A FRIENDSHIP EXPLAINED
Michael, tired himself, threw himself on to his tired horse when he
left Magdalen’s parlour, and rode down the drive and into the
high-road. He had had a long and hard day, and there was weariness
visible in the paleness of his face, which was a thinner and an
older face than it had been.
But there was a theme in his mind, occupying it to the exclusion of
his weariness, and this it was which engrossed him as he rode
towards Bradstane.
‘So that is Otho Askam’s sister?’ he reflected. ‘I had nearly
forgotten that he had a sister. Somehow, one never associates him
with human, kindly connections of that kind. I remember her now,
though, when we used to be children together in the Thorsgarth
garden. She wore a blue velvet frock, I remember, and little kid
shoes. I used to think her a pretty little thing. She is something
more than a pretty little thing now, though’—he smiled a little to
himself—‘rather a superb young woman, I should say, and, judging
from all one can gather from a flying glimpse and a few words about
the antipodes of her brother in everything—yes, I should say
everything. I wonder if she knows about his character? I wonder how
she got to Balder Hall so soon after her arrival? With him for a
brother, and Magdalen for a friend—she is splendidly equipped, and
need fear nothing, morally or socially.... She is a beautiful girl.
Such eyes, and such a fine expression.’
Thinking such thoughts, he presently arrived at the Red Gables,
where he had to devote himself to work till Roger came in for
dinner. Eleanor had wondered, after she had heard Michael’s story,
how he had been able to remain on terms of politeness with Magdalen,
who said plainly that he was her friend still. But Magdalen had
given no recital of the steps by which she and Michael had arrived
at their present degree of mutual courtesy and neutrality. It was
hardly likely that she should, when such a recital must have laid
bare the very eye and core of her own humiliation, of the
degradation which was constantly present in her consciousness, and
of the disappointment and the failure which made her see all things
in the light of bitterness and cynicism.
She had broken with Michael, suddenly, promptly, and pitilessly: she
had not stayed her hand, she had not softened her expressions; she
had dealt a blow which she knew might ruin his life, and that
knowledge had not deterred her, or caused her hand to tremble as she
struck. She had sent Michael—a broken man, as he thought—to recover
his health, moral and physical, as best he might; and he had
returned, saying he was glad that nothing remained of the man who
had been Michael Langstroth, since that man had been a great fool.
When things have happened to a man which make him feel as if the sun
had fallen out of the heavens, and the stars changed their courses,
he is, no doubt, a little apt to feel astounded on finding, after a
time, that it was not the sun nor the stars, but himself who was
disturbed and jolted out of his old orbit into a new one. But let
him be astonished as much as he will—let him even be indignant, as
he very often is, at such vagaries of the universe so distressing
him—he cannot alter things. The sun goes on shining, and the stars
pursue their appointed march, and by and by he—to descend from great
things to small ones—also falls into some sort of progress, be it
march, or shamble, or shuffle, or steady struggle onwards and
upwards. This always happens if the man be a very man, and not an
amorphous sort of thing without backbone or sinew.
In obedience to this law it had come to pass that Michael
Langstroth, five years after he had been stricken down, found
himself able to stand upright—found that he was still living,
moving, working; could laugh when a joke tickled him, which it did
pretty often; could feel hungry when he had fasted, and thought
perhaps a little more of the nature of the provision set before him
than he had formerly done. This last trait was, no doubt, if one
argues rightly, a powerful sign that if he moved now easily enough,
still it was in a different way, and on a different platform from
the old ones.
On his return from Hastings, after the illness which followed his
father’s death and Magdalen’s repudiation of him, Dr. Rowntree had
attacked him, and gone near to kill him with kindness of a very
practical sort; insisting that he was an old man, tired of hard
work, who had long been wanting to retire, and had only been waiting
till Michael should be ready to take his place. All tenders of
payment for his generosity he had firmly and steadily put aside,
till Michael had been forced to stop any such suggestions. He had
finally accepted the doctor’s goodness, as the latter had fully made
up his mind that he should; and so it came to pass that, soon after
his return to work, Michael had found himself in possession of a
practice of his own, and also that the retirement of his old friend
had called a rival into the field, another surgeon, who perhaps
thought that the Bradstane circuit was too large for the unaided
management of one man. Thus Michael, while he became better off than
he had ever been before, in a pecuniary point of view, found at the
same time that he must work with all his might, just to keep the
lead—not to be swamped in the struggle. The practice he now had was
not as lucrative as the practice of the old doctor, untroubled by
any rival, had been, but it was a practice on which Michael could
have afforded that marriage which had been his goal for three years.
