He and she stood in a room in an inn in the town of Hull--and how she
wept! Crying as a child cries, with a woman's feelings joining
exquisite pain to those tears; which tears, in a way wonderful and
peculiar to beautiful women, scarcely disordered her face, or gave
anything worse to her countenance than an indescribably pathetic
tenderness.
He was older than she was by full ten years. He only watched her. And
if the most acute of my readers had watched _him_, they would have
been no wiser for their scrutiny.
At last she left the room; he had opened the door and offered his hand
to her. It was night; and she changed her chamber-candle from her
right hand to her left, and gave that right hand to him. He held it,
while he said: "I spoke because I dread the influence of the house we
are going to, and of those whom you will meet there."
"Thank you. Good night" And so she got to a great dark bed-room, and
knelt down, like a good girl as she was, and cried no more, but was in
bed and asleep before he had left the place he had taken by the side
of the sitting-room fire, leaning thoughtfully against the
mantel-shelf, when her absence had made the room lonely.
Then he ran down stairs and rushed out into the streets of the kingly
Hull--Kingston of the day of Edward I. The man we speak of was no
antiquary, and he troubled himself neither with the Kingston of the
royal Edward nor the _Vaccaria_ of the abbot from whom the place was
bought; he walked at a quick pace through streets dim and streets
lighted, toward the ships, or among the houses; to where he could see
the great headland of Holderness, or behold nothing at all but the
brick wall that prevented his going further, and told him by strong
facts that he had lost his way. So he wandered, walking fast
often--again, walking slowly; his head bowed down, his features
working, and his eyes flashing--clenched hands, or hands clasped on
his breast, as if to keep down the surging waves of memory, which
carried on their crests many things which now he could only gnash his
teeth at in withering vexation.
He and she had come from Scotland. I have said that she was
beautiful--she was English, too; but he was Scotch born and bred, and
not dark and stem, or really wild or poetic, as a Scotchman in a story
ought to be. He was simply a strong, well-formed man, of dark, ruddy
complexion, and fine, thick, waving brown hair. He might have been a
nobleman, or a royal descendant of Hull's own king. He looked it all,
without being downright handsome. But he was, in fact, only one of the
many men who have come into a thousand a year too soon for the
preservation of prudence. Between sixteen, when he succeeded to it,
and twenty-one, when he could spend it, he had committed many follies,
and found friends who turned out worse than declared enemies--since
twenty-one he had fallen in love more than once. He had been
praised, blamed, accused, acquitted. But whether or not this man was
good or bad, no living soul could tell. He was well off, well looking,
well read, and in good company. He re-entered the inn at Hull that
April night, stood by the fire smoking, asked for a cup of strong
coffee, went to bed.
The next morning the two met at breakfast They were going south. No
matter where. Whether to the dreamy vales of Devonshire, to verdant
Somersetshire, or the gardens of Hampshire--no matter. They were going
to what the north Britons call the south. And it did not mean Algeria.
Railways were not everywhere then as railways are now. They had to
travel nearly all day, then to "coach it" to a great town, in whose
history coaches have now long been of the past. Then to get on a
second day by the old "fast four-horse," and to arrive about five
o'clock at a little quiet country town, where a carriage would take
them to the friends and the house whose influence he dreaded.
In fact, that night, in the inn sitting-room, he had offered marriage
to the girl whom he had in charge for safe guardianship on so long a
journey to her far-off home where he was to be a guest. She had felt
that he had abused his trust and taken an unfair advantage of her;
also, she was in that peculiarly feminine state of mind which is
neither expressed by _no_ nor by _yes_. She had upbraided him. He,
pleading guilty in his soul, was in a horror at the thought of losing
her; losing her in that way too, because he had done wrong. Being
miserable, he had shown his misery as a strong man may. He spoke, and
self-reproachfully; but, as he pleaded, he betrayed all he felt. The
girl saw his clasped hands, his bent form, as he leaned down from the
chair on which he sat in the straggling attitude which expressed a
disordered mind. He spoke, looking at the carpet, not loud nor long,
but with a terrible earnestness that frightened the girl, and then she
cried all the more, and seemed to shrink away as if in alarm, and yet
almost angrily. Why would he speak so fiercely--why had he taken this
advantage of her?
Then he had risen up quickly, and said, "Well, you know all now. We
will talk of something else." But she only shook her head and moved
away, and, as we have seen, went to bed.
The next morning they met calmly enough. On his side it was done with
an effort; on hers without effort, yet with a little trembling fear,
which went when she saw his calm, and she poured out tea, and he drank
it, and only a rather extraordinary silence told of too much having
being said the night before.
Now, why was all this? Why were this man and this young English girl
travelling thus to the sweet south coast, and to expecting friends?
While they are travelling on their way, we, you and I, dear reader,
will not only get on before them, but also turn back the pages of
life's story, and read its secrets.
