‘AMIDST THE BLAZE OF NOON’
Michael took his brother home, and so true is it that time and life
can and do, if not wipe out, yet blur and deface the recollection of
the sternest and most terrible past scenes, that Michael never once
thought, as he opened the door, and ushered Gilbert in, of how that
door had last closed upon his companion. Gilbert, however,
remembered it—remembered many other things too, as he entered the
familiar square hall, and looked furtively round at the well-known
things which still furnished it. When they got into the library,
some recollection of it all seemed to come to Michael too. Perhaps
something in his brother’s attitude, and in the slow, stiff way in
which he moved and gazed about him, recalled past scenes to his
mind. He turned to Gilbert, took his hand into one of his, and laid
the other upon his shoulder.
‘Gilbert, we have little time for going into old troubles, in the
midst of these new ones; but, I say, let bygones be bygones. I am
more glad than I can tell you to see you here; and I would like you
to feel it your home again, if you can.’
Gilbert’s only present reply—though he had more to say, at some
future date—was to wring the hand that held his. They understood
each other again, at last—or, perhaps, for the first time; and as
Michael said, there was no time for further explanations. He rang
the bell, and ordered refreshments for his brother; and while
Gilbert ate and drank, Michael sat conning over a railway guide, and
jotting down memoranda.
‘How long can you stay, Gilbert? Over to-morrow?’
‘I could manage till the day after, if I wire to my head man
to-morrow morning.’
‘That is well. Then to-morrow, I will leave you in charge here, and
go over to Leeds, and tell Roger of this. If I began to write it, I
should make a mess of it, I know; besides, writing is cold-blooded
work, in such a case.’
‘It was all off between them, was it not?’
‘Ay. But it never need have been, but for that d—d scoundrel
philandering round the girl, and putting her out of conceit with
Roger. It is his doing from beginning to end, and I must say I
should glory in seeing him punished as he deserves. I think he wants
tearing to pieces. But don’t talk to me about it, or I shall lose
all my self-control, and I want it every bit.’
With which he returned to the study of Bradshaw, trying to make out
how he could soonest get himself conveyed to Leeds, see Roger, and
return to Bradstane. And as he searched in the railway guide, to see
how the trains were connected on the different lines, there came
into his mind a keen sense of the grimness of the contrast between
his errand, and the means by which he was going to hurry to Roger
with his budget of ill-news, and back again.
Our modern contrivances, indeed, for speedily moving about from
place to place, and for darting news hither and thither, have a
certain appearance of haste and want of dignity when tragedy comes
in question. And yet, it is surely a proof of the intrinsic might,
of the victorious power of great elementary human emotions, that
when they are every now and then called into play, in this decorous
age, it is they that triumph, and not the comfortable arrangements
which only take into account ease of mind and plenty of purse. Love
and hate and despair go striding grimly or gloriously on, and live
their lives, and strike their strokes, and sway the minds and souls
of those possessed by them, and override the obstacles in their
course, as potently now as they did in more picturesque days.
Bradshaw and the penny post come in in a parenthesis, and the system
of electric telegraphy powerfully supports them, so that we can send
the news of our own catastrophes, or of those of our neighbours,
with a speed unheard of a century ago, though even before then there
was a saying that ‘ill news travels fast.’ Nay, these things, if
rightly considered, appear conducive to privacy rather than, as
might appear from a superficial glance, to publicity. For any one
who reads a startling announcement in letter or newspaper, has the
habit, nowadays, of calling it a _canard_, and of saying that it is
sure to be contradicted to-morrow. And so it often is. But even if
it be not, this beautiful system of Bradshaw, penny post and Co.,
has no sooner certified the truth of one calamity, than it is ready
and to the fore with another, and a worse than the former one; which
second tragedy an intelligently interested public devours, even if
incredulous, with never-satiated delight; and thus the immediate
actors in the events chronicled are in reality left almost as much
to themselves and their own devouring emotions, as they would have
been before the steam-engine was invented. The world has heard of
your domestic drama, that is true; and its details have been printed
in every daily paper throughout the kingdom. But the day after, it
is provided with something much more remarkable than your
twopenny-halfpenny calamity, and has forgotten in a week that it
ever heard your name.
Some such train of thought was in Michael’s mind, as he paused to
consider the sequence in which he should arrange his different tasks
on the morrow. Gilbert’s voice broke in upon his reverie. He had
risen, and stood with his back against the mantelpiece.
‘Michael, it seems that you and Miss Askam “understand each other,”
as the phrase goes.’
‘Yes, we do,’ said Michael.
