HAYES MEREDITH'S REVELATION.
It had seldom fallen to the lot of James Dugdale to experience more
painful mental disquietude than that in which he passed the interval
between the receipt of Hayes Meredith's letter and the arrival of his
friend, accompanied by his son, at Chayleigh. Mr. Carteret, always
unobservant, did not notice the preoccupation of James's manner, and
James had decided, within a few minutes after he had read the
communication which had so disturbed him, that he would not mention
the matter to the old gentleman at all, if concealment were
practicable--certainly not before it should become indispensable, if
it should ever prove to be so.
An unpleasant communication to be made to Margaret! What could it be?
The vain question whose solution was so near, and yet appeared to him
so distant, in his impatience repeated itself perpetually in every
waking hour, and he would frequently start from his sleep, roused by a
terrible sense of undefined trouble impending over the woman who never
ceased to occupy the chief place in his thoughts. The problem took
every imaginable shape in his mind. The little knowledge he had of the
circumstances of Margaret's life in Australia left him scope for all
kinds of conjectures, and did not impose superior probability on any.
Was there a secret reason beyond, more pressing than her natural,
easily explicable shrinking from the revival of pain and humiliation,
which kept Margaret so absolutely and resolutely silent concerning the
years of her suffering and exile? Was there something which she knew
and dreaded, which might come to light at any time, which was soon to
come to light now, in the background of her memory? Was there some
transaction of Hungerford's, involving disgraceful consequences, which
had been dragged into publicity, in which she, too, must be involved,
as well as the dead man's worthless memory? This might be the case; it
might be debts, swindling, anything; and the brilliant and happy
marriage she had made, might be destined to be clouded over by the
shadow of her former life.
James Dugdale suffered very keenly during the few days in which he
pondered upon these things. He tortured himself with apprehension, and
knew that, to a certain extent, it must be groundless. The only real,
serious injury which could come out of the dark storehouse of the
past, into the present life of Fitzwilliam Baldwin's wife, must be one
of a nature to interfere with her relations towards her husband. She
could afford to defy every other kind of harm. She was raised far
above the influence of all material evil, and removed from the sphere
in which the doings of people like Hungerford and his associates were
ever heard of. Her marriage bucklered her no less against present than
past evil; on all sides but one. When James weighed calmly the matter
of which he never ceased to think, he called in "the succours of
thought" to the discomfiture of "fear," which in its vague has greater
torment than in its most defined shape, and drew upon their resources
largely. Margaret had indeed been reticent with him, with her father,
with Haldane, even, he felt persuaded, with her sister-in-law Lady
Davyntry; but had she been equally reticent with Baldwin? He thought
she had not; he hoped, he believed she had not; that the confidence
existing between her and her husband was as perfect as their mutual
love, and that, however strictly she might have maintained a silence,
which Baldwin would have been the last man in the world to induce or
wish her to break, up to the period of her marriage, he did not doubt
that Margaret's husband was now in possession of all the facts of her
past life, so that no painful intelligence could find him more or less
unprepared than his wife to meet it.
It needed the frequent repetition of this belief to himself, the
frequent repetition of the grounds on which it was founded, to enable
James Dugdale to subdue the apprehensions inspired by Hayes Meredith's
letter. His delicate health, his nervous susceptibility, the almost
feminine sensitiveness of his temperament, made suspense, anxiety, and
apprehension peculiarly trying to him; and the servants at Chayleigh,
keener observers than their master, quickly found out that something
was wrong with Mr. Dugdale, and that the arrival of the two gentlemen
from foreign parts, for whose reception preparations were being duly
made, would not be a cause of unalloyed pleasure to him.
The urgency of Meredith's request, that there might be no delay in a
meeting between himself and Margaret, gave James much uneasiness,
because, in addition to the general vagueness of the matter, he did
not in this particular instance know what to do. Hayes Meredith did
not wish her to be alarmed (which looked as if he believed her to be
ignorant of the unpleasant intelligence to which he alluded, as if he
contemplated the necessity of its being broken to her with caution),
but he laid stress on the necessity of an immediate meeting. How was
this to be accomplished? Meredith had not thought of such a
contingency as that which actually existed. He had supposed it
probable Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin would be in Scotland when his letter
should reach James Dugdale, which must create a delay of a few days
indeed, but he had not contemplated their absence at such a distance
as must imply the postponement of a meeting for weeks.