They were going to a great house in a fine park, where fern waved its
tall, mounted feathers of green, and hid the dappled deer from sight--
where great ancestral oaks spread protecting branches; where hawthorn
trees, that it had taken three generations of men to make, stood,
large, thick, knotted, twisted--strange, dark, stunted looking trees
they looked, till spring came, and no green was like their green, and
the glory of their flower-wreaths people made pilgrimages to see. The
place was called Beremouth.
A mile and a half off was a town; one of those odd little old places
which tell of days and fashions past away. A very respectable place.
There had lived in Marston the dowager ladies of old country families,
in houses which had no pretensions to grandeur as you passed them in
the extremely quiet street, but which on the other side broke out into
bay windows, garden fronts, charming conservatories, and a good
many other things which help to make life pleasant. So the inhabitants
of Marston were not all mere country-town's people. They knew
themselves to be _somebodies_ and they never forgot it.
Now, in this town dwelt a certain widow lady; poor she was, but she
had a pedigree and two beautiful daughters. Mary and Lucia Morier were
not two commonly, or even uncommonly, pretty girls; they were
wonderfully beautiful, people said, and nothing less. So lovers came a
courting. One married a Scotchman, a Mr. Erskine. They liked each
other quite well enough, Lucia thought, when she made her promises,
and received his; and so they did. They lived happily; did good;
wished for children but never had any, and so adopted Mr. Erskine's
orphan nephew--namely, the very man who behaved with such strange
imprudence in the inn at Hull. Mr. Erskine the uncle was twenty years
older than Mrs. Erskine the aunt. Mr. Erskine the younger was but a
child when they adopted him. But he was their heir, as well as the
inheritor of his father's' fortune, and they loved and cared for him.
Mary Morier did differently. She married at twenty, her younger sister
having married the month before at eighteen. Mary did differently, for
she did imprudently. They had had a brother who was an agent for
certain mines thirty miles off; and there he lived; but he came home
often enough, and made the house in the old town gay. A year before
the sister married, in fact while that sister was away on a visit to
friends in Scotland, the brother came home ill. He was ill for six
months. It is wonderful how much expense is incurred by a mother in
six months for a son who is sick. It made life very difficult. The
money to pay for Lucia's journey home had to be thought of. To be
sure, she was not there to eat and drink, but then her extra finery
had cost something. George had only earned one hundred a year. It had
not been more than enough to keep him. He came home ill with ten
pounds in his pocket, beside his half-year's rent, which would be due
the next month--certainly money at this time was wanted, for our
friends were sadly pinched. But the one most exemplary friend and
servant Jenifer was paid her wages, and tea and sugar money to the
day; and the doctor got so many guineas that he grew desperate and
suddenly refused to come--then repented, and made a Christian-like
bargain, that he would go on coming on condition that he never saw
another piece of any kind of money.
Mary and her mother looked each other in the face one day, and that
look told all. There was some plate, and they had watches, and a
little fine old-fashioned jewelry--yes, they must go. They were
reduced to poverty at last--this was more than "limited means"--hard
penury had them with a desperate grasp.
Fortune comes in many shapes, and not often openly, and with a
flourish of trumpets--neither did she come in that way now; but
shamefacedly, sneakingly, and ringing the door-bell with a meek, not
to say tremulous pull; and her shape was that of a broad-built, short,
wide-jawed, lanky-haired, pig-eyed, elderly man, with a curious
quantity of waistcoat showing, yet, generally, well dressed. "Your
mistress at home?" "Yes, Mr. Brewer." "Mr. George better?" "No. Never
will be, sir." "Bless me! I beg your pardon!" "Granted before 'tis
asked, sir." "Ah! yes; I have a little business to transact with your
mistress. Can I see her alone?" Mr. Brewer was shown by Jenifer into
the little right-hand parlor. He gravely took out a huge pocket-book,
and then a small parchment-covered account-book appeared. I believe he
had persuaded himself that he was really going to transact business,
and not to perform the neatest piece of deception that a
respectable gentleman ever attempted. A lady entered the room. "Madam,
jour son has been my agent for mines three years--my mine _and land_
agent since Christmas. He takes the additional work at seventy-five
pounds a year extra. The half of that is now due to him. I pay _that_
myself. I have brought it" And thirty-seven pounds ten shillings Mr.
Brewer put on the table, saying, "I will take your receipt, madam.
Don't trouble Georges's head about business; for when you _do_ speak
of that you will have, I am sorry to say, to inform him that in _both_
his places I have had to put another man. I have to give George three
months' payment at the rate of one hundred and seventy pounds a year,
as I gave him no quarter's warning. That is business, do you
understand?" asked Mr. Brewer. "It is for my son to discharge himself,
sir--since he cannot"--the mother's voice faltered. "Ah--only he
didn't, and I did," said Mr. Brewer. "Your receipt? When your son
recovers, let him apply to me. I am sorry to end our connexion so
abruptly. But it is business. Business, you know"--and there Mr.
Brewer stopped, for Mary Morier was in the room, and her beauty filled
it, or seemed to do so. And Mr. Brewer departed muttering, as he had
muttered before often, "the most beautiful girl in the world." Still,
he had an uncomfortable sensation, for he felt he was an underhand
sneak, and that Mary had found him out; and so she had. She knew that
her brother had been "discharged" only to afford a pretext for giving
the quarter's money; and she was sure that his being land agent, at an
additional seventy-five pounds a year, was a pure unadulterated
fiction.
