THE FAILURE OF MARGARET.
"Then I am to understand," said Wyvis, a sudden glow breaking out over
his dark face, "that you did not make this communication carelessly, as
at first I thought, but out of malice prepense?"
"If you like to call it so--certainly," said Lady Caroline, with a
slight shrug of her shoulders.
"This was your revenge?--when you found that Margaret had come to me!"
"You use strange words, Mr. Wyvis Brand. Revenge is out of date--a quite
too ridiculous idea. I simply mean that I never wish to intermeddle with
my neighbors' affairs, and should not have thought of bringing this
matter forward if your pretentions could have been settled in an
ordinary way. If Margaret"--glancing at her daughter, who stood white
and thunderstricken at her side--"had behaved with submission and with
modesty, I should not have had to inflict what seems to be considerable
pain upon you. But it is her fault and yours. Young people should submit
to the judgment of their elders: we do not refuse to gratify their
wishes without good reason."
Lady Caroline spoke with a cold dignity, which she did not usually
assume. Margaret half covered her face with one hand, and turned aside.
The sight of the slow tears trickling through her fingers almost
maddened Wyvis, as he stood before her, looking alternately at her and
at Lady Caroline. Mrs. Brand and Janetta were left in the background of
the little group. The older woman was still weeping, and Janetta was
engaged in soothing and caressing her; but neither of them lost a word
which passed between the man for whom they cared and the woman whom at
that moment they both sincerely hated.
"But is it a good reason?" said Wyvis at last. His eye flashed beneath
his dark brow, his nostril began to quiver. "If I had been Mark Brand's
son, you mean, you would have given me Margaret?"
"There would then have been no disqualification of birth," said Lady
Caroline, clearly. "There might then have been disqualifications of
character or of fortune, but these we need hardly consider now. The
other--the primary--fact is conclusive."
"Mamma, mamma!" broke out Margaret; "don't say these terrible
things--please don't. It isn't Wyvis' fault."
"God bless you, my darling!" Wyvis muttered between his teeth.
"No, it is not his fault; it is his misfortune," said Lady Caroline.
"I am to understand, then, Lady Caroline," said Wyvis, to whom
Margaret's expostulation seemed to have brought sudden calmness and
courage, "that my lowly origin forms an insurmountable barrier to my
marriage with Miss Adair?"
"Quite so, Mr. Brand."
"But that there is no other obstacle?"
"I did not say so. Your domestic relations have been unfortunate, and
Mr. Adair strongly objects to giving his daughter to a man in your
position. But we need not go into that matter; I don't consider it a
subject suitable for discussion in my daughter's presence."
"Then I appeal to Margaret!" said Wyvis, in a deep, strong voice. "I
call upon _her_ to decide whether my birth is as much of an obstacle as
you say it is."
"That is not fair," said Lady Caroline, quickly. "She will write to you.
She can say nothing now."
"She must say something. She was on the point of giving me herself--her
all--when you came in. She had promised to be my wife, and she was
prepared to keep her promise almost immediately. She shall not break her
word because my father was a ploughman instead of a landowner and a
gentleman."
For once Lady Caroline made a quick, resistant gesture, as if some
impulse prompted her to speak sharply and decisively. Then she recovered
herself, leaned back in her chair, and smiled faintly.
"Is the battle to be fought out here and now?" she said. "Well, then, do
your worst, Mr. Brand. But I must have a word by and by, when you have
spoken."
Wyvis seemed scarcely to hear her. He was looking again, at Margaret.
She was not crying now, but one hand still grasped a handkerchief wet
with her tears. She had rested the other on the back of her mother's
chair. Janetta marveled at her irresolute attitude. In Margaret's place
she would have flung her arms round Wyvis Brand's neck, and vowed that
nothing but death should sever her from him. But Margaret was neither
passionately loving nor of indomitable courage.
Wyvis stepped forward and took her by the hand. Lady Caroline's eyebrows
contracted a little, but she did not interfere. She seemed to hold
herself resolutely aloof--for a time--and listened, Janetta thought, as
if she were present at a very interesting comedy of modern manners.
"Margaret, look at me!" said the man.
His deep, vibrating voice compelled the girl to raise her eyes. She
looked up piteously, and seemed half afraid to withdraw her gaze from
Wyvis' dark earnestness of aspect.
"Margaret--my darling--you said you loved me."
"Yes--I do love you," she murmured; but she looked afraid.
"I am not altered, Margaret: I am the same Wyvis that you loved--the
Wyvis that you kissed down by the brook, when you promised to be my
wife. Have you forgotten? Ah no--not so soon. You would not have come
here to-day if you had forgotten."
"I have not forgotten," she said, in a whisper.