‘I’ll make a clean breast of it. Last year, I came down here with
some curiosity to see this girl who had come and planted herself
down with Otho. Knowing what he was, I was undecided whether she was
very fast, or very silly. So I came prepared for a good deal of
amusement. You need not glare at me in that way. I would bet
something you had your own private bit of astonishment in the
matter, too. Well, the very first time I saw her, I understood one
thing—that she was neither fast nor silly, and the more I saw of her
the more lost in astonishment I was. Do you remember that knight in
“The Faery Queene”—I forget which he was—who came across a woman of
her sort, and was struck dumb by her goodness, till
‘“He himself, long gazing thereupon,
At last fell humbly down upon his knee,
And of his wonder made religion.”
It was something like that with me; and in a very short time I had
made up my mind that she was the woman I would marry, if I could
only get her to take me. And I had the best hopes in the world, for
Otho had begun to conduct himself like a maniac, even then, and she
speedily found out that I was the only person who had any control
over him. Well, then came that night of the concert; a good many
things came about that night, it seems to me. And when I saw you and
her in the same room together, and you speaking to her, and her to
you, I was certain there was something of the kind going on.
Michael, I gave her up from that moment.... And yet, when time went
on—it is nearly a year ago—and I heard of nothing between you, I
began to think that, perhaps, after all, you had decided to have
nothing to do with one who belonged to _us_, and I began to have a
little hope again. When I got her telegram this morning, I felt a
good deal of hope, and I frankly confess I was not sorry to hear
that she was in trouble. I hoped that I could so serve her that I
should be able to ask for a reward; and the shape I proposed to give
it was, that we should pension off Otho with her money,—some of it,
you know,—and that she should come to me, and never be troubled any
more—if she only would. But you had forestalled me; and since it is
you, I submit; but if it had been anybody else——’
He paused expressively. Michael was looking earnestly at him, a
crowd of new emotions in his heart. This, then, was the secret of
Gilbert’s conduct which had so puzzled Eleanor.
‘I should have told her long ago that I loved her,’ observed
Michael; ‘but there was her money, and her connections. They were
too much for me.’
‘As far as money goes, you will be her equal,’ said Gilbert. ‘I
don’t suppose she will let Otho starve, and I can assure you there
will not be a great superfluity of means when his affairs are wound
up; and now that this girl and this child will have to be provided
for——’
‘If they live,’ put in Michael.
‘If they live—yes. Well, that will make a hole in her income, I can
assure you. While, on your part, there is that money—Michael——’ he
hesitated, stammered—‘that money that——’
‘I know,’ said Michael, quietly. ‘What about it?’
‘Why, I have done well with it. I have always hoped that some day
you would not reject it. It is six years ago, and I have made the
most of it. It is a good large sum now—larger than if——’
Michael gave a short laugh.
‘I can well believe that.’
‘And if I am to believe that you have forgiven,’ he added earnestly,
‘you will not refuse any longer to take your share—ay, and as much
more as you like—so that you can go to her and fear nothing, even if
she loses every penny she has.’
There was a pause. Michael at last said—
‘You must let me think about it. I cannot decide such a thing all in
a minute.’
Indeed, he felt that he could not. And he was beginning to feel that
six years ago he had been hard—as hard as some pagan or puritan,
whose creed relentlessly demands an eye for an eye, and a tooth for
a tooth. Quite a new feeling came over him with regard to Gilbert,
who, it seemed, had worked for him for many years, and patiently
bided till circumstances should allow him to offer the fruits of his
work. Sweeping condemnations, he reflected, would be comfortable,
very comfortable, to the carnal heart of offended man; but
reasonable man must confess that scarcely ever are they just.
* * * * *
The months dragged on. Autumn fled by; winter had passed from off
the face of the earth, and disappeared from the skies, but not from
the soul and the mind of Ada. Gradually, after a long and terrible
illness, her bodily health began to be restored. The death for which
she had prayed, and which she had wildly begged Michael to procure
for her, had stayed his hand. She was uplifted from the bed of
sickness, but arose a changed being, altered and transformed
apparently in her very nature. A melancholy, deep, black, and
profound as the grave itself, had settled upon her—a melancholy
which nothing ever seemed to move or change. She was not mad now, if
she could still hardly be called sane, just because of this black
cloud which rolled between her and other persons. She had no craze,
and no delusion, properly speaking; she was simply dead to hope and
joy, to every amelioration of the present, to every hope in the
future. Eleanor studied her with awe and wonder, realising the
mysterious nature of the human creature in her. For if Ada had lost
great things, if she had fallen from a high ideal, had been dashed
from a great height of purity and loftiness of soul, and so had felt
herself irreparably stained and polluted, her present condition of
apathetic despair would have been comprehensible to Eleanor, and she
would have sympathised as well as pitied. But the things she had
lost, and the loss of which had reduced her to what she was, were so
small; at least, they appeared so to the other. It was not for moral
and spiritual degradation that she mourned and refused to be
comforted, but for material trouble,—vanity crushed, great hopes of
advancement and aggrandisement shattered; her social position, such
as it was, gone for ever, and humbler women who had been clever
enough to take care of themselves, exalted above her. When they
showed her her child, who was a healthy and beautiful boy, though
not robust, she turned away in horror, with hatred in her eyes—the
nearest approach to an active emotion which she had shown since her
calamity. It was what Michael had expected to see, and he noted it
down in his mind.