Mr. Brewer was an extraordinary man. He had a turn for the
supernatural. He would have liked above all things to have worked
miracles. He did do odd things, such as we have seen, which he made,
by means of the poetic quality that characterized him, a purely
natural act. He was praising George for a saving, prudent, industrious
young man, who had never drawn the whole of his last year's salary,
before an hour was over. And his story looked so like truth that he
believed it himself.
Mr. Brewer was what people call "a risen man." But then his father had
been rising--and, for the matter of that, his grandfather too. All
their fortunes had flowed into the life of the man who has got into
this story; and he, having had a tide of prosperity exceeding all
others, in height, and strength, and riches, had found himself
stranded on the great shore of society, at forty years of age, with
more thousands a year than he liked to be generally known. Could he
have transformed himself into a benignant fairy he would have been
very happy, and acts of mercy would have abounded on the earth. But
no--Mr. Brewer was Mr. Brewer, and anything less poetic to look
at--more impossible as to wands, and wings, and good fairy appendages,
it is difficult to imagine. Mr. Brewer was a middle-aged man, with
hands in his pockets; plain truth is always respectable. There it is.
But there was a Mrs. Brewer. Now Mrs. Brewer was an excellent woman,
but not excellent after the manner of her husband. She was three years
older. They had not been in love. They had married at an epoch in Mr.
Brewer's life when public affairs occupied his time so entirely as to
make it desirable to have what people call a "missus;" we are afraid
that Mr. Brewer himself so called the article, a "missus, at home."
Mrs. Brewer had been "a widow lady--young--of a sociable and domestic
disposition" who "desired to be housekeeper--to be treated
confidentially, and as one of the family--to a widower--with or
without children." On inquiry, it was found that young Mrs. Smith had
not irrevocably determined that the owner of the house that she was to
keep should have been the husband of one wife, undoubtedly dead;
the widower was an expression only, a sort of modest way of putting
the plain fact of a single man, or a man capable of matrimony--the
expression meant all that; and when Mrs. Smith entered on the
housekeeping, she acted up to the meaning of the advertisement, and
married Mr. Brewer. Neither had ever repented. Let that be understood.
Only, Mr. Brewer, when he knew he could live in a great house, dine
off silver, keep a four-in-hand, or a pack of hounds, or enter on any
other legitimate mode of spending money, did none of them; but eased
his mind and his pocket by such contrivances as we have seen resorted
to in the presence of the beautiful Mary Morier. He tried curious
experiments of what a man would do with ten pounds. He had dangerous
notions as to people addicted to certain villanies being cured of
their moral diseases by the administration of a hundred a year. In
some round-about ways he had put the idea to the proof, and not always
with satisfactory results. He held as an article of faith--nobody
could guess where he found it--that there were people in the world who
could go straighter in prosperity than in adversity. He never would
believe that adversity was a thing to be suffered. He had replied to a
Protestant divine on that subject, illustrated in the case of a
starving family, that that might be, only it was no concern of his,
and he would not act upon the theory. And the result was a thriving,
thankful family in Australia, to whom Mr. Brewer was always, ever
after, sending valuable commodities, and receiving flower-seeds and
skins of gaudy feathered birds in return.
Mr. Brewer had a daughter, Claudia was her name. "A Bible name," said
Mr. Brewer, and bowed his head, and felt he had done his duty by the
girl. What more could he do? She went to school, and was at school
when he was paying money in Mrs. Morier's parlor. She was then ten
years old; and being a clever child, she had, in the holidays just
over, chosen to talk French, and nothing else, to a friend whom she
had been allowed to bring with her. A thing that had caused great
perturbation in the soul of her honest father, who prayed in a
wordless, but real anxiety, that the Bible name might not be thrown
away on the glib-tongued little gipsy. It will be perceived that
Claudia was a difficulty.
Now, when Mr. Brewer was gone out of Mrs. Morier's house, the mother
took up the money, wiped her eyes, and said, "What a good boy George
was." And Mary said "_Yes;_" and knew in her heart that if there had
been any chance of George living, Mr. Brewer would never have done
_that_.
George died. There was money, just enough for all wants. Lucia came
home engaged to the married to Mr. Erskine. And when she was gone
there went with her a certain seven hundred pounds, her fortune,
settled--what a silly mockery Mr. Erskine thought it--on her children.
The loss made the two who were left very poor. Lucia sent her mother
gifts, but the regular and to be reckoned on eight-and-twenty pounds a
year were gone. She who had eaten, drank, and dressed was gone
too--but still it was a loss; and Mary and her mother were poor. Also,
Mary had long been engaged to be married to the son of a younger
branch of a great county family house, Lansdowne Lorimer by name. He
was in an attorney's office in Marston. In that old-world place, the
attorney, himself of a county family, was a great man. It was hard to
see Lucia marry a man of money and land, young Lorimer thought, so he
advised Mary to assert their independence of all earthly
considerations, and marry too. And they did so.
