It was about eleven o'clock in the day. The London thunder had not
begun. There might be a few carts creeping about the streets, but they
crept lazily and almost silently; the rattle of a hackney-coach might
be heard here and there, but still it was but a temporary rattle; and
the comparative stillness of the whole town gave a dreamy sort of
quietude to the air, which was pleasant and full of repose. It
harmonized well with the character of the day, too, for it was quite a
summer morning.
The sun was streaming into Lady Fleetwood's drawing-room, sending
oblique rays over the corner of the houses of a neighbouring street,
and the motes were dancing drowsily in the long pencils of light. A
droning fly, which had somehow or other got into a long-necked, deep
blue carnation-glass, and could not get out again, was buzzing as if
it had nearly tired itself to sleep; and the waving of the plants at
the open windows, stirred by a light air, had a slumberous sound with
it.
"Really, this is very pleasant!" thought Lady Fleetwood, as she sat,
after breakfast, enjoying the delicious sensation of life which a fine
summer day gives; "it is all so calm and tranquil that one could
almost go to sleep."
Strange, strange life!--that one of thy best blessings should be to
lose the consciousness of thine existence!
She soon found, however, that to go to sleep was not for her. Hardly
had the thought passed through her brain when a sharp double knock at
the door dispelled the stillness, and the next moment Charles Marston,
the incarnation of mobility, entered.
"Well, my dear aunt," he said, "I have determined upon my course for
the day; laid out everything in the most methodical and scientific
manner; and having just half-an-hour to spare, came to bestow it upon
you."
"You should really go and see your uncle, my dear Charles," replied
Lady Fleetwood. "It would have been much better to have given it to
him instead of to me; for he may well be offended if he hears you have
been here twice without going near him."
"You are wrong, dearest of aunts!--you are wrong," answered Charles:
"you always are sweetly wrong, you know, most excellent of women. I
sent half-an-hour ago, to ask if he was at home; for, although one may
have to swallow a bitter pill now and then, there is no reason why one
should needlessly walk a mile and a half to take it. But he was out;
and so, when I go hence, I shall diligently pursue him to his dingy
hole in the city, where pray heaven there may be plenty of business
stirring to cut our conference short! I am now only waiting for
Winkworth, who is going to the city too."
"I cannot think, Charles, why you should feel such a distaste to your
uncle's conversation," said Lady Fleetwood, meditating upon the
problem; "everybody admits he is a clever man."
"Undoubtedly, my dear aunt," replied Charles; "but I will tell you why
I am not very fond of his conversation. It is because that same
conversation of his transforms everything into arithmetic. Now, I
never had an arithmetical head in my life: I know that two and two
make four, but it has not been the study of my life to discover how
many blue beans make five. I cannot calculate friendships by the rules
of profit and loss, nor look on love upon the principles of tare and
tret, nor subject every feeling of the heart to the computations of
the interest-table, nor measure poetry by the square foot, nor extract
the cube root of an acquaintance's purse, in order to estimate how
intimate I should become with him, nor regulate my own thoughts and
wishes by quadratic equations, nor always keep my own conduct and
purposes within an exact parallelogram. The sages of Laputa must have
been great bores, my dear aunt; but they were nothing, depend upon it,
to the men of the present day, who subject not only their
understandings, but their very emotions, to the stiffest rules of
calculation. Besides, the sight of poor Miss Hayley has not altogether
taught me to like my uncle better--nor has what you said about him, it
_à propos_ to her."
Lady Fleetwood looked scared, and in a moment her mind ran back to all
that had passed during the preceding evening, to ascertain if she
could possibly by any blunder have said aught to produce mischief
between uncle and nephew.
"Why, my dear Charles," she exclaimed, "I am very sure that I never
uttered one word to make you believe that your uncle is at all aware
of the poor thing's condition. He would be the first, I am sure----"
"I never said you did, my dear aunt," he replied, interrupting her;
"but you told me he had been angry because you went to see them in
their distress at Highgate. I have a strong notion he did not behave
well to poor Hayley. I remember something of an unsettled account."
"Oh! but poor uncle always said, that as soon as Mr. Hayley produced
certain papers he would go into that," exclaimed Lady Fleetwood. "I
remember quite well that Hayley always declared there was a large sum
due to him--fifteen or twenty thousand pounds; and he declared once
that he would put it into chancery or some law court; but he lost
heart, poor man, after the sad business of Henry's death; and,
though he talked a great deal, he never did anything. But now I
recollect--that was what made your uncle so angry, Charles. He said
Hayley had defamed him; and you know your uncle is always reckoned a
highly honourable man, though a little too fond of money, perhaps."
