MISGIVINGS
The day after Felix Muller's visit to Rufus the squire and his family
returned to the Hall. The news soon spread through St. Gaved that the
big house was alive once more, and that the captain was expected home in
time to eat his Christmas dinner with the family. Rufus heard the news
with a curious thrill, but whether of pain or of pleasure it would be
hard to say.
His heart had been aching for a sight of Madeline's face ever since she
went away. And yet there were times when he desired above all things
that he might never look into her eyes again. Pain was not to be cured
by additional pain. To see Madeline would not appease the hunger, it
would only increase it. Hence to keep out of her way would be the wise
thing for him; to avoid the field-path in front of the park, and the
familiar road across the downs and round by the cliffs. If they met she
would be sure to speak, and the very sound of her voice would awaken
into life all the wild longings of his soul once more. It was far
better, therefore, for him that they never met.
Besides, it was more than probable that by this time she was the
promised wife of Gervase Tregony. He was coming home to claim her and
coming home at express speed. Was he delighted at the prospect, he
wondered. Did he love her as she deserved to be loved?
"Oh, if it had only been my lot to win so sweet a soul," he said to
himself. "Is it true, I wonder, that we always long most passionately
for the impossible?"
For several days he kept close to business, never venturing out of doors
till after sunset. Once he thought he passed her in the bright
moonlight, and his heart almost stopped, but he never paused in his
walk, never looked back; indeed he strode on with a longer and quicker
stride, and did not breathe freely again till a sharp bend in the road
prevented any possibility of recognition.
When he yielded to the witchery of her presence before, there was some
excuse for his doing so, but all the circumstances were different now.
He had no excuse to-day, no right. His tenure of life hung on a thread.
His chance of success was growing less hopeful day by day.
Even if Madeline were free and within his reach he would have no right
to speak to her of love. While this sword of Damocles was suspended over
his head he was bound in honour to be silent. But since she was neither
free nor within his reach, and he was walking across a volcano that at
any moment might burst open beneath his feet, it would be the part of a
madman to put himself in her way if there was any chance of keeping out
of it.
So he pursued his work with all the earnestness and intensity he could
command, but he was conscious all the time that something had gone out
of his life. The enthusiasm that springs from certainty had left him,
the chill and lethargy of doubt had crept into his blood. Instead of
constantly dwelling on the delights of success, he found himself
brooding over the prospect of failure, and wondering what lay beyond the
grim shadow of death.
By a curious combination of circumstances both life and death had become
doubly hard to contemplate. Success had once been his dream. To-day
success of itself seemed nothing. The one thing that was of value, that
would have turned earth into heaven was love. He would have courted
failure--gloried in it--if failure would have given him Madeline. But
since Madeline was denied him, neither success nor failure mattered
much, and life and death were both robbed of the light of hope. He told
himself one minute that he did not care to live since Madeline could
never be his, and the next minute he dreaded the thought of death, since
death would blot out the sight of her and the thought of her for ever
and ever. So, in whatever direction he looked, he found neither solace
nor inspiration.
The thing that spurred him on from day to day was not so much the hope
of victory as the humiliation of defeat. There was any number of people
in St. Gaved who had no sympathy whatever with him in his ambitions,
whose invincible creed was that a man ought to be content to remain in
that state of life to which it had pleased God to call him. These people
had expressed themselves with great freedom and candour on his folly in
giving up a good position at the mine, and devoting all his time and
energy to something in the clouds; and which, in all likelihood, would
never be of any benefit to man or beast.
Rufus used to smile at the criticisms of these people, and anticipate
the day when he would stand proud and triumphant before them. Now he
began to fear that the day might come when they would triumph over him,
when they would expand their chests and smile wisely, and say to their
neighbours: "There, didn't we tell you so?" It was rather with the
object of preventing such a triumph than of winning any triumph for
himself that he toiled on from day to day, throwing into his work more
of the energy of despair than the inspiration of hope.
Meanwhile Madeline had been suffering from what she called "an acute
attack of the blues." For no sufficient reason, so she admitted to
herself, she became restless and peevish, and generally discontented.
She was not ill. Generally speaking, her appetite was as good as it had
been, while her energy was greater than ever. But for some reason
nothing satisfied her--things that at one time she would have gone into
ecstacies over barely interested her. She was in the mood to be pleased
at nothing, and to find fault with everything.
That this condition of things began on the day Sir Charles took her to
task for visiting Rufus Sterne she was well aware; but why it should
have continued was a puzzle. She had been angry with Sir Charles at the
moment it was true, but after a day's reflection she had been led to see
that he was perfectly in the right. Moreover Sir Charles had behaved
very handsomely all the way through. She was convinced that it was very
largely on her account that they went to London for the autumn, and
while in London she had scarcely a wish that was not gratified. She had
gone to receptions and balls and dinners by the dozen. She had been
taken to every place of interest she wanted to see. She had blossomed
out into what she termed "a tame celebrity," and had had more
compliments showered upon her than ever before in her life, yet, in
spite of all this, she was not happy. Indeed, after a few weeks, she
tired utterly of London and wanted to return again to Trewinion Hall.