The young man had no father or mother. He had angry uncles and
insolent aunts, and family friends, all to be respected, and prophets
of evil, every one of them. He had, also, a place in the office, a
clear head, a determined will, a handsome person, a good
pedigree, and a beautiful wife. She, also, had her eight-and-twenty
pounds a year. But they gave it back regularly to Mrs. Morier; for,
you know, they, the young people, _were_ young, and they could work.
Mrs. Morier never spent this money. She and Jenifer, the prime
minister of that court of loyal love, put it by, against the evil day,
and they had just enough for themselves and the cat to live upon
without it.
The county families asked their imprudent kinsman to visit them with
his bride. How they flouted her. How they advised her. How they
congratulated her that she had always been poor. How they assured her
that she would be poor for ever. How, too, they feared that Lansdowne
would never bear hard work, nor anxiety, nor any other of those
troubles which were so very sure to happen. How surprised they were at
the three pretty silk dresses, the one plain white muslin, and the
smart best white net. How they scorned when they heard that she and
Jenifer, and her mother, and a girl at eightpence a day, had made them
all. And, then, how they sunned themselves in her wonderful beauty,
and accepted the world's praises of it, and kept the triumph
themselves, and handed over to her the gravest warnings of its being a
dangerous gift.
Dangerous, indeed! it was the pride of Lorimer's life. And Mary was
accomplished, far more really accomplished than the lazy, half-taught
creatures who had never said to themselves that they might have to
play and sing, and speak French and Italian, for their or their
children's bread. Mary had said it to herself many a time since her
heart had been given to the man who was her husband. A true, brave,
loving heart it was, and that which her common sense had whispered to
it that heart was strong to do, and would be found doing if the day of
necessity ever came. So, at that Castle Dangerous where the bride and
bridegroom were staying, Mary outshone others, and was not the
better loved for that; and one old Lady Caroline crowned the triumph
by ordering a piano-forte for the new home at Marston, with a savage
"Keep up what you know, child; you may be glad of it one day." Old
Lady Caroline was generally considered as a high-bred privileged
savage. But that was the only savage thing she ever said to Mary. She
told Lorimer that he was a selfish, unprincipled brute for marrying
anybody so perfect and so pretty. And Lorimer bore her
misrepresentations with remarkable patience, only making her a
ceremonious bow, and saying in a low voice, "You know better." "I know
you will starve," and she walked off without an answer.
They did not starve. In fact, they prospered, till one sad day when
Lorimer caught cold--and again and again caught cold--cough, pain,
symptoms of consumption--a short, sad story; and then the great end,
death. Mary was a widow three years after her wedding day, with a
child of two years of age at her side, and an income from a life
insurance made by her husband of one hundred a year. We have seen the
child--grown to a beautiful girl of seventeen--we have seen her in the
room with Mr. Erskine, at the inn at Hull.
Mrs. Lorimer went back to live with her mother, Jenifer, and the great
white cat.
The year after this great change, Mrs. Brewer died, and Claudia at
thirteen was a greater difficulty than ever. The first holidays after
the departure of the good mother, the puzzled father had written to
the two Miss Gainsboroughs to bring the child to Marston and stay at
his house during the holidays. He entertained them for a week, and
then went off on a tour through Holland. The next holidays he proposed
that they should take a house at Brighton, and that he should pay all
expenses. This, too, was done, and Mr. Brewer went to a hotel and
there made friends with his precocious daughter in a way that
surprised and pleased him. He visited the young lady, and she
entertained him. He hired horses, and they rode together. He took
boxes at the theatre, and they made parties and went together. He gave
the girl jewelry and fine clothes, and they really got to know each
other, and to enjoy life together as could never have been the case
had they not been thus left to their own way. The child no longer felt
herself of a different world from that of her parents--the father had
a companion in the child who could grace his position, and keep her
own. They parted with love and anxious lookings forward to the summer
meeting. They were both in possession of a new happiness. When Mr.
Brewer got back to Marston, he led a dull, dreamy life--a year and a
half of widowhood passed--then he went to Mrs. Morier's, saw Mary, and
asked her to be his wife. It is not easy to declare why Mary Lorimer
said--after some weeks of wondering-mindedness--why she said "Yes."
She knew all Mr. Brewer's goodness. She preferred, no doubt, not to
wound a heart that had so often sympathized with the wounded. She
never, in her life, could have borne to see him vexed without great
vexation herself. She liked that he should be rewarded. She was
interested in Claudia. She liked the thought of two hundred a year
settled on her mother. She liked to feel that her own little Mary
might be brought up as grandly as any of those little saucy "county
family" damsels, her cousins, who already looked down on her, and
scorned her pink spotted calico frock.
Mary and Mr. Brewer walked quietly to church; Mrs. Morier still in
astonishment, and Jenifer "dazed;" bat all the working people loved
Mr. Brewer. And they walked back, man and wife, to her mother's house,
and had a quiet substantial breakfast before they started for London.
