletins, to the major, seldom receiving an acknowledgment. The new earl wrote that he had been to the funeral, and described in a would-be humorous way the house and lands to which he had fallen heir. The house might, he said, with unlimited money, be made fit to live in, but what was left of the estate was literally a mere savage mountain.
CHAPTER XXX.
IN ANOTHER LIGHT
Mr. Raymount went now and then to London, but never stayed long. In the autumn he had his books removed to Yrndale, saying in London he could always get what books he wanted, but must have his own about him in the country. When they were accommodated and arranged to his mind, all on the same floor, and partly in the same room with the old library of the house, he began, for the first lime in his life, to feel he had an abiding place and talked of selling the house in Addison Square. It would have been greater progress to feel that there is no abiding in place or among things.
In the month of October, when the forsaken spider-webs were filled no more with flies, but in the morning now with the dew-drops, now with hoarfrost, and the fine stimulus and gentle challenge of the cold roused the vital spirit in every fibre to meet it; when the sun shone a little sadly, and the wraith of the coming winter might be felt hovering in the air, major Marvel again made his appearance at Yrndale, but not quite the man he was; he had a troubled manner, and an expression on his face such as Mrs. Raymount had never before seen there: it was the look of one who had an unpleasant duty to discharge—a thing to do he would rather not do, but which it would cost him far more to leave undone. He had brought the things he promised, every one, and at sight of them Mark had brightened up amazingly. At table he tried to be merry as before, but failed rather conspicuously, drank more wine than was his custom, and laid the blame on the climate. His chamber was over that of his host and hostess, and they heard him walking about for hours in the night. There was something on his mind that would not let him sleep! In the morning he appeared at the usual hour, but showed plain marks of a sleepless night. When condoled with he answered he must seek a warmer climate, for if it was like this already, what would it be in January?
It was in reality a perfect autumn morning, of which every one except the major felt the enlivening influence—the morning of all mornings for a walk! Just as Hester was leaving the room to get ready to go with Saffy—Mark was not able for a long walk—the major rose, and overtaking her in the anteroom, humbly whispered the request that she would walk with him alone, as he much wished a private conversation with her. Hester, though with a little surprise, also a little undefined anxiety, at once consented, but ran first to her mother.
"What can he want to talk to me about, mamma?" she concluded.
"How can I tell, my dear?" answered her mother with a smile. "Perhaps he will dare the daughter's refusal too."
"Oh, mamma! how can you joke about such a thing!"
"I am not quite joking, my child. There is no knowing what altogether unsuitable things men will do!—Who can blame them when they see how women consent to many unsuitable things!"
"But, mamma, he is old enough to be my father!"
"Of course he is! Poor man! it would be a hard fate to have fallen in love with both mother and daughter in vain!"
"I won't go with him, mamma!"
"You had better go, my dear. You need not be much afraid. He is really a gentleman, however easily mistaken for something else. You must not forget how much we owe him for Mark!"
"Do you mean, mamma," said Hester, with a strange look out of her eyes, "that I ought to marry him if he asks me?" Hester was sometimes oddly stupid for a moment as to the intent of those she knew best.
Her mother laughed heartily.
"What a goose you are, my darling! Don't you know your mother from a miscreant yet?"
But in truth her mother so rarely jested that there was some excuse for her. Relieved from the passing pang of a sudden dread, Hester went without more words and put on her bonnet to go with the cause of it. She did not like the things at all, for no one could be certain what absurd thing he might not do.
They set out together, but until they were some distance from the house walked in absolute silence, which seemed to Hester to bode no good. But how changed the poor man was, she thought. It would be pitiful to have to make him still more miserable! Steadily the major marched along, his stick under his arm like a sword, and his eyes looking straight before him.
"Cousin Hester," he said at length, "I am about to talk to you very strangely—to conduct myself indeed in a very peculiar manner. Can you imagine a man rendering himself intensely, unpardonably disagreeable, from the very best of motives?"
It was a speech very different from any to be expected of him. That he should behave oddly seemed natural—not that he should knowingly intend to do so!
"I think I could," answered Hester, wishing neither to lead him on nor to deter him: whatever he had to say, the sooner it was said the better!
"Tell me," he said suddenly after a pause just beginning to be awkward—then paused again. "—Let me ask you first," he resumed, "whether you are able to trust me a little. I am old enough to be your father—let me say your grandfather;—fancy I am your grandfather: in my soul I believe neither could wish you well more truly than myself. Tell me—trust me and tell me: what is there between you and Mr. Vavasor?"
Hester was silent. The silence would have lasted but a moment had Hester to ask herself, not what answer she should give to his question, but what answer there was to give to it. Whether bound, whether pleased to answer it or not, might have come presently, but it did not; every question has its answer, known or unknown: what was the answer to this one? Before she knew it, the major resumed.
"I know," he said, "ladies think such things are not to be talked about with gentlemen; but there are exceptions to every rule: David ate the show-bread because there was a good reason for breaking a good rule.—Are you engaged to Mr. Vavasor?"
"No," answered Hester promptly.
"What is it then? Are you going to be?"
"If I answered that in the affirmative," said Hester, "would it not be much the same as acknowledging myself already engaged?"
"No! no!" cried the major vehemently. "So long as your word is not passed you remain free. The two are as far asunder as the pole from the equator. I thank God you are not engaged to him!"
"But why?" asked Hester, with a pang of something like dread. "Why should you be so anxious about it?"
"Has he never said he loved you?" asked the major eagerly.
"No," said Hester hurriedly. She felt instinctively it was best to answer directly where there was no reason for silence. What he might be wrong to ask she was not therefore wrong to answer. But her No trembled a little, for the doubt came with it, whether though literally, it was strictly true. "We are friends," she added. "We trust each other a good deal."