That however, was shown to be an impossibility. The house had been taken
practically till the end of the year, and the servants at Trewinion
Hall had been put on board wages till Christmas.
"Are you sure you are quite well, Madeline?" Sir Charles said to her,
when she preferred her request.
"Quite sure," she replied. "In fact I was never better in my life."
"Then why do you want to go back to the Hall?"
"Oh! I don't know. This endless whirl and excitement has got on my
nerves, I think."
"But you complained of Cornwall getting on your nerves some time ago."
"Did I? Well, it did seem rather flat and tame at first."
"No, it was not at the beginning. You were delighted with it on your
arrival----"
"And I am still," she interrupted. "I think it is just too lovely for
anything."
"But have you really got tired of London life?"
"I think it is too stupid for words. Oh! no, I don't mean that exactly.
Pardon me, Sir Charles"--seeing the pained look in his eyes--"I won't
complain any more if I can help it, I won't really."
"I am very anxious that you should enjoy yourself all you possibly can.
Beryl is dreading the time when she will have to go back again."
"She knows so many people," Madeline said, reflectively.
"And you have made hosts of acquaintances, have you not?"
"Yes, acquaintances, but they don't mean anything. I never realised
before, I think, how many people there are in the world, and how many
things there are in the world I can do without."
"That oughtn't to be a very startling discovery," he said, with a
smile.
"But you don't feel it in a place like St. Gaved," she said. "There
everybody seems necessary to everybody else."
"Indeed?" he questioned, dryly.
"Well, I mean that in a little community where each one plays his part,
and each one's part is known to all the rest----"
"Yes?" he questioned, seeing she hesitated.
"Oh! I can't explain myself very well, but you must know very well what
I mean."
"No; really you flatter me," he said, in a tone of banter, "for in
reality your meaning is quite beyond me."
"Then I must be stupider than I thought," she answered, with a pout, and
relapsed into silence.
Sir Charles was not only perplexed, he was more or less troubled. If he
dared he would have been angry, but he knew that anger would defeat the
particular end he had in view. Whatever Madeline might or might not be
she was not the kind of person to be coerced. She might be led in many
directions, but no one could drive her. At the least suggestion of the
lash, she would jib and back, and nothing short of physical force would
move her a step forward.
Hence Sir Charles had felt from the first that his task was one of
extreme difficulty and delicacy. Moreover, every day as it passed
increased the difficulty. Madeline was swiftly growing out of girlhood
into womanhood, and the things that fascinated her as a girl quickly
palled upon her as a woman, and Sir Charles was growing desperately
afraid lest when she saw Gervase again she might be disillusioned, as
she evidently had been in other matters.
He was more troubled also than he liked to confess over her intimacy
with Rufus Sterne. He could not forget the romantic circumstances under
which they had met, the signal service he had rendered her, and the long
weeks of suffering and idleness that followed as a consequence, and on a
romantic and generous nature like Madeline's, these things would make an
abiding impression. For that reason he had got her away from St. Gaved
as quickly as possible after he had made the discovery that she was in
the habit of visiting him, and for the same reason he intended to keep
her away until within a few days of his son's return.
Sir Charles had counted so long on annexing the American heiress for his
son, that any thought of failure now was too humiliating to be
entertained. It was his last hope of rehabilitating Trewinion Hall, and
the historic name of Tregony. Gervase's record was of such a character
that no English heiress would look at him unless, indeed, he consented
to marry the daughter of a tradesman, and even in such case as that his
chances would be very doubtful.
The beautiful thing about an American heiress was that nobody inquired
into her antecedents. So long as she had the requisite number of dollars
nothing else mattered. Her father might be a pork-butcher, or a
pawnbroker, or an oilman; that was no barrier to his daughter becoming a
countess or even a duchess.
Poor as Sir Charles was, he would have fainted at the idea of Gervase
marrying the daughter of a Redbourne tradesman, however rich or
beautiful or accomplished she might be. The very suggestion of "trade"
was an offence to his aristocratic nostrils. But Madeline came from a
country where the only aristocracy was that of cash, hence by virtue of
her uncounted millions she was eligible for the highest positions on
this side the water. The logic might not be very sound, but it was
satisfying. If the Earl of this and the Duke of that had regilded their
coronets with American dollars, why might not he refurbish the Tregony
coat of arms with the same precious metal? The reasoning appeared to him
to be without a flaw.
Moreover, there was the additional argument of necessity. In consequence
of the low price of corn along with nearly all other articles of food,
agriculture was in a terribly depressed condition. In other words, the
farmer could pay only about half the amount in rent that he would be
able to do if wheat and barley, and bacon and butter, stood at twice
their present prices.
Sir Charles always grew white with anger when he thought of the foolish
men who, in a previous generation, abolished the corn-laws and gave
cheap food to the people.
"Look at me," he would say; "my rent roll is only about one-half of what
it was in my father's day, and there are hundreds and thousands of the
best families up and down the country who have been reduced in
circumstances by the same means. What the Government ought to do is to
put a high duty on all imported corn and foodstuffs, that would send up
the price of English wheat, and English beef, and everything else that
is English, and so give the English nobility a chance of getting out of
their estates all that they are capable of producing."