And when there Mr. Brewer told her that they were not to return to the
respectable stone-fronted house facing the market-place in Marston,
but that he had bought Lord Byland's property--and that Beremouth was
theirs. Beremouth, with its spreading park, and river, and lake, its
miles of old pasture-land, its waving ferns, and dappled deer;
Beremouth, with its forest and gardens, royal oaks and twisted
hawthorn trees; Beremouth, the finest place in the county. And all
that Mary felt was, that he who had kept this secret, had had a true
hero's delicacy, and had never thought to bribe her, or to get her by
purchase into his home. I think she almost loved him then.
In due time, after perhaps six months of wandering, and of
preparation, Mr. and Mrs. Brewer arrived at their new home, made
glorious by all that taste and art could do, with London energy
working with the power of gold. With them came Claudia. The child
loved her new mother with an abandonment of heart and a perfect
approval. She was still too young to argue, but she was not too young
to feel. The mother she had now got, though not much more than ten
years older than herself, was the mother to love, admire, delight
in--is the mother who could understand her.
Then Beremouth just suited this young lady's idea of what was worth
having in this world; and without any evil thought of the homely
mother who had gone, there was a thought that "Mother-Mary," as Mrs.
Brewer was called by her step-daughter, looked right at Beremouth, and
that another class of person would have looked wrong there--so wrong
that her father under such circumstances would never have put himself
in the position of trying the experiment.
Minnie Lorimer was very happy in her great play-ground; for all the
world, and all life, was play to little Minnie. She loved her new
sister; and the new sister patronized and petted her, so all seemed
right. It was, indeed, a great happiness for Claudia that her father
had chosen Mary Lorimer. Claudia was a vixenish, little handsome
gipsy; very clever, very high-spirited, full of life, health, and
fun--a girl who could have yielded to very few, and who brought the
homage of heart and mind to "Mother-Mary," and rejoiced in doing it.
These two grew to be great friends, and when after three years Claudia
came home and came out, all parties were happy.
In the meantime Mr. Brewer's way in the world had been straight,
plain, and rapidly travelled. The county was at his feet. Mary was no
longer congratulated on having been brought up to poverty. Behind her
back there were plenty of people to say that Mr. Brewer was happy in
having for his wife a well connected gentlewoman. Her pedigree was
told, her poverty forgotten. Her singing and playing, dancing and
drawing, were none the worse for unknown thousands a year. And people
wondered less openly at the splendor of velvets and diamonds than they
had at the new muslin gown. To Mary herself life was very different in
every way. Daily, more and more, she admired her husband, and approved
of him. It was the awakening into life of a new set of feelings. She
knew none of the love and devotion she had felt for her first husband.
Mr. Brewer never expected any of it. But he intended that she should,
in some other indescribable manner, fall in love with him, and she was
doing it every day--which thing her husband saw, and welcomed life
with great satisfaction in consequence.
It was when Claudia came out that the man we have seen, Horace
Erskine, first came to them. He was just of age. Mary did not like
him. She could give no reason for it. Her sister had always praised
him--but Mary _could_ not like him. He came to them for a series of
gay doings, and Mr. Brewer admired him, and Claudia--poor little
Claudia! She gave him that strong heart of hers; that spirit that
could break sooner than bend was quite enslaved--she loved him, and he
had asked for her love, and vowed a hundred times that he could never
be happy without it. He asked her of her father, and Mr. Brewer
consented. It was not for Mary to say no; but her heart went cold in
its fear, and she was very sorry.
The Erskines in Scotland were delighted--all deemed doing well. But
when Horace Erskine talked to Mr. Brewer about money, he was told that
Claudia would have on her marriage five thousand pounds; and ten
thousand more if she survived him would be forthcoming on his death--
that was all. "Enough for a woman," said Mr. Brewer; and Erskine was
silent. It went on for a few weeks, Horace, being flighty and odd,
Claudia, for the first time in her life, humble and endearing. Then he
told her that to him money was necessary; then he asked her to appeal
to her father for more; then she treated the request lightly, and, at
last, positively refused. If she had not enough, he could leave her.
If he left her, would she take the blame on herself? It would injure
him in his future hopes and prospects to have it supposed to be _his_
doing if they parted? Yes, she said. It was the easiest thing in the
world. Who cared?--not he of course--and, certainly, not Claudia
Brewer. It broke her heart to find him vile. But she was too
discerning not to see the truth; her great thought now was to hide it.
To hide too from every one, even from "Mother-Mary," that her heart
felt death-struck--that the whole place was poisoned to her--that life
at Beremouth was loathsome.
She took a strange way of hiding it.
A county election was going on. The man whom Mr. Brewer hoped to see
elected was a guest at Beremouth. An old, grey-haired, worldly,
statesmanlike man. A man who petted Claudia, and admired her; and who
suddenly woke up one day to a thought--a question--a species of
amusing suggestion, which grew into a profound wonder, and then
even warmed into a hope--surely that pretty bright young heiress liked
him, had a fancy to be the second Lady Greystock. It was a droll
thought at first, and he played with it; a flattering fancy, and he
encouraged it. He was an honest man. He knew that he was great,
clever, learned. Was there anything so wonderful in a woman loving
him? He settled the question by asking Claudia. And she promised to be
his wife with a real and undisguised gladness. Her spirit and her
determination were treading the life out of her heart. She was sincere
in her gladness. She thought she could welcome any duties that took
her away from life at Beremouth, and gave her place and position
elsewhere.