"Then, darling, what difference does it make? There is no stain upon my
birth. I would not ask you to share a dishonored name. But my parents
were honest if they were poor, and what they were does not affect me.
Margaret, speak, tell me, dear, that you will not give me up!"
Margaret tried to withdraw her hand. "I do not know what to say," she
whispered.
"Say that you love me."
"I--have said it."
"Then, that you will not give me up?"
"Mamma!" said Margaret, entreatingly. "You hear what Wyvis says. It is
not his fault. Why--why--won't you let us be happy?"
"Don't appeal to your mother," said Wyvis, the workings of whose
features showed that he was becoming frightfully agitated. "You know
that she is against me. Listen to your own heart--what does it say? It
speaks to you of my love for you, of your own love for me. Darling, you
know how miserable my life has been. Are you going to scatter all my
hopes again and plunge me down in the depths of gloom? And all for what?
To satisfy a worldly scruple. It is not even as if I had been brought up
in my early years in the station to which my father belonged. I have
never known him--never known any relations but the Brands; and they are
not so very much beneath you. Don't fail me, Margaret! I shall lose all
faith in goodness if I lose faith in you!"
"I think," said Lady Caroline, in the rather disheartening pause which
followed upon Wyvis' words--disheartening to him, at least, and also to
Janetta, who had counted much upon Margaret's innate nobility of
soul!--"I think that I may now be permitted to say a word to my daughter
before she replies. What Mr. Wyvis Brand asks you to do, Margaret, is to
marry him at once. Well, the time for coercion has gone by. Of course,
we cannot prevent you from marrying him if you choose to do so, but on
the other hand we shall never speak to you again."
Wyvis uttered a short laugh, as if he were scornfully ready to meet that
contingency, but Margaret's look of startled horror recalled him to
decorum.
"You would be no longer any child of ours," said Lady Caroline, calmly.
"Your father concurs with me in this. You have known our views so long
and so well that we feel it almost necessary to explain this to you. Mr.
Brand wishes you to choose, as a matter of fact, between his house and
ours. Make your choice--make it now, if you like; but understand--and I
am very sorry to be obliged to say a thing which may perhaps hurt the
feelings of some persons present--that if you marry the son of a
ploughman and a scullery-maid--I do not mean to be more offensive than I
can help--you cannot possibly expect to be received at Helmsley Court."
"But, mamma! he ranks as one of the Brands of the Red House. Nobody
knows."
"But everybody _will_ know," said Lady Caroline, calmly. "I shall take
care of that. I don't know how it is that Mr. Brand has got possession
of the family estate--to which he has, of course, no right; but it has
an ugly look of fraud about it, to which public attention had better be
drawn at once. Mr. Brand may have been a party to the deception all
along, for aught I know."
"That statement needs no refutation," said Wyvis, calmly, though with a
dangerous glitter in his eyes. "I shall prove my integrity by handing
over the Red House to my bro----to Cuthbert Brand, who is of course the
rightful owner of the place."
"You hear. Margaret?" said Lady Caroline. "You will not even have the
Red House in your portion. You have to choose between your mother and
father and friends, position, wealth, refinement, luxury--and Wyvis
Brand. That is your alternative. He will have no position of his own, no
house to offer you; I am amazed at his selfishness, I must own, at
making such a proposition."
"No, madam," said Mrs. Brand, breaking into the conversation for the
first time, and seeming to forget her timidity in the defence of her
beloved son Wyvis; "we are not so selfish as you think. The estate was
left to Wyvis by my husband's will. He preferred that Wyvis should be
master here; and we thought that no one knew the truth."
"But I shall not be master here any longer," said her son. "I will hand
over the place to Cuthbert at once. I will take nothing on false
pretences. So, Margaret, choose between me and the advantages your
mother offers you. It is for you to decide."
"Oh, I can't, I can't! Why need I decide now?" said Margaret, clasping
her hands. "Let me have time to think!"
"No, you must decide now, Margaret," said Lady Caroline. "You have done
a very unjustifiable thing in coming here to-day, and you must take the
consequences. If you still wish to marry Mr. Wyvis Brand, you had better
accept the offer of his mother's protection and remain here. If you come
away with me, it must be understood that you give up any thought of such
a marriage. You must renounce Mr. Wyvis Brand from this time forth and
for ever. Pray, don't answer hastily. The question is this--do you mean
to stay here or to come away with me?"
She rose as she spoke, and began to arrange the details of her dress,
as though preparing to take her departure. Margaret stood pale,
irresolute, miserable between her mother and her lover. Wyvis threw
out his hands to her with an imploring gesture and an almost frenzied
cry--"Margaret--love--come to me!" Janetta held her breath.
But in that moment of indecision, Margaret's wavering eye fell upon Mrs.
