Lady Markland had recovered in a great degree from the shock of her
husband's death. It had been, as Mrs. Warrender said, a shock rather
than a sorrow. There is no such reconciler of those who have been
severed, no such softener of the wounds which people closely connected
in life so often give to each other, as death. A long illness ending
so has often the effect of blotting out altogether the wrongs and
bitternesses of many troubled years. The unkind husband becomes once
more a hero, the child who has stung its parents to the quick a young
and tender saint, by that blessed process. Nor when death comes in a
moment is it of less avail. The horror, the pity, the intolerable pang
of sympathy, with which we realise what the sudden end must have been to
him who met it, without time to think, without time to repent, without
a moment to prepare himself for that incalculable change, affects every
mind, even that of the merest spectator; how much more that of one whom
the victim had left a few hours before with a careless word, perhaps an
insult, perhaps a jest! What changes of mood, what revelations, what
sudden adaptation to the supreme necessity, may come with the blow, the
spectator, even if he be nearest and dearest to the sufferer, cannot
know. He knows only what was and is, and his soul is overwhelmed with
pity. In that moment those who are most deeply injured forgive and
forget. They remember the time when all was well,--the sweet childhood,
the blooming youth, the first love, the halcyon days before trouble
came.
Lady Markland had felt this universal influence. But when she showed her
husband's portrait to Mrs. Warrender, it was not so much with a renewal
of love as with a great anguish of pity that her mind was filled. This
for a time veiled even in her mind the relief, which was not altogether
to be ignored even then, but which gradually gained upon her, yet still
with great gravity and pain. She was free from a bondage which had
become intolerable to her, which day by day she had felt herself less
able to bear; but this gain was at his cost. To gain anything at the
cost of another is painful to a generous mind; but to gain at such a
price,--the price as seemed not only of another's life, but of a life to
which it had seemed almost impossible that there could be any harmonious
completion or extension! For what could he do in another world, in a
world of spirits? He had been all fleshly; nothing in him that was not
of the earth. In the majority of cases it is a hard thing to understand
how a spirit, formed apparently for nothing but the uses of earth, should
be able to adapt itself in a moment to those occupations and interests
which are congenial to another state of existence; and with young Lord
Markland this was peculiarly the case. He had seemed to care for nothing
except things which he could not carry with him into the unseen. Had
other capacities, other desires, developed in a moment into the new
life? This is a question which no one could answer, and his wife could
only think of him as he had been. There seemed nothing but suffering,
deprivation, for him, in such a change. The wind, when it blew wildly of
nights, seemed to her like the moan of a wandering spirit trying vainly
to get back to the world which it understood, to the pleasures of which it
was capable. And had she bought relief and freedom by such a sacrifice
exacted from another? When comforters bid her believe that he had gone
to a better place, that it was her loss but his gain,--which in all
probability is true in all cases, not only in those of the saints whose
natural home is heaven,--her heart rose against them, and contradicted
them, though she said nothing. It was--alas that it should be so!--her
gain. She dared not, even to herself, deny that; but how could it be
his--a man who had no thought but of the beggarly elements of life, no
aspiration beyond its present enjoyments? and it was by this dreadful
overturn in his existence, this taking from him of everything he cared
for, that she had been made free. Such a thought as this is more
terrible than sorrow, it is sadder than death. It left her for a long
time very grave, full of something which was almost remorse, as if she
had done it; wondering whether God himself could make up to poor
Geoffrey, who had never thought of Him, for the loss of everything which
he had ever thought of or cared for. She could not confide this thought
to any spiritual guide,--and indeed she was not a woman to whom a
spiritual guide was possible. Her problems, her difficulties, remained
in her own breast, where she worked them out as she could, or, perhaps,
in process of time, forgot them, which, in the darkness of human
understanding, was probably the better way.
But in one respect he had been just, nay, generous, to his wife. He had
left the burdened estates, the no-money, the guardianship of her child,
entirely to her. His old uncle, indeed, was associated with her in that
guardianship; but this was merely nominal, for old John Markland was
very indifferent, more interested in his own comforts than in all the
children in the world, and had no mind to interfere. She found herself
thus not only a free woman, but with what was equal to a new profession
upon her shoulders,--the care of her boy's fortune and of considerable
estates, though at the moment in as low a condition and as badly managed
as it was possible for estates to be. It was not the fault of Mr.