Mary suspected much, and feared everything. But Claudia felt and knew
too much to speak one word of the world of hope and joy and love that
had gone away from her. She declared that she liked her old love, and
gloried in his grey hairs, and in the great heart that had stooped to
ask for hers.
Now what are we to say of Horace Erskine? Was he wholly bad? First, he
had never loved Claudia with a real devotion. He had admired her; she
had loved him. He had gambled--green turf and green cloth--gambled
and recklessly indulged himself till he had got upon the way to ruin,
and had begun the downward path, and was glad to be stopped in that
slippery descent by a marriage with an heiress. There was a sparkle,
an originality, about Claudia. It was impossible not to be taken with
her. But Claudia with only _that_ fortune was of no use to him. He
knew she was brave and true-hearted; so he boldly asked her to guard
his name--in fact, to give him up, and not injure his next chance with
a better heiress by telling the truth. _He_ told _her_ the truth; that
he wanted money, and money he must have. She would not tell him that
the worst part of her trial was the loss of her idol. It was despising
him that broke her heart. But because he had been her idol she would
never injure him--never tell.
So the day came, and at Marston church she married Sir Geoffrey
Greystock, "Mother-Mary" wondering; Mr. Brewer believing, in the
innocence of his heart, that the fancy for Horace Erskine had been a
bit of the old wilfulness. "The last bit--the last," he said, as he
spoke of it to her that very day, making her chilled heart knock
against her side as he spoke, and kissed her, and sent her with
blessings from the Beremouth that she had married to get away from.
_To get away_--it had more to do with her marrying than any other
thought. To get away from the house, the spreading pastures, the
bright garden, and above all from the _old deer pond_ in the park--the
most beautiful of all the many lovely spots that nature and art, and
time and taste, had joined to create and adorn Beremouth. The old deer
pond in the park! Sheltered by ancient oak; backed by interlacing
boughs of old hawthorn trees; shadowed by tall, shining, dark dense
holly, that glowed through the winter with its red berries, and
contrasted with the long fair wreaths of hawthorn flowers in the sweet
smiling spring. There, in this now dreaded place, Horace Erskine had
first spoken of love; and there how often had he promised her the
happiness that had gone out of her life--for ever. In the terrible
nights, when her broken-hearted pains were strongest, this deer pond
in the park had been before her closed eyes like a vision. In its
waters she saw in her sleep her face and his, so happy, so loving, so
trusting, so true. Then the picture in that water changed, and she
watched it in her feverish dreams with horror, but yet was obliged to
gaze, and the truth went out of his face, and the terror came into
hers. And, worse and worse, he grew threatening--he was cold--he had
never loved--he was killing her; and she fell, fell from her height of
happiness; no protecting arm stayed her, and the dark waters
opened, and she heard the rushing sound of their deadly waves closing
over her, as she sunk--sunk--again and again, night after night Oh, to
get away, to get away! And she blessed Sir Geoffrey, and when he said
he was too old to wait for a wife she was glad, for she had no wish to
wait. Change, absence, another home, another life, another
world--these things she wanted, and they had come. Is it any wonder
that she took them as the man who is dying of thirst takes the
longed-for draught, and drains the cup of mercy to the dregs?
It was a happy day to marry. Mr. Brewer had not only an excuse, but a
positively undeniable reason for being bountiful and kind. For once he
could openly, and as a matter of duty, make the sad hearts in
Marston--and elsewhere--sing for joy. His blessings flowed so
liberally that he had to apologize. It was only for once--he begged
everybody's pardon, but it could never happen again; he had but this
one child, and she was a bride, and so if they would forgive
everything this once! And many a new life of gladness was begun that
day; many a burden then lost its weight; many a record went up to the
Eternal memory to meet that man at the inevitable hour.
Little Mary was the loveliest bridesmaid the world ever saw; standing
alone like an angel by her dark sister's side. She was the only thing
that Claudia grieved to leave. She was glad to flee away from
"Mother-Mary." She dreaded lest those sweet wistful eyes should read
her heart one day; and she could not help rejoicing to get away from
that honest, open-hearted father's sight. Her poor, wrecked, shrunken
heart--her withered life, could not bear the contrast with his free,
kind, bounteous spirit that gave such measure of love, pressed down
and running over, to all who wanted it. Her old husband, Sir Geoffrey,
resembled that great good heart in whose love she had learnt to think
all men true, more than did her young lover Horace Erskine--she could
be humble and thankful to Sir Geoffrey; a well-placed approval was a
better thing than an ill-placed love. So with that little vision of
beauty, Minnie Lorimer, by her side, Claudia became Sir Geoffrey's
wife.
