HOW MARGARET AND TITA TREAD MANY PATHS; AND HOW FORTUNE, HAVING
TURNED HER BACK ON TITA, SHOWS A SMILING FRONT TO MAURICE.
It is six months later, and now fair May has come to us on young and
eager feet. On young feet barely born, and with a smile so slight
that one dare hardly call it sunshine. At this moment a little gleam
of it, just strong enough to make one dream of summer, but not
enough to warm one, is stealing timidly though the windows of
Margaret's smaller drawing-room in Park Lane.
She had taken Tita abroad almost immediately after the rupture at
Oakdean, explaining to their mutual friends that it was necessary
for Tita's health that she should winter in the south. An
explanation received face to face with delicate appreciation and
warm sympathy, and much laughed over later on. Poor old Margaret! As
if one didn't _know!_ As if one couldn't _see!_ That cousin, you
know! He was--he really _was_ far too good-looking. And then this
sudden loss of fortune! After all, these unequal marriages never
_do_. Rylton plainly was tired of her, and when the money
went--well, then Margaret took her off his hands. Of course Margaret
was better than the cousin--more respectable. This brilliant bit of
wit was received with much soft smothered mirth. But as for
Rylton--he certainly had not come well out of it. A fellow should
stick to his bargain, any way. He had married her for her money, and
that gone, had shaken himself free. It was certainly playing it a
little low down. By the way, wouldn't Mrs. Bethune be singing hymns
over it all! _Such_ a downfall to her rival! There was a good deal
of gossip about it, here and there.
Mrs. Chichester, who has a heart somewhere in her lean, frivolous
body, had come all the way up from Devonshire, where she was then
falsely beguiling a most unlucky young curate, to see Margaret, on
the latter's way through town, and express her sorrow for Tita. She
had honestly liked Tita, and she said to Margaret many kindly things
about her. So many, and so kindly indeed, that Margaret almost
forgave her that reprehensible flirtation with Captain Marryatt. But
then Margaret, at that time, knew nothing of the luckless curate!
The greatest surprise of all, however, came from old Miss Gower.
Popularly she had been supposed to hate Tita, and resent her
marriage with Rylton, who was a relative of hers; but five days
after the _fiasco,_ as Randal called it, Rylton had a letter from
her that somewhat startled him. It was extremely abusive, and rather
involved; but the meaning of it was that he ought to be ashamed of
himself, and that Tita was too good for him. She wound up with a few
very rude remarks directed at Mrs. Bethune, and a hope that Tita
would stick to her determination to cast off the tyrant--_Man_ (the
capital was enormous), as personified by Maurice.
Rylton wasn't in the least annoyed by this letter; indeed, it
somewhat puzzled him to find that he rather liked it, and he put it
away in his private drawer, amongst the papers he cared for.
Margaret had taken Tita to Rome, and thence to Constantinople. She
had kept her moving about from place to place, hoping to clear her
mind of all past deadly thoughts by constant change. She had a hope
that by breaking off all old associations, the girl might come to
think of the past--and Maurice--in a more gentle, lenient light, and
thus be prepared for a reconciliation in the future. To Margaret it
seemed terrible that these two young people should be for ever
apart--their lives ruined, their social position smirched.
A long separation from her own country--her own circle--might lead
Tita to desire a return to it--a return to her husband and her home.
Alas! not to the old home, however. She might desire a return to
that with all her soul, yet nothing would come of it. It was gone!
Gone past recall! When Tita's affairs were wound up, it was found
that all should be sold, not only her other two houses, but the old
home--the one beloved of her childhood. Oakdean came to the hammer a
month ago!
Indeed, out of all her large fortune only a bare £300 a year was
saved for the poor little heiress of yesterday! When Tita was
assured that even this small sum was honourably hers, she had
insisted on her lawyers writing and offering half of it to
Maurice--an offer I need hardly say refused. Maurice declined,
naturally, but, unfortunately, very rudely, to touch a penny of
hers.