‘I wish he was dead, and me too!’ she said, looking coldly at
Michael. ‘I think you might have put us both out of the way, Dr.
Langstroth, if you had had as much kind feeling as people talk
about.’
Michael told Eleanor that the child must be removed from Ada’s
vicinity. Therefore, while the latter remained at the farm, in Mrs.
Nadin’s care, Eleanor charged herself with the baby, and took it and
its nurse into her house. She could have devised no surer means of
healing the wounds, sweetening the bitterness, soothing the
angriness of her own thoughts. The utter helplessness of the child,
the terrible circumstances of its birth, its clouded future,
appealed irresistibly to her nature. She grew to love the little
creature with an intensity which surprised herself. She hushed it to
sleep in her arms, or interrogated its large mournful eyes as they
stared upwards, with long, vacant gaze into her absorbed face. And
in this occupation she had time to ponder over all that had
happened, and to try to shape her course in accordance, not with the
dictates of anger and passion, however just, but with the laws of
mercy and forgiveness. The helpless figure in her arms, whose warm
and clinging dependence seemed to make everything more human and
more endurable, softened her, calmed her, so that sometimes she
spoke to Michael of what had happened, and of what might happen,
with an insight and a depth of thought and feeling which surprised
him, ready as he was to credit her with all manner of goodness and
nobleness.
Her great desire, during the period in which the boy was under her
care, was to get a marriage performed between Otho and Ada.
Thorsgarth was not an entailed property, though it had always been
the practice in the Askam family to arrange it and the succession to
it as if it had been. If Otho and Ada were married, and he could be
forced to do justice to this child, though he could never give him
the name he ought to have borne, yet much evil would be removed, and
great sorrow and heart-burning averted.
Strange to say, the difficulties in the way of this scheme arose,
not with Otho, but with Ada. When the latter was well enough to
leave the farm, Eleanor brought her to her own house, since Ada
utterly refused to go home, saying she would kill herself if they
took her there.
Through Gilbert, she and Michael had word that Otho was subdued,
cowed, and changed; that it had become a sort of superstitious wish
with him to have the marriage legalised. This gave hope to Eleanor.
But Ada, when questioned, merely said, with profound melancholy, and
profound indifference, ‘What does it matter? If he married me fifty
times, he cannot give me back any of the things that made me happy.
I do not care what any one thinks or says. Father says he will
remove from here, and let me live with him. That will do as well as
anything.’
So firmly was she planted in this mind, that after a time they
ceased to press it upon her, trusting to time to work a change. At
the end of March she was still at the Dower House, seeing only
Eleanor, Michael, and her father, who sometimes came to visit her.
Mr. Dixon was a broken man now. His wife’s anger took a different
shape from his; she would have had him sell his business and retire
altogether from a place where they could never hold up their heads
again. But the poor old man was not thus to be torn away from his
child, or from the place where she was. Mrs. Dixon indignantly
refused to see the baby; but her husband frequently stole up to the
Dower House of an afternoon or evening, creeping timidly into the
room where his daughter sat, and taking a place beside her. And here
he used to nurse his little grandchild upon his knee, trying to
disguise from Ada the delight he could not help taking in its looks
and ways, as, when he had once or twice called her attention to
them, she had looked at him and at the child, too, in a strange way,
of which Eleanor took more notice than he did; and, warned by
Michael, she was ever on her guard. But it was not written that Ada
was to fulfil her lot in any way such as they sometimes dimly
dreaded. Her thoughts strayed within her darkened mind, and as she
saw the spring outside breaking around her, and beheld also the
looks and gestures by which Michael and Eleanor sometimes betrayed,
amidst all the gloom, that they loved, and were happy, Ada might
have cried also—
‘Oh, dark, dark, dark, amidst the blaze of noon!’
Most likely, the intelligence of a certain order which her woe
seemed to have developed in her, read their fears, and smiled at
them. They thought she planned nothing for the future, any more than
she revived at any sign in the present; but in this they were
mistaken.