Four months past, the bride and bridegroom were entertaining a grand
party at their fine ancestral home, and Mr. Brewer was the father of a
son and heir. Horace Erskine read both announcements in the paper one
morning, and ground his teeth with vexation. He went to his desk and
took out three letters, a long lock of silky hair, a small
miniature--these things he had begged to keep. Laughing, he had argued
that he was almost a relation. His uncle had married "Mother-Mary's"
sister. She had had no strength to debate with him. She had chosen to
wear the mask of indifference, too, to him. He now made these things
into a parcel and sent them to Sir Geoffrey Greystock without one word
of explanation. When they were gone he wrote to his uncle, begged for
some money, got it, and started for Vienna. The money met him in
London, and he crossed to France the same day.
In the midst of great happiness the strong heart of good Sir Geoffrey
stood still. His wife sought him. She found him in his chair in a fit.
On a little table by his side was the parcel just received. Claudia
knew all. She took the parcel into the room close by, called her
dressing room, rung for help, but in an hour Sir Geoffrey was dead;
and Claudia had burnt the letters and the lock of silky hair.
The business of parliament, the excitement attendant on his marriage
with that beautiful girl, the entertainment of that great house full
of company--these reasons the world reckoned up, and found sufficient
to answer the questions and the wonderings on Sir Geoffrey's death.
But when those solemn walls no longer knew their master, Claudia, into
whose new life the new things held but an unsteady place, grew
ill. First of all, sleepless nights: how could she sleep with the
sound of those waters by the deer pond in her ears? How could she help
gazing perpetually at the picture on the pond's still surface: Horace
and Sir Geoffrey, and herself not able to turn aside the death-stroke,
but standing, fettered by she knew not what, in powerless misery, only
obliged to see the changing face of her husband till the dead seemed
to be again before her, and Horace melted out of sight, and she woke,
dreading fever and praying against delirium? She was overcome at last.
Terrible hours came, and "Mother-Mary's" sweet face mingling with some
strong, subduing, life-endangering dream, was the first thing that
seemed to bring her back to better things, and to restore her to
herself.
In fact, Claudia had had brain fever, and whether or not she was ever
to know real health again was a problem to be worked out by time.
Would she come back to her father's house? No! The very name of
Beremouth was to be avoided. Would she go abroad? Oh, no; there was a
dread of separation upon her. "Somewhere where you can easily hear of
me, and I of you; where you can come and see me, for I shall never see
Beremouth again." It was her own thought, and so, about five miles
from Beremouth, in the house of a Doctor Rankin, who took ladies out
of health into his family, Claudia determined to go. It was every way
the best thing that could be done, for every day showed more strongly
than the last that Claudia would never be what is emphatically called
"herself" again. So people said.
Dr. Rankin was kind, learned, and wise; Mrs. Rankin warm-hearted and
friendly. Other patients beside Lady Greystock were there. It was not
a private asylum, and Claudia was not mad; it was really what it
called itself, a home which the sick might share, with medical
attendance, cheerful company, and out-door recreations in a well-kept
garden and extensive grounds of considerable beauty. Claudia had known
Dr. and Mrs. Rankin, and had called with her father at Blagden, where
they lived. And there her father and "Mother-Mary" took her three
months after her husband's death, looking really aged, feeble, and
strangely sad.
After a time--it was a long time--Claudia was said to be well.
"Perfectly recovered," said Dr. Rankin, "and in really satisfactory
health." So she was when Minnie Lorimer stood in the room at the inn
in Hull, talking to that very Horace Erskine, who was bringing her
home from her aunt's in Scotland to her mother at Beremouth.
"Sweet seventeen!" Very sweet and beautiful, pleasing the eye,
gratifying the mind, filling the heart with hope, and setting
imagination at play--Minnie Lorimer was beautiful, and with all that
peculiar beauty about her that belongs to "a spoilt child" who has not
been spoilt after all.
Claudia--how old she looked! Claudia, with that one only shadow on her
once bright face, was still living with Dr. and Mrs. Rankin. It was
Lady Greystock's pleasure to live with them. She said she had grown
out of the position of a patient, and into their hearts as a friend.
"Was it not so?" she asked. It was impossible to deny that which
really brought happiness to everybody. "Well, then, I shall build on a
few rooms to the house, and I shall call them mine, and I shall add to
the coach-house, and hire a cottage for my groom and his wife--I shall
live here. Why not? You will take care of me, and feed me, and scold
me, and find me a good guidable creature. You know I shall be ill if
you refuse."
It all happened as she chose. Hers was the prettiest carriage in the
county, the best horses, the most perfectly appointed little
household--for she had her own servants. Among her most devoted
friends were the good doctor and his wife. Lady Greystock was as
positive and as much given to govern as the clever little Claudia
in school-girl days. But the arrangement was a success, and
"Mother-Mary," who saw her constantly, was very glad. Only one trouble
survived; Claudia would never go and stay at Beremouth. She would
drive her ponies merrily to the door, and even spend an hour or two
within the house, but never would she stay there--never! She used to
say to herself that she dared not trust herself with the things that
had witnessed her love, her sorrow, her marriage--with the things that
told her of him who had ruined everything like a murderer--as he was.