So far Tita was protected from actual poverty--poverty was much
closer to Maurice at this time than to her; and, indeed, being with
Margaret, who loved her from her heart, and would hear no word of
her leaving her, hardly felt the change in her position. The loss of
the old home--of Oakdean--had been, so far as Margaret could see,
the one thing that had deeply affected her. Of Maurice she would
hardly talk at all, but of Oakdean she would talk by the hour.
The wheels of law grind slowly, and it was not until last month that
the actual sale of her beautiful home took place. The news came to
her when she and Margaret were at Berne on their homeward way, and
she had quite broken down. She had cried terribly over it night and
day--so much, indeed, that Margaret, who had been astonished at her
strength of mind over her loss of fortune, now began to regard her
as devoid of it altogether. For days and days she fretted, eating
scarcely anything, caring for nothing. It was when Margaret was
almost in despair about her that she grew better, and let herself be
amused by the ordinary occurrences of the day.
As for Rylton, these past six months had been the fullest of his
life. Time had made him his shuttlecock. Fortune had played with
him. It had caught him when he was up in the world and flung him to
the ground, and after that had seized him afresh, and sent him
flying to a higher altitude than he had ever known before. As a
fact, three months had not elapsed after his parting with his wife
when his uncle (a comparatively young man) had died of typhoid
fever, leaving him all his property.
It seemed the very irony of fate. A year ago, if he had had this
money, he would not have even _seen_ Tita. The marriage was an
arrangement of his mother's, and now that he has got this money, of
what good is it to him? His wife is gone, yet he still is wedded.
The first sense of comfort he got from his newly-acquired fortune
was the thought that he could now give Tita some of it.
But Tita would none of it! The very fact that their cases had been
so suddenly and so marvellously reversed made her the more strong in
her determination to spurn any gift from him. She was now sitting on
the lowest rung of Fortune's ladder, whilst he stood at the top;
but, for all that, she would take nothing from him. Rylton wrote to
Margaret, who scolded Tita vigorously to no end; and so the matter
stood. The first instalment of a very magnificent allowance was paid
into Tita's bank, and rested there untouched, doing no good to
anybody.
"It is senseless! As his wife, you are entitled to some of his
money. It is not a gift," said Margaret angrily.
But Tita had laughed, and tore his letter to Margaret in two.
"He wouldn't take my small gift," said she, alluding to that offer
of hers of the half of her tiny income. "And now it does me _good_
to be able to refuse his big one."
"But it isn't a gift; it is your right," Margaret urged again; but
all in vain.
Now they are back once more in England. Ten days ago they arrived,
and are this morning in Margaret's pretty room that is half filled
with growing plants, moving about from this flower to that, and
feeling unconsciously little thrills of delight in the fresh
sweetness of the morning.
"Spring goeth all in white,
Crowned with milk-white May;
In fleecy flocks of light,
O'er heaven the white clouds stray.
"White butterflies in the air,
White daisies prank the ground;
The cherry and the hoary pear
Scatter their snow around."
Well, there are no cherry-trees or hoary pear-trees here, but the
perfume of the delicate lilac comes to them from the Park, telling
them that spring is reigning, even in this dusty old city, with a
right royal gaiety.
Twice during these ten days Rylton has called, always asking
scrupulously for Margaret; and Margaret only has he seen. Hescott
had called once, but Tita would not see him either, and poor
Margaret had a rather dreadful interview with him. He had offered
her in a frantic, foolish moment, half of all he was worth to be
given from him to Tita, and Margaret had a good deal of difficulty
in explaining to him that Tita, in reality, was as well off as any
young woman need be. Margaret even exaggerated somewhat, and told
him that she had a large sum lying idle in a bank--as indeed she
had, considering Rylton paid in his princely allowance to her, with
determined punctuality, every month, in spite of his knowledge of
the fact that she would not touch it. Margaret suffered a good deal
through Hescott, and was devoutly grateful when she learned the
morning after his visit to her that he had started for a prolonged
tour in South Africa. She learned this from himself in a somewhat
incoherent letter, and a paragraph in the papers the day after set
her mind at rest. Margaret was a Christian, or she might have found
consolation in the thought that there are lions in South Africa!