"Trust him with nothing, least of all your heart, my dear," said the major earnestly. "Or if you must trust him, trust him with anything, with everything, except that. He is not worthy of you."
"Do you say so to flatter me or to disparage him?"
"Entirely to disparage him. I never flatter."
"You did not surely bring me out, major Marvel, to hear evil of one of my best friends?" said Hester, now angry.
"I certainly did—if the truth be evil—but only for your sake. The man I do not feel interest enough in to abuse even. He is a nobody."
"That only proves you do not know him: you would not speak so if you did," said Hester, widening the space between her and the major, and ready to choke with what in utterance took such gentle form.
"I am confident I should have worse to say if I knew him better. It is you who do not know him. It astonishes me that sensible people like your father and mother should let a fellow like that come prowling after you!"
"Major Marvel, if you are going to abuse my father and mother as well as lord Gartley,—" cried Hester, but he interrupted her.
"Ah, there it is!" exclaimed he bitterly. "Lord Gartley!—I have no business to interfere—no more than your gardener or coachman! but to think of an angel like you in the arms of a–"
"Major Marvel!"
–"I beg ten thousand pardons, cousin Hester! but I am so damnably in earnest I can't pick and choose my phrases. Believe me the man is not worthy of you."
"What have you got against him?—I do hate backbiting! As his friend I ask you what you have against him."
"That's the pity of it! I can't tell you anything very bad of him. But a man of whom no one has anything good to say—one of whom never a warm word is uttered—"
"I have called him my friend!" said Hester.
"That's the worst of it! If it were not for that he might go to the devil for me!—I daresay you think it a fine thing he should have stuck to business so long!
"He was put to that before there was much chance of his succeeding; his aunt would not have him on her hands consuming the money she meant for the earldom. His elder brother would have had it, but he killed himself before it fell due: there are things that must not be spoken of to young ladies. I don't say your friend has disgraced himself; he has not: by George, it takes a good deal for that in his set! But not a soul out of his own family cares two-pence for him."
"There are some who are better liked everywhere than at home, and they're not the better sort," said Hester. "That goes for less than nothing. I know the part of him chance acquaintances cannot know. He does not bear his heart on his sleeve. I assure you, major Marvel, he is a man of uncommon gifts and—"
"Great attractions, no doubt—to me invisible," blurted the major.
Hester turned from him.
"I am going home," she said. "—Luncheon is at the usual hour."
"Just one word," cried he, hurrying after her. "I swear by the living God I have no purpose or hope in interfering but to save you from a miserable future. Promise me not to marry this man, and I will settle on you a thousand a year—safe. You shall have the principal down if you prefer."
Hester walked the faster.
"Hear me," he went on, in an agony of entreaty mingled with something like anger.
"I mean it," he continued. "Why should I not for Helen's child!"
He was a yard or two behind her. She turned on him with a glance of contempt. But the tears were in his eyes, and her heart smote her. He had abused her friend, but was plainly honest himself. Her countenance changed as she looked at him. He came up to her. She laid her hand on his arm, and said—
"Dear major Marvel, I will speak to you without anger. What would you think of one who took money to do the thing she ought to do? I will not ask you what you would think of one who took money to do the thing she ought not to do! I would not promise not to marry a beggar from the street. It might be disgraceful to marry the beggar; it must be disgraceful to promise not!"
"Yes, yes, my dear! you are quite right—absolutely right," said the major humbly. "I only wanted to make you independent. You don't think half enough of yourself.—But I will dare one more question before I give you up; is he going to ask you to marry him?"
"Perhaps. I do not know."
"One more question yet: can you secure any liberty? Will your father settle anything upon you?"
"I don't know. I have never thought about anything of the kind."
"How could they let you go about with him so much and never ask him what he meant by it?"
"They could easier have asked me what I meant by it!"
"If I had such a jewel I would look after it!"
"Have me shut up like an eastern lady, I suppose," said Hester, laughing; "make my life miserable to make it safe. If a woman has any sense, major Marvel, she can take care of herself; if she has not, she must learn the need of it."
"Ah!" said the major sadly, "but the thousand pangs and aches and heart-sickenings! I would sooner see my child on the funeral pyre of a husband she loved, than living a merry life with one she despised!"
Hester began to feel she had not been doing the major justice.
"So would I!" she said heartily. "You mean me well, and I shall not forget how kind you have been. Now let us go back."
"Just one thing more: if ever you think I can help you, you will let me know?"
"That I promise with all my heart," she answered.
"I mean," she added, "if it be a thing I count it right to trouble you about."
The major's face fell.
"I see!" he said; "you won't promise anything. Well, stick to that, and don't promise."
"You wouldn't have me come to you for a new bonnet, would you?"
"By George! shouldn't I be proud to fetch you the best in Regent street by the next train!"
"Or saddle the pony for me?"
"Try me.—But I won't have any more chaff. I throw myself on your generosity, and trust you to remember there is an old man that loves you, and has more money than he knows what to do with."
"I think," said Hester, "the day is sure to come when I shall ask your help. In the meantime, if it be any pleasure to you to know it, I trust you heartily. You are all wrong about lord Gartley though. He is not what you think him."
She gave him her hand. The major took it in his own soft small one—small enough almost for the hilt of an Indian tulwar—and pressed it devoutly to his lips. She did not draw it away, and he felt she trusted him.
Now that the hard duty was done, and if not much good yet no harm had resulted, he went home a different man. A pang of fear for Hester in the power of "that ape Gartley" would now and then pass through him; but he had now a right to look after her, and who can tell what might not turn up!