The logic of this, if not quite sound, was also satisfying from his
point of view. There seemed, however, no prospect just then that the
food of the people would be taxed for the benefit of the noble and
indispensable class to which he belonged. The working classes for some
selfish reason, appeared to object to it. They were possessed by the
stupid idea that the higher their wages and the cheaper their food, the
better off they would be; and against such unreasoning prejudice as
that, logic spent its strength in vain.
Failing, therefore, any Government help in the shape of protection, he
would have to guard his interests in some other way, and Madeline
appeared to be an excellent way out of the difficulty. In fact, she
almost reconciled him to the idea of free imports. If England had
suffered loss through the importation of American wheat, it was only
fair that England should be compensated by having the pick of America's
richest and fairest women. Since there was no duty on corn, it was only
just and right that heiresses should be free.
But as the time drew near when Sir Charles hoped to see the full
fruition of his little scheme, he grew increasingly nervous. Until the
last few weeks everything had gone as smoothly as heart could desire.
Madeline seemed like a ripe apple that would drop directly the tree was
touched. Without any undue influence, with scarcely a suggestion from
anyone, she was inclining in the very direction most desired.
Then suddenly she had become captious and uncertain. The moment she
reached the point when she was desired to make up her mind definitely
she drew back. The increasing warmth of the Captain's letters she had
appeared to reciprocate to the full. She had talked about him with a
simple ingenuousness that had delighted the baronet's heart. The
proposal seemed to have arrived in the very nick of time. She had
gathered from Sir Charles, in detached fragments, the full story of her
father's wish in the matter. She had been given one glimpse of London,
with its life and gaiety, she had been supplied with every newspaper
cutting that spoke of Captain Tregony's prowess as a hunter of big game,
and she had tacitly accepted the situation, as though Providence had
shaped her lot, and shaped it to her entire satisfaction. And then she
hesitated, and became silent, and demanded time for further
consideration.
Sir Charles had broached the subject in the most delicate manner
possible when they happened to be alone. Gervase's letter to the family
had been left on the drawing-room table. The Baronet picked it up and
read it again.
"Gervase seems terribly impatient to get home this time," he remarked,
casually.
Madeline glanced up from her book, but did not reply.
"I really do not wonder," Sir Charles went on. "Poor old boy, it is
nearly three years since he saw you, and he must be pining for a sight
of your face."
"He seems a little home-sick," Madeline said, indifferently.
"I don't think it is that altogether. Now that he has definitely
proposed to you, it brings all the longing to a head, if I may say so. I
hope you have written to him and put an end to his suspense?"
"No, I have not replied yet. I thought of writing this afternoon."
"I wish you would; I am sorry you have not written before."
"I have been too busy with other things, Sir Charles."
"Oh, well, I am not complaining, my dear. Take your own time, of course.
But, naturally, I feel for my son, and I know how anxious he will be. It
will be nice for him to meet you here in his ancestral home as his
affianced wife."
"I suppose it would simplify matters, wouldn't it?"
"It would simplify matters a very great deal," Sir Charles said, in a
tone of relief. "There is no reason why you should not go away on the
Continent in the early spring for your honeymoon, and so escape our
bitter east winds."
"That would be lovely, wouldn't it?"
"Lovely! Ah! well, I almost envy you young people. If one could only be
young a second time how much he would appreciate it! But I will not
detain you now if you are going to write letters," and he thrust
Gervase's epistle into his pocket, and walked slowly out of the room.
Later in the day he discovered that instead of writing letters she had
been visiting Rufus Sterne at St. Gaved, and his anger almost got the
better of him. By a tremendous effort, however, he kept himself well in
hand, and talked to her with a seriousness that did full justice to the
occasion.
Two days later he learned that she had not yet replied to Gervase's
letter; he made no remark, however, but on the following day he made a
proposition that they should spent the late autumn in London.
The experiment, however, had not been altogether satisfactory. Madeline
had not been at all like her old self. She was moody and absent-minded,
and by no means easy to please. That she had written to Gervase he knew,
and written more than once, but she gave no hint to anyone of the nature
of her communications.
Sir Charles hoped for the best, but he was troubled all the time by
serious misgivings. Her very uncommunicativeness was a disturbing
factor. Several times he was strongly tempted to put a point-blank
question to her; but when it came to the point his courage failed him.
Moreover, his reason told him that the more anxious he appeared to be
the more stubborn and intractable she would become. The only thing he
could do was to wait patiently until Gervase's return, and trust to
luck or Providence for what would follow.
Madeline welcomed the morning of their departure from London more
eagerly than any of the others. She was tired of the big city, with its
murk and gloom, its dreary streets and muddy crossings, and its
never-ceasing roar and turmoil. She longed for the "clean country," as
she expressed it, with its quietness and peace and far distances. In
truth, she hardly knew what she longed for. Some day her desire would
take definite shape, then she would understand.