She watched Tita anxiously for a day or two after this, but could
not see that the girl was distressed at Tom's departure. She talked
of him, indeed, very freely--always a good sign.
* * * * *
"Tita, do you hear the birds?" says Margaret, in quite a little
excited way. "Come here to this window. How they sing!"
"Don't they!" says Tita rapturously.
Her face lights up, but presently she looks a little sad.
"It makes you long for the country?" asks Margaret gently, looking
at her without seeming to do so.
"No," says Tita, shaking her head resolutely; and then: "Yes--yes.
But I shall always hate to go to it now--now that the dear old home
is gone."
"I wish I had been able to buy it!" says Margaret regretfully.
"Oh, Meg, don't go on like that! You--you who have been everything
to me!"
"I wasn't rich enough," says Margaret ruefully; "and, at all events,
I wasn't in time. I confess now I sold out some shares a little time
ago with a view to getting it, but I was too late; it was bought--a
private sale, they said."
"There is nothing I can say--nothing," says Tita, tears dimming her
eyes. "Why are you so good to me? Oh, Meg! there is one, one
thing--I love you, and love you, and love you!" She slips her soft
arms round Margaret's neck, and presses her cheek to hers. There is
moisture on Margaret's face when this little burst of gratitude has
been accomplished. "I never loved anyone as I love you," says Tita.
"There is someone else you ought to love better, Tita."
"There is someone else I _hate,"_ returns Tita, with really
astonishing promptitude.
"Well, about Oakdean," says Margaret quickly, appalled by this
outbreak of wrath.
"There is nothing about it; it is gone," says Tita, in a forlorn
sort of way; then: "I wonder who bought it?"
"I don't know. I asked, but I could not find out. Some rich
merchant, no doubt."
"Well," sighing, "a rich merchant bought it before--my poor
father--and to a rich merchant it has gone. That is as it should be.
Still, it was so pretty, so lovely, so homelike, that I wish----"
"What, darling?"
"That it had been burnt to the ground before anyone else got it,"
breaks out Tita, in a little storm of grief and despair.
"Yes, I know; I can feel with you," says Margaret, pressing her back
into a chair, and hovering over her with loving touches and tender
words. "But, after all, Tita, one has to give up things daily. It is
life. Life is one long surrender."
"My surrender has been done in a bundle," says Tita indignantly.
"Other people do their surrenders by degrees, year after year; but
in _one_ year I have lost everything--my home, my money, my
husband."
Margaret notes with fear that she has put her husband last in the
list of her losses.
"Not that I care a fig about Maurice," continues Tita, with a tilt
of her chin that would have made any man admire her. "I was
delighted to get rid of _him."_ Then, glancing at Margaret, she
flings her arms round her neck again. "No; don't look at me like
that. I'm a wretch. But _really,_ Margaret, you know that Maurice
was a wretch, too!"
"Well, well!" says Margaret sadly. "It seems useless to defend
Maurice--you know how sorry I am for you always," she goes on
gently. "To come from riches to poverty is one of the worst things
the word offers; but to be very rich is not well, Tita. It clogs the
mind; it takes one away from the very meaning of life. Money hardens
the soul; it keeps one away from touch with the inner circle of
humanity--from the misery, the sorrow, the vice! It is bad to be too
rich."
"Yet you are rich, Margaret!"
"Yet--yes; and it frightens me," says she, in a low tone.
Tita rubs her cheek softly against hers.
"Yet _you_ are not far from the kingdom of God!" says she.
The little kittenish gesture and the solemn phrase! Margaret presses
Tita to her. What a strange child she is! What a mixture!
"Neither are you, I trust," says she.
"So you see riches have got nothing to do with it," says Tita,
breaking into a gay, irresistible little laugh.
Miss Knollys laughs too, in spite of herself, and then grows
suddenly very grave. There is something she must say to Tita.