When he had come home and begun work, he had heard many rumours,
many asseverations, even, that Magdalen Wynter and Otho Askam were
to be married. Scandal-mongers said that she had jilted Michael in
order that she might marry Otho. Michael had to steel his heart and
his nerves and his whole moral man in a triple brazen armour, in
order to receive these assaults without wincing, and in order to
hear without shrinking the proofs adduced in support of the
hypothesis—Otho’s constant visits, namely, to Balder Hall, and
Magdalen’s graciousness to him. For his own part, with a natural
revulsion of feeling, the result of the demolition of his blind
trust in her, he was firmly persuaded that the marriage would take
place; but it did not. Months passed by, and the indignation at
Magdalen’s infidelity had merged into ridicule of her failure—if
failure it were, for Otho’s visits to Balder Hall continued with
unabated regularity.
During these months Michael had never even seen her, and he took it
for granted, without thinking very much about it, that he was not to
see her any more, nor hold any intercourse with her. Then, one day,
a messenger came in haste from Balder Hall, to Dr. Rowntree, to say
that Miss Strangforth was very ill, and he was to go to her
immediately. But Dr. Rowntree was not in Bradstane at the moment.
Michael was, and of course there could be no question of hesitating
or debating. He went to Balder Hall; was ushered straight into Miss
Strangforth’s room, where the first object he saw was Magdalen
Wynter’s face, pale and anxious, raised to look at him as he came
in. Michael had just time to feel that all that he had been sure he
would experience on first meeting her, was conspicuous by its
absence—all that he would have thought it least likely that he
should feel, he felt. It was she who showed the more agitation of
the two. Her eyes fell, her lips fluttered—she could not meet
Michael’s gaze. She spoke in a low voice, timidly, deprecatingly.
From that moment he felt master of the situation, and of her. It did
not give him a more kindly feeling towards life in general, or
towards Magdalen in particular, but it made him conscious he was a
free man. It was he who from this day took the lead in the
intercourse between Magdalen and himself—chose how far it should go,
laid down the terms on which they should meet. Magdalen had said to
Eleanor, ‘We have been friends ever since.’ Perhaps Michael would
not have contradicted her, even had she asserted this before his
face. But none could know better than Magdalen herself what Michael
in reality felt for her now—none was better acquainted than herself
with the nature of those ashes left after the edifice of his faith
in her had been so entirely consumed and demolished. She knew that
she was powerless now to move him in any way—that he was stronger
than she was, and that, instead of crushing him, she had exposed
herself to the possibility of being crushed by him. He despised
her—she knew it: he esteemed her no higher than his brother Gilbert,
if he did not choose to visit his contempt upon her in the same way.
She was his ‘friend,’ not because he could not tear himself away
from her presence, but because she had now become to him a thing of
so little consequence that it was not worth his while to avoid her.
He had never said so to her, but she knew it, and it was more
convenient to say to Eleanor Askam, ‘We are friends,’ than it would
have been to explain to her the nature of the friendship.
And thus it can be understood how Michael this night thought more of
Eleanor Askam, and felt more interest in her—of a purely speculative
kind—than in the woman he had known and loved for so many years. He
had cut himself off entirely from the Askam clan, as it were—Gilbert
was mixed up with them; Magdalen and Otho were friends, and Otho was
a man whom he disliked inevitably, from his very nature. The vision
of this bright and beautiful girl, suddenly appearing in a quarter
to which he was accustomed to consider himself a perfect stranger,
had struck him, and he felt interested in her, as we feel interested
in amusing or curious things with which we do not expect or desire
to have any intimacy. And while he was waiting for Roger to come in
to dinner, and ostensibly reading, he found himself half-dreaming,
for he was sleepy, and ever the vision before his mental eyes was
Magdalen’s scented, warm parlour, with its ruddy glow of firelight
cheering the dull afternoon, and the sudden appearance upon the
scene of that bright and beautiful girl, with her open gaze, and her
abundant life and fire.