"Rich men are always honourable men," replied Charles, in a graver
tone than was customary with him, "and poor and unfortunate men are
great rascals--in the world's opinion, my dear aunt. In this good
country of ours, wealth does find ways, if not to corrupt justice, at
least to fix the balance and the sword immoveable. Law is too
expensive a luxury for poor men to treat themselves to much of it; and
many an honest cause is lost for fear of the inseparable punishment,
in this land, of seeking right by law--I mean expense, if not ruin. I
remember hearing a clerk give a message to Hayley, exactly to the
purport you mention: that Mr. Scriven had no time to write, but that
he would go into the account whenever Mr. Hayley was prepared to
produce the papers. Do you know what Hayley replied, my dear aunt? He
was then in a shabby black coat, and his face looked as if he had been
drinking, I must confess; but he spoke distinctly and bitterly. 'Be so
good as to ask Mr. Scriven,' he said, 'how I am to do that, when all
those papers were left here, and I have never been able to get them
out of this house?'--and with a fierce imprecation upon my uncle's
head, he walked away without waiting for an answer. I was witness to
the whole, and a sad scene it was?"
"Oh, dear! that is very terrible!" said Lady Fleetwood; "but do you
think it could be true, Charles?"
"I really do not know, my dear aunt," answered her nephew; "but I have
a sort of feeling that the Hayleys have suffered by our family; and
consequently, as I am quite sure this poor thing whom I saw upon
Frimley Common is one of them, I have resolved to go down again this
very day and see what can be done for her. Winkworth will go with me,
and as he is one upon whose advice I can fully rely, I shall consult
him in regard to all I do for her."--"But, dear me, then you will not
see Maria to-day!" said Lady Fleetwood: "she will be here by two
o'clock."
"Oh, yes, I shall," answered Charles; "we do not set out till three,
and I shall be back from the city by two."
Lady Fleetwood's arrangements were all deranged. She had planned a
pleasant little dinner-party for Charles, Mr. Winkworth, and Maria, at
which she proposed to engage Mr. Winkworth in conversation with
herself, while Charles and Maria would be thrown upon each other's
hands entirely; and she did not in the least doubt--being a fine
politician in her way--that what between Maria's natural charms, a
sudden meeting after a long absence, and a great many other advantages
of the same kind, love and matrimony would as naturally rise up as the
flame of a spirit-lamp when a match is applied to it. We must remark
that Lady Fleetwood never doubted for a moment that any of her plans
would succeed; nor did the experience of more than twenty years,
during which period every one that she had ever formed had broken to
pieces, convince her that there was always, somehow or another, some
element wanting in her calculations which ensured their failure. She
laid defeat upon the back of accident--one of the three or four
broad-shouldered accessories to human infirmities which bear all the
sins and misadventures of the world--the scapegoats of conscience and
self-reproach. Accident, ill-luck, the devil, and adverse
circumstances, are the favourite deputies to whom we transfer the
burden of our faults in the present day, since Zeus and his Olympian
household are no longer chargeable, as in the days of Homer.
Perverse mankind! whose wills, created free,
Charge all their woes on absolute decree;
All to the dooming gods their guilt translate,
And follies are miscalled the crimes of Fate.
Accident was Lady Fleetwood's pack-horse; and she thought it a most
unfortunate accident indeed that Charles had arranged to go with Mr.
Winkworth into the country that evening, rather than stay and fall in
love with his cousin upon her plan.
While she was thinking, however, of how she could induce him to give
up his journey for the day, and balancing with nice casuistry whether
she ought or ought not to try, kindly feeling for poor Miss Hayley
pulling her one way, and a natural hankering for her own schemes
tugging her the other, the knocker was again heard doing its function;
and her servant, a moment after, announced that Mr. Winkworth was
below, waiting for Mr. Marston.
"Oh! ask him up, by all means," said Lady Fleetwood; "I shall be
delighted to see him."
"I asked him, my lady," replied the man: "but he said he had no time
at the present moment."
Lady Fleetwood would have pressed the point; but Charles represented
that, if they did not set out for the city at once, he should not be
back in time to see his cousin, and ran down-stairs without delay.