And so, to save appearances, she used to say that she never stayed
away from Blagden for a single night, and she never left off black. It
was not that she wore a widow's dress, or covered up the glories of
her beautiful hair. She was but twenty-nine at the moment recorded in
the first page of this story. She was very thin and pale, but she was
a strong woman, and one who required no more care than any other
person; but she had determined never again to see Horace Erskine. What
he had done had become known to her, as we have seen. She only
bargained with life, as it were, in this way, that _that_ man should
be out of it for ever. And for this it was that she made her
resolution and kept it.
Horace Erskine had been abroad for some years; but though she had felt
safe in that fact, she had looked into the future and kept her
resolution. And so she lived on at Blagden, doing good, blessing the
poor, comforting the afflicted, visiting the sick, and beautifying all
things, and adorning all places that came within her reach. Certain
things she was young enough to enjoy greatly; the chief of these was
the contemplation of Frederick Brewer, her half-brother, a fine boy of
nine years old, for nine years of widowhood had been passed, and
through all that time this boy, her dear father's son, had been Lady
Greystock's delight. She loved "Mother-Mary" all the better for having
given him to her father, and she felt a strong, unutterable
thanksgiving that, his birth having been expected, the test of whether
or not Horace Erskine loved her for herself had been applied before
she had become chained to so terrible a destiny as that of being wife
to a thankless, disappointed man. Terrible as her great trial had
been, she might have suffered that which, to one of her temper, would
have been far worse. So Fred Brewer would ride over to see his sister.
Day after day the boy's bright face would be laid beside her own, and
to him, and only to him, would she talk of Sir Geoffrey. Then they
would ride together down to Marston to see Mrs. Morier and Jenifer,
who was a true friend, and lived on those terms with the lady who
loved her well; then to the market-place where the old home stood, now
turned into an almshouse of an eccentric sort, with all rules included
under one head, that the dear old souls were to have just whatever
they wanted. Did Martha Gannet keep three parrots, and did they eat as
much as a young heifer? and scream, too? ah, that was their
nature--never go against a dumb creature's nature, Mr. Brewer said
there was always cruelty in that--and did they smell, and give
trouble, and would they be mischievous, and tear Mrs. Betty's cap?
Indeed. Mr. Brewer was delighted. An excellent excuse for giving new
caps to all the inmates, and to look up all troubles, and mend
everybody's griefs--such an excellent thing it was that the fact of
three parrots should lead to the discovery of so many disgraceful
neglects that Mr. Brewer begged leave to apologize very heartily and
sincerely while he diligently repaired them. It was a very odd school
to bring up young Freddy in. But we are obliged to say that he was not
at all the worse for it.
And here we must say what we have not said before. Mr. Brewer was a
Catholic. He and Jenifer were Catholics; Mrs. Brewer had not been
a Catholic; and Claudia had been left to her mother's teaching. When
Freddy was born, Mr. Brewer considered his ways. And what he saw in
his life we may see shortly. He had been born of a Catholic mother who
had died, and made his Protestant father promise to send him to a
Catholic school. He had stood alone in the world, he had always stood
alone in the world. He seemed to see nothing else. Three miles from
Marston was a little dirty sea-port, also a sort of fishing place. A
place that bore a bad character in a good many ways. Some people would
have finished that character by saying that there were Papists there.
To that place every Sunday Mr. Brewer went to mass. Many and many a
lift he had given to Jenifer on those days. How much Jenifer's talk
assisted his choice of Mary for his wife, we may guess. When Freddy
was born Jenifer said her first words on the subject of religion to
Mr. Brewer: "You will have him properly baptized:" "Of course." "Order
me the pony cart, and I'll go to Father Daniels." "I must tell Mrs.
Brewer." "Leave that to me--just send for the cart." It _was_ left to
Jenifer. By night the priest had come and gone. It had not been his
first visit. He had been there many times, and had known that he was
welcome. The Clayton mission had felt the blessing of Mr. Brewer's
gold. He had seldom been at the house in the market-place in Marston,
but at Beremouth Mary had plucked her finest flowers, and sent them
back in the old gentleman's gig, and he had been always made welcome
in her husband's house with a pretty grace and many pleasant
attentions. Now, when Freddy was baptized, Mr. Brewer went to his wife
and bent over her, and said solemnly, "Mary--my dear wife; Mary--I
thank thee, darling. I thank thee, my love." And the single tear that
fell on her cheek she never forgot.
Then Mr. Brewer met Jenifer at his wife's door. "It's like a new life,
Jenifer." And the steady-mannered woman looked in his bright eyes and
saw how true his words were.
"It's a steady life of doing good to everybody that you have ever led,
sir. It was a lonely life once, no doubt. I was dazed when she married
you. But, eh, master; I have _that_ to think about, and _that_ to pray
for, that a'most makes me believe in anything happening to _you_ for
good, when so much is asked for, day and night, in my own prayer."
"Put _us_ into it; let me and mine be in Jenifer's prayer," he said,
and passed on.