Longstaffe, who had all the business of the county in his hands, and
who had tried in vain to save from incumbrance the property which Lord
Markland had weighed down almost beyond redemption. Mr. Longstaffe,
indeed, when he heard of the fatal accident to his client, had been
unable to refrain from a quick burst of self-congratulation over a long
minority, before he composed his countenance to the distress and pity
which were becoming such an occasion. When the funeral was over, indeed,
he permitted himself to say piously that, though such an end was very
shocking, it was an intervention of Providence for the property, which
could not have stood another year of Lord Markland's going-on. He was
a little dubious of Lady Markland's wisdom in taking the burden of the
business upon her own shoulders; but on the whole he respected her and
her motives, and gave her all the help in his power. And Lady Markland
let no grass grow under her feet. She began proceedings at once with an
energy which nobody had expected from her. The horses were sold, and
the establishment reduced without any delay. The two other houses, both
expensive,--the villa in the Isle of Wight, the shooting-box in the
Highlands,--both of which had been necessary to Lord Markland's pursuits,
were let as soon as it was possible to secure tenants. And Geoff and his
mother began, in one wing of the big barracks at Markland, a life not
much different from their past life, except in so far that it was free
from interruption and anxiety. The pang of loss in such a case does not
last; and Lady Markland entered with all the zest of an active-minded
and intelligent woman into the work from which she had been debarred all
her previous life. No man, perhaps,--seeing that men can always find
serious occupation when they choose to do so,--can throw himself with
the same delight into unexpected work as such a woman can do, a woman to
whom it is salvation from many lesser miseries, as well as an advantage
in itself. She had known nothing hitherto, except that everything was
going badly, and that she was helpless to interfere, to arrest the ruin
which stared them in the face. And now to feel that she might stop that
ruin, might even make up for all the losses of the past, and place
her son in the position his father had lost, was a happiness beyond
description, and gave new life and exhilaration to all her thoughts.
This change, however, occasioned other changes, which marked the alteration
from the old life to the new with difficulties and embarrassments which
were inevitable. One of those, and the most important, has been already
indicated. It concerned Geoff. The change in Geoff's existence was
great. Into the morning-room, where his mother and he had constantly sat
together, where he had his lessons, where all the corners were full of
his toys, where his little life had been spent from morning till night
in such a close and absorbing companionship as can only exist between a
parent and an only child, there suddenly intruded things and thoughts
with which Geoff had little to do. First came a large writing table,
occupying the centre of the room, with all sorts of drawers full of
papers, and so many letters and notes and account-books that Geoff
looked with astonishment, mingled with awe and admiration, at the work
which went on upon it. "Did you write all these?" he said to his mother,
touching with a finger a pile of letters. He was proud of the achievement,
without remembering that he had himself sat very forlorn all the morning,
in the light of the great bow windows, with his lesson books, and had
asked a great many questions, without more response than a smile and a
"Presently, dear," from the mother who was generally so ready to meet
and reply to every word he said. Geoff kept his place in the window, as
he had always done, and after Lady Markland had got through her morning's
work there would be an attempt at the lessons, which heretofore had been
the pleasant occupation of the whole morning,--a delightful dialogue,
in which the mind of the teacher was as much stimulated as that of the
pupil, since Geoff conducted his own education by means of a multitude
of questions, to which it was not always very easy to reply. Under the
new _regime_, however, this long process was not possible, and the lessons
had to be said in a summary manner which did not at all suit Geoff's way
of thinking. He did not complain, but he was puzzled, turning it over in
his mind with slow but progressive understanding. The big writing-table
seemed typical to Geoff. It threw a deep shadow behind it, making the
thick, light-coloured, much-worn carpet, on which he had trotted all his
life, dark and gloomy, like the robbers' cave he had often found so much
difficulty in inventing in the lightness of the room. He had a robbers'
cave to his desire now in the dark, dark hole between the two lines of
drawers; but it was dearly bought.
Geoff, however, without being as yet quite clear in his mind as to his
grievance, had instinctively taken what means were in his power to make
up for it. There was that robbers' cave, for one thing, which had many
dramatic possibilities. And he was a boy who took a great interest in
his fellow-creatures, and liked to listen to talk, especially when it was
of a personal character. He was delighted to be there, notwithstanding
the strange silence to which he was condemned, when Dickinson, the
bailiff, came in to make his report and to receive his orders. Geoff
took the greatest interest in Dickinson's long-winded stories about what
was wanted in the village, the cottages that were tumbling to pieces,
the things that must be done for the farmers. Lady Markland was at first
greatly amused and delighted to see how her boy entered into everything,
and even made a gentle boast that Geoff understood better than she did.