James did not know what to do. To summon Margaret and Mr. Baldwin to
return at once, without any clue to the meaning of the communication
awaiting them, would be to alarm them to an extent, which, under any
circumstances within the reach of his imagination, must be
unnecessary; and from the possible responsibility involved in not
procuring their return he naturally shrank. He could not communicate
with Meredith, whose letter bore no address but "Liverpool;" there was
nothing for it but the painful process of patience.
Mr. Carteret talked of Margaret more than usual in the interval
between the arrival of Meredith's letter and the day on which he was
expected at Chayleigh; the association of ideas made him garrulous,
and he expatiated largely to James upon the pleasure which Mr.
Meredith would feel on seeing his _protégée_ of the bad old times so
differently circumstanced, and the splendid hospitality with which he
would certainly be entertained at the Deane. Baldwin would return
sooner than he had intended, no doubt, in consequence of Mr.
Meredith's visit to England.
When Mr. Carteret expressed his opinion, apparently oblivious of the
fact that the state of Margaret's health rendered her remaining abroad
peculiarly desirable, James heard him with a sense of partial relief.
It would be much gained, let the unpleasant business before them be
what it might, if Mr. Carteret could be kept from alarm or pain in
connection with it. If he could be brought to regard the sudden return
of Margaret as a natural event, considering his placid nature and
secluded habits, it might be readily practicable to secure him from
all knowledge of what had occurred.
There was strong anticipative consolation for James Dugdale in this
reflection. Reason with himself as he would, strive against it as he
might, there was a presentiment of evil upon James's heart, a thrill
of dread of the interruption of that happiness in which he found such
pure and disinterested delight, and he dared not think of such a dread
extending itself to the old man, who had built such an edifice of
pride and contentment on his daughter's fortunes, and would have so
little strength to bear, not alone its crumbling, but any shock to its
stability.
"Let it be what it may, I think it can be hidden from him," said James
Dugdale, as he bade Mr. Carteret good-night for the last time before
all his suspense should be resolved into certainty.
That particular aspect of nature, to which the complacent epithets
"good old English" have been most frequently applied by poets and
novelists, presented itself at Chayleigh, in perfection, on the day of
Hayes Meredith's arrival. "Our English summer" has become rather
mythical in this generation, and the most bearable kind of cold
weather, keen, bright, frosty, kindly (to those who can afford
ubiquitous fires and double windows), occurs in miserably small
proportion to the dull, damp, despairing; winter of fogs and rain. It
was not so between twenty and thirty years ago, however, and the eyes
of the long-expatriated Englishman were refreshed, and those of his
colonial-born son astonished, by the beauty and novelty of the scenery
through which they passed on their journey southwards.
Chayleigh was one of those places which look particularly beautiful in
winter. It boasted splendid evergreens, and grassy slopes carefully
kept, and the holly trees, freshly glistening after a fall of snow,
which had just disappeared, were grouped about the low picturesque
house like ideal trees in a fancy sketch of the proper home of
Christmas. It was difficult to realise that the only dwellers in the
pleasant house, from whose long low windows innumerable lights
twinkled brightly, were two men, the one old in years, and older still
in his quiet ways, in his deadness of sympathy with the outer world,
the other declining also in years, and carrying, in a frail and
suffering body, a heart quite purged of self, but heavy-laden with
trouble for one far dearer than self had ever been to him.
Fair women and bright children should have tenanted such a home as
that to which Mr. Carteret, a little later than the hour at which they
were expected, bade Hayes Meredith and his son a hearty if somewhat
old-fashioned welcome.
When the post-chaise which brought the travellers stopped, James
Dugdale met his old friend as he stepped out, and the two looked at
each other with the contending feelings of pain and pleasure which
such a meeting was calculated to produce. Time had so altered each
that the other would not have recognised him, had their meeting been a
chance one; but when, a little later, they regarded each other more
closely, many familiar looks and expressions, turns of feature and of
phrase, made themselves observed in both, which restored the old
feeling of familiarity.
Then James Dugdale saw the strong, frank, hopeful young man, with his
vivacious black eyes, and his strong limbs, his cheery laugh, and his
jovial self-reliant temper once more, and found all those qualities
again in the world-taught, and the world-sobered, but not world-worn
man whose gray hair was the only physical mark of time set upon him.