At last Roger came in, apologising for being late.
‘I went to meet Ada, and it is a good half-hour’s walk from Balder
Hall.’
‘Oh, I’ve been at Balder Hall this afternoon, too. Who do you think
I saw there?’
‘Miss Askam—I’ve heard.’
‘Otho Askam’s sister. That is the light in which I saw her, I must
confess.’
Roger shrugged his shoulders. They were as broad—he was as big, as
clumsy, as saturnine as ever.
‘Ada says she is very handsome.’
‘Ay, she is! Handsome enough to make a sensation here, I can tell
you.’
‘Ah! In her brother’s style?’
‘No, indeed. I should say they had no two points in common, unless
physiognomy lies most atrociously.’
‘Wish her joy, I’m sure, then,’ said Roger, drily.
‘Just what I was thinking. Are you going out again to-night?’ he
added, for they had returned to the library, and he saw Roger
collecting sundry songs and pieces of music.
‘Yes. The usual rendezvous,’ replied Roger.
‘How go the rehearsals?’
‘First-rate; if she would only leave it to me, and not go up to
Balder Hall after every lesson, to get a second opinion.’
Michael laughed a little sarcastically.
‘That must be flattering to your _amour propre_, both as teacher and
betrothed,’ he said.
‘Very much so. Never mind! When we are wed, the Balder Hall alliance
must come to an end.’
‘Now, I don’t call that fair, but the very reverse,’ said Michael,
emphatically. ‘She would have just as much right to go to Miss
Wynter and say, “Never mind! When we are wed, the Red Gables
alliance must come to an end.”’
‘Oh no! There’s a great difference.’
‘Yes, there is. There is the difference that you could make her give
up Miss Wynter, and that she could not make you give up me.’
‘No one makes me give up my friend,’ said Roger, deliberately;
‘neither wife nor mistress, nor any one else. It is no true wife’s
part to wish to separate her husband and his friends.’
‘A wife has the strictest right to say the same thing with regard to
her husband. And you have not a shadow of right, Roger, to say she
shall not know Miss Wynter when she is married to you. If you make
it a _sine quâ non_, you ought to tell her so in advance.’
‘You are very hot about it. I’d as soon she had a serpent for a
friend as——’ He nodded expressively.
‘Well, I say you have no right to say so,’ said Michael, ‘and I
recommend you to think it over on your way down. You talk about
educating her where she is deficient—poor little thing! but it isn’t
education to say “you shall” and “you shall not.”’
‘You may be right,’ said Roger, deliberately. ‘Only, please, do me
the justice to own that I did not say how I should stop the
alliance. I only said it should come to an end. There is such a
thing as persuasion.’
‘Oh, if you are going to get out of it in that way——’
‘Good night,’ said Roger, amiably. ‘Don’t leap so readily to
conclusions another time.’
With which he went out, leaving Michael laughing to himself.
The latter had once again to turn out in the raw November air, to
see some patients in the town. As he returned, he passed the shop of
Mr. Dixon, the Bradstane stationer, and looking up, saw a bright
light burning behind the red curtains of the windows on the second
story. Distant sounds of music also came to his ears. He smiled and
sighed, both at once; and in his mind there were running thoughts,
almost identical with those which Roger Camm had thought of
Michael’s own engagement, eight years ago, to Magdalen Wynter.
‘If she is the girl to make him happy, well and good. But I wish he
had chosen differently. He talks about marrying into his own
sphere—such bosh! Small shopkeepers are not his sphere, let him say
what he likes. If Ada Dixon had been a squire’s daughter, I suppose
he would have discovered that after all he was a clergyman’s son,
and a gentleman, her social equal. Now it suits him better to call
himself a working man, and say that like must wed like, to be happy.
It is a pity; he might have had a career, only she drags him back.’
He called at Dr. Rowntree’s, and had half an hour’s chat with the
old man; then back to his own house, his pipe, and a treatise on
some new surgical experiments with which it behoved him to make
acquaintance.