It was only when Mr. Longstaffe and her clergyman simultaneously snubbed
her that this foolish woman came to herself. Mr. Longstaffe said, in his
brusque way, that he thought Master Geoff--he begged his pardon, little
Lord Markland--would be better at his lessons; while Mr. Scarsdale put
on a very grave air, and remarked that he feared Dickinson might have
things to tell his mistress which were not fit for a little boy's ears.
This last address had disconcerted the young mother sadly, and cost her
some tears; for she was as innocent as Geoff, and the idea that there
were in the village things to tell her that were unfit for the child's
ears threw her into daily terror, not only for him, but for herself.
This was one of the things that made it apparent that a new rule was
necessary. Her business grew day by day, as she began to understand it
better, and the lessons fell more and more into the background. Geoff
was the soul of loyalty, and did not complain. He developed a quite new
faculty of silence, as he sat at his table in the window, now and then
stealing a glance at her to see if she were free. That little figure,
seated against the light, was all that Lady Markland had to cheer her,
as she set out upon this new and stony path of life. He represented
everything that made her task possible and her burden grateful to her.
Without him always there in the background, what, she asked herself,
would existence be to her? She asked herself this question when it first
began to be suggested by her friends that Geoff should be sent to school.
It is one special feature in the change and downfall that happens to a
woman when she becomes a widow that all her friends find themselves at
liberty to advise her. However bad or useless her husband may be, so
long as he lives she is safe from this exercise of friendship; but
when he is dead all mouths are opened. Mr. Scarsdale paid her a visit
solemnly, in order to deliver his soul in this respect. "I came on
purpose," he said, as if that was an additional virtue, "to speak to
you, dear Lady Markland, very seriously about Geoff." And whether it was
by his own impulse, or because he was written to on the subject, and
inspired by zealous friends nearer home, old Mr. Markland wrote to his
dear niece in the same strain, assuring her that it would be far the
best thing to send him to school. To school! Her little delicate boy,
not nine till April, who had never been out of his mother's care! Lady
Markland suffered a great deal from these attacks, and she tried hard,
by getting up early, by sitting up late, to find time for Geoff, as of
old; but Geoff himself had fallen into the new ways, and the lessons
languished. What was she to do?
And then it was that the alternative of a tutor was suggested to her.
A tutor! That did not seem so terrible. She confided her troubles to
Warrender, who had fallen into the way of riding over to Markland two or
three times a week, of checking Dickinson's accounts for her, and
looking up little bits of law as between landlord and tenant, and doing
his best to make himself necessary; not with any deep-laid plan, but
only because to be near her, and serve her, was becoming more and more
the desire of his life. Warrender was not fond of Geoff. It is possible,
indeed, that his spirits rose with a sense of relief at the suggestion
of sending that inevitable third in all their interviews away; but he
was at that stage when the wish of a person beloved is strong enough in
a young mind to make all endurance possible, and to justify the turning
upside down of heaven and earth. He had replied boldly that there would
be nothing more easy than to find a tutor; that he himself would go
to town, and make inquiries; and that she need contemplate the other
dreadful alternative no more. Lady Markland was more grateful to Theo
than words could say, and she told all her friends, with a serene
countenance, that she had made up her mind to the tutor. It is a great
thing to have made up one's mind. It gave a satisfaction and calm to her
spirits that nothing else could have done. Indeed, she was so satisfied
that she avoided the subject thereafter, and said nothing more to
Warrender, who had constituted himself her agent, and took great care
not to question him about what he had been doing in London, when she
heard that he had been there. For after all, to come to a determination
is the great thing. The practical part may be put in operation at any
moment. What is really necessary is to make up one's mind.
Something of the same feeling moved Warrender when he returned from that
expedition to London, which has been already recorded. Dick Cavendish's
suggestion had been to him a suggestion from heaven. But when he returned
home, and as he began to think, there were a great many secondary matters
to be taken into account. He began to realise the interest that would be
taken by the entire county in a matter which did not concern them in the
very least. He realised the astonished look of his mother, and felt
already his ear transfixed by Minnie's persistent "Why?" Theo saw all
these hindrances by degrees. He said to himself, indignantly, that it
was nobody's business but his own, and that he hoped he was able to
judge for himself. But these reflections do not make an end of a
difficulty; they only show more distinctly a consciousness of it. And
thus it was that he put off making to Lady Markland the proposal he
intended to make, just as she, on her side, put off asking him whether
he had done anything in the matter. In the meantime, while the summer
lasted, there were many reasons and excuses for putting off from day to
day.