Then Hayes Meredith saw the pale, stooped student, with form awry and
spiritual sensitive face, bearing upon it the inexplicable painful
expression which malformation gives,--the keen intelligence, the sadly
strong faculty of suffering--the equally keen affections and firm
will. Time had set many a mark upon James. He had had rich brown
curls, the only gift of youth dealt lavishly to him by nature, but
they were gone now, and his hair was thin and gray, and the lines in
his face were more numerous and deeper than might have been fitting at
twenty additional years. But Hayes Meredith saw that same face under
the lines, and in a wonderfully short time he found himself saying to
himself--"I should feel as if we were boys together again, only that
Dugdale, poor fellow, never was a boy."
"Is Mrs. Baldwin here?" was Meredith's first question to his friend,
after the undemonstrative English greeting, which said so little and
meant so much.
"No, she is abroad."
"How unfortunate!"
"What is the matter? Is anything very wrong?"
"No, no, we'll put it right--but we cannot talk of it now. When can I
have some time with you quite alone?"
"To-night, if you are not too tired," returned James, who was
intensely impatient to hear what had to be told, but to whose
sensitive nerves the strong, steady, almost unconcerned manner of his
friend conveyed some little assurance.
"To-night, then."
There was no farther private conversation between the two. Hayes
Meredith devoted himself to Mr. Carteret, whose placid character
afforded him considerable amusement, in its contrast with those of the
bustling and energetic companions of his ordinary life. To Mr.
Carteret, Hayes Meredith was an altogether new and delightful
_trouvaille_. That he came from a new world, of infinite interest and
importance to England; that he could tell of his own personal
experience, particulars of the great events, political, commercial,
and social, to which colonial enterprise had given rise; that, as a
member of a strange community, with all the interest of a foreign
land, and all the sympathy of fellowship of race attaching to them,
Mr. Carteret knew, if he had cared to think about it, and he might
perhaps, merely as an intellectual exercise, have comprehended, that
there was something remarkable about his guest in that aspect. But he
did not care about it in the least. The political, social, and
commercial life of either this half of the world or the other half was
a matter of entire indifference to him. He was eminently desirous to
ascertain, as soon as politeness warranted the inquiry, whether Mr.
Meredith had brought to England the "specimens" which James Dugdale
had bespoken, and that point satisfactorily disposed of, and an early
hour on the following day appointed for their disinterment from the
general mass of luggage, he turned the conversation without delay on
the cranial peculiarities of "black fellows," the number of species
into which the marsupial genus may be divided, and the properties of
the turpentine tree. On all these matters Hayes Meredith sustained a
very creditable examination, and during its course rapidly arrived at
a very kindly feeling towards his gentle and eccentric but eminently
kind-hearted entertainer. There was a curious occult sympathy between
the minds of James Dugdale and Hayes Meredith, as the latter thought:
"If it could be hidden from the poor old gentleman, and I really see
no reason why he should ever know it, what a good thing it will be!"
Mr. Carteret had taken an early opportunity of expressing, not
ungracefully, his sense of the kindness which his daughter had
received at the hands of Mr. Meredith and his family, and his regret
that she was not then at Chayleigh to welcome him. The embarrassment
with which his guest received his courteous observations, and the
little allusion which he afterwards made to Margaret, though it would
have been natural that she should have been the prevailing subject of
their conversation, did not strike Mr. Carteret in the least, though
James Dugdale perceived it plainly and painfully, and it rendered
the task which he had set himself--that of entertaining Robert
Meredith--anything but easy. The mere notion of such a possibility as
taking any notice of a boy, after having once shaken hands with him,
and told him he was very happy to see him, and hoped he would make
himself quite at home at Chayleigh, would never have occurred to Mr.
Carteret. About boys, as boys, he knew very little indeed; but if the
word aversion could ever be used with propriety in describing a
sentiment entertained by Mr. Carteret, he might be said to regard them
with aversion. They made noises, they opened doors unnecessarily
often, and they never shut them; they trod on people's feet, and tore
people's dresses; they did not wash their hands with decent frequency;
and once a terrible specimen of the genus, having been admitted to a
view of his precious case of Cape butterflies, thrust his plebeian and
intrusive elbow through the glass. This was final.
"I don't like boys," said Mr. Carteret; "I don't understand them. Keep
them away from me, please."
He had listened with a mild shudder to Haldane's praises of that
"wonderfully clever child," the eldest Miss Crofton's "little
brother;" and had turned a desperately deaf ear to all hints that an
invitation for the urchin to inspect the wonders of the "collection"
might be regarded by the Crofton family as an attention.