Under any ordinary circumstances, the solitary meditations of a lady
on the sear side of fifty can be of no great interest to the general
reader. There is something in youth--in its freshness, its vigour, its
excitability, its world of emotions--which renders the young mind, as
well as the young frame, in its bloom and perfection, a pleasant
object of contemplation; but with age, alas! it is seldom so. I will,
therefore, only say that good Lady Fleetwood sat and thought, for full
five minutes, of how unfortunate it was that Charles should have
spoiled her evening plan for his benefit; and having no other scheme
for making people happy in her own way ready-made at the moment, she
might have gone on for five, or even ten minutes more, had she not
been interrupted by a visit from her brother.
"Well, that is the most unfortunate thing in the world!" exclaimed the
poor lady, as soon as she saw Mr. Scriven's face. "Charles has just
this moment gone into the city to call upon you."
"Humph!" said Mr. Scriven; "I wonder he did not call upon me last
night."
"I dare say he was tired, poor fellow," replied Lady Fleetwood, who
had almost always an excuse ready for everybody; "but he sent, the
first thing this morning, to see if you were at home."
"It would have been better to have come himself," rejoined Mr.
Scriven, drily; "then he might have discovered that I was not ten
doors off, and would return directly. Now, I suppose, he will call at
the counting-house, and, finding I have not arrived, walk away again.
I must see him to-day, Margaret: I have some important matters to tell
him. If he comes back, then, keep him to dinner, and I will come in
and join you."
"I cannot do that," answered Lady Fleetwood; "for he has just told me
that he is going down to Frimley Common at three o'clock."
"What for?" asked Mr. Scriven with a look of surprise.
Lady Fleetwood hesitated, and her brother's face assumed a stern look.
"Is he going to fight a duel?" asked Mr. Scriven.
And his poor sister, in a fright lest she should produce a wrong
impression, poured forth the whole story of Miss Hayley, and Charles
Marston's intentions, and Mr. Winkworth's kindness in going with him.
Moreover, one part of the tale requiring, in her estimation,
explanation by another, she went on to give sundry portions of her
conversation with her nephew, to account for his determination to take
care of poor Miss Hayley, which she well knew, in its bald state, Mr.
Scriven would think very absurd, romantic, and extravagant; and she
added various hints with regard to what she and Charles judged he, Mr.
Scriven, ought to do for the poor lady; adding that some people
thought the Hayleys had not been altogether well treated.
There was a sort of consciousness in her heart all the time that she
was blundering, which only made her flounder more and more amongst the
shallows into which she had plunged; and the deep, imperturbable
silence with which her brother sat and listened to a long story--a
thing he was rarely inclined to do--only added to her embarrassment.
When she had done, he asked no questions, but only raised his eyes to
the timepiece; and with a last convulsion to get right again, or at
least to cast the weight from her own shoulders, she added--
"Well, Henry--I do not understand all these matters, as you well
know."
"Perfectly well," rejoined Mr. Scriven.
"And so," she continued, "you had better talk with Charles about them
yourself."
"I will," said Mr. Scriven.
"He will be back from the city before two," added Lady Fleetwood, "and
he sets out for Frimley at three."
"Ha!" said Mr. Scriven. "And now, Margaret, I will go; for I do not
see anything further that can be gained by staying here."
Now, Lady Fleetwood would have given a great deal to have unloosed his
taciturn tongue and discovered what he was going to do next; but Mr.
Scriven was not inclined that it should be so, and took his departure.
He had a brown cabriolet at the door--that was an age of cabriolets;
and when he had got into the vehicle, he first turned his horse's
head, as if he would have driven, as usual, to his house of business
in the city; but by the time he had got to the other side of the
square he had altered his mind, and sweeping round with a whirl, he
directed his course back to his private residence.
It was very strange that he should do so, for Mr. Scriven was the most
methodical of men. He arranged in the morning all that he intended to
do during the day, and on all ordinary occasions he did it. But there
was something stranger still; for, notwithstanding his having told
Lady Fleetwood that he must and would see his nephew Charles that day,
he took a very good way of preventing himself from so doing.
He first looked into a posting-hook, then ordered one of his servants
to go to the counting-house and say that he should not be there till
the next morning, and then directed another servant to order a pair of
post-horses.
As soon as they arrived he went out of town.