Brand. The mother was an unlovely object in her abject sorrow and
despair. Her previous coldness and awkwardness told against her at that
moment. It suddenly darted through Margaret's mind that she would have
to accept this woman, with her common associations, her obscure origin,
her doubtful antecedents, in a mother's place. The soul of the girl who
had been brought up by Lady Caroline Adair revolted at the thought.
Wyvis she loved, or thought she loved; Wyvis she could accept; but
Wyvis' mother for her own, coupled with exclusion from the home where
she had lived so many smooth and tranquil years, exclusion also from the
society in which she had been taught that it was her right to take a
distinguished place--this was too much. Her dreams fell from her like a
garment. Plain, unvarnished reality unfolded itself instead. To be poor
and obscure and unfriended, to be looked down upon and pitied, to be
snubbed and passed by on the other side--this was what seemed to be the
reality of things to Margaret's mind. It was too much for her to accept.
She looked at it and passed by it.
She stretched out her hand timidly and touched her mother's arm.
"Mamma," she said falteringly, "I--I will come with you." And then she
burst into tears and fell upon her mother's neck, and over her shoulder
Lady Caroline turned and smiled at Wyvis Brand. She had won her game.
"Of course you will, darling," she said, caressingly. "I did not think
you could have been so wicked as to give us up. Come with me! this is
nor the place for us."
And in the heart-struck silence which fell upon the little group that
she left behind, Lady Caroline gravely bowed and led her weeping
daughter from the room.
"Oh, Margaret, Margaret!" Janetta suddenly cried out; but Margaret never
once looked back. Perhaps if she had seen Wyvis Brand's face just then,
she might have given way. It was a terrible face; hard, bitter,
despairing; with lines of anguish about the mouth, and a lurid light in
the deep-set, haggard-looking eyes. Janetta, in the pity of her heart,
went up to her cousin, and took his clenched hand between her own.
"Wyvis, dear Wyvis," she said, "do not look so. Do not grieve. Indeed,
she could not have been worthy of you, or she would not have done like
this. All women are not like her, Wyvis. Some would have loved you for
yourself."
And there she stopped, crimson and ashamed. For surely she had almost
told him that she loved him!--that secret of which she had long been so
much ashamed, and which had given her so much of grief and pain. But she
attached too much importance to her own vague words. They did not betray
her, and Wyvis scarcely listened to what she said. He broke into a
short, harsh laugh, more hideous than a sob.
"Are not all women like her?" he said. "Then they are worse. She was
innocent, at any rate, if she was weak. But she has sold her soul now,
if she ever had one, to the devil; and, as I would rather be with her in
life and death than anywhere else, I shall make haste to go to the devil
too."
He shook off her detaining hand, and strode to the door. There he
turned, and looked fixedly at his mother.
"It is almost worse to be weak than wicked, I think," he said. "If you
had told me the truth long ago, mother, I should have kept out of this
complication. It's been your fault--my misery and my failure have always
been your fault. It would have been better for me if you had left me to
plough the fields like my father before me. As it is, life's over for me
in this part of the world, and I may as well bid it good-bye."
Before they could stop him, he was gone. And Janetta could not follow,
for Mrs. Brand sank fainting from her chair, and it was long before she
could be recovered from the deathlike swoon into which she fell.
And throughout that evening, and for days to come, Margaret Adair,
although petted and caressed and praised on every hand, and persuaded
into feeling that she had not only done the thing that was expected of
her, but a very worthy and noble thing, was haunted by an uneasy
consciousness, that the argument which had prevailed with her was not
the love of home or of her parents, which, indeed, might have been a
very creditable motive for her decision, but a shrinking from trouble, a
dislike to effort of any kind, and an utter distaste for obscurity and
humility. Janetta's reproachful call rang in her ears for days. She
knew that she had chosen the baser part. True, as she argued with
herself, it was right to obey one's parents, to be submissive and
straightforward, to shrink from the idea of ingratitude and rebellion;
and, if she had yielded on these grounds, she might have been somewhat
consoled for the loss of her lover by the conviction that she had done
her duty. But for some little time she was distressfully aware that she
had never considered her parents in the matter at all. She had thought
of worldly disadvantage only. She had not felt any desire to stand by
Wyvis Brand in his trouble. She had felt only repugnance and disgust;
and, having some elements of good in her, she was troubled and ashamed
by her failure; for, even if she had done right in the main, she knew
that she had done it in the wrong way.
But, of course, time changed her estimate of herself. She was so much
caressed and flattered by her family for her "exquisite dutifulness," as
they phrased it, that she ended by believing that she had behaved
beautifully. And this belief was a great support to her during the
winter that she subsequently spent with her parents in Italy.