"Wonderfully clever, is he?" said Mr. Carteret musingly; "what a
nuisance he must be!"
Haldane did not mention the talented creature again, and no boy had
ever troubled Mr. Carteret from that hour until now. He had the
satisfaction of knowing, when his prompt invitation was extended to
James Dugdale's friends, that Robert Meredith was a big boy--not an
objectionable child, with precocious ideas, prying eyes, and fingers
addicted to mischief--had it been otherwise, his patience and
hospitality would have been sorely tried.
"You will see to the young gentleman, Foster," he had said to his
confidential servant; "I daresay he will like a good deal to eat and
drink, and you can see that he does not wear strong boots in the
house, and--ah--hem, Foster, you can make him understand--politely,
you know--that people in general don't go into my rooms. You
understand, Foster?"
"O yes, sir; I understand," said Foster, in a tone which to Mr.
Carteret's sensitive ears implied an almost unfeeling indifference,
but Foster acted on the hint for all that, and the result was
remarkable.
Mr. Carteret never once had reason to complain of Robert Meredith. The
boy never vexed or worried him; he seemed to have an intuitive
comprehension of his feelings and prejudices, of his harmless little
oddities, and in a silent, distant kind of way--for though a wonderful
exception, Robert was still a boy, and therefore to be avoided--Mr.
Carteret actually came to like him. In which particular he formed an
exception to the entire household as then assembled at Chayleigh, and
even when it received the accession of Mr. Baldwin, Margaret, and
their little daughter. No one else in the house liked Robert Meredith.
The preoccupation of James Dugdale's mind, the anxiety and suspense of
some days, which grew stronger and less endurable now when a few hours
only divided him from learning, with absolute certainty, the evil
tidings which Hayes Meredith had to communicate, rendered his friend's
son and his affairs objects of very secondary interest to him. When he
thought of the business which had induced Meredith to undertake such a
voyage to England, such an absence from home, he roused himself to
remember the keen interest he had taken in the father's projects for,
and on account of, the son. But he could only remember it; he could
not feel it again. When he should know the worst, when he and Meredith
should have had their private talk that night, then things would
resume their proper proportion, then he should be able to fulfil all
his friend's behests, with the aid of his hand and his heart alike.
But now, only the face of Margaret, pale, wan, stern, with the youth
and bloom gone from it, as he had seen her when she first came home;
only the face of Margaret, transfigured in the light of love and joy,
of pride and pleasure, as he had seen her last, held his attention.
Her form seemed to flit before him in the air. The sound of her voice
mingled, to his fancy, with all other sounds. The effort to control
his feelings, and bide his time, almost surpassed his strength.
Afterwards, when he recalled that day, and tried to remember his
impressions of Robert Meredith, James recollected him as a quiet,
gentlemanly, self-possessed boy, with a handsome face, a good figure,
and an intelligent expression--a little shy, perhaps, but James did
not see that until afterwards. A boy without the objectionable habits
of boys, but also without the frankness which beseems boyhood. A boy
who watched Mr. Carteret's conversation with his father, and rapidly
perceived that gentleman's harmless eccentricities, and who, when he
found that a total absence of observation was one of them, marked each
fresh exhibition of them with a contemptuous sneer, which would not
have been out of place on the countenance of a full-grown demon. He
had a good deal of the early-reached decision in opinion and in manner
which is a feature in most young colonials, but he was not
unpleasantly "bumptious;" and James Dugdale, had his mind been free to
permit him to find pleasure in anything, would have enjoyed making the
acquaintance of his old friend's son.
At length the two men found themselves alone in James Dugdale's room.
"Our consultation is likely to be a long one, Dugdale," said
Meredith, as he seated himself close by the fire. "Is there any danger
of our being interrupted or overheard?"
"None whatever," James answered. He felt unable to speak, to ask a
question, now that the time had come.
Meredith looked at him compassionately, but shrugged his shoulders at
the same time, imperceptibly. He understood his friend's
sensitiveness; his weakness he could not understand. "I may as well
tell you at once," he said, "about this bad business." He took a paper
from a pocket-book as he spoke. "Tell me the exact date of Mr.
Baldwin's marriage."
James named it without adding a word. Then Meredith handed him the
paper he held, and James, having read it hastily, looked up at him
with a pale horrified face.