"Nothing to do with feelings!"
"The right or the wrong can't be affected by them, I mean," Winifred
went on, still slowly, turning her face towards the grey clouds broken
with white depths that were driven from the west. "There is something
more secure for us to rest upon than even the love you hold to be so
strong, Marion, or else--"
"Else what?" said Marion impatiently. But Winifred would not answer.
She came from the window, and took up her hat which was lying on the
sofa.
"I must go, or I shall be caught in the rain. Take care of your cold."
"O, I am taking care!" said Marion discontentedly. "Marmaduke was
obliged to go into Underham on some stupid business of Miss Philippa's.
Old people are so selfish. Anthony comes back to-morrow. Ask Bessie to
bring the last magazines. But you don't know what you were talking
about, Winifred, really."
Winifred laughed and went away.
Marmaduke had gone to Underham, as she said, doing what he had done a
hundred times before, walking in through the narrow lanes, white with
the blossom of the blackthorn, and past the farm orchards to the little
ugly improving town, with its bustle, its grimy coal-wharves, and its
rows of stiff houses run up quickly by the sides of the street.
Marmaduke transacted Miss Philippa's business, and stood talking for a
while to Mr Featherly. He particularly disliked meeting Mr Featherly,
because the old clergyman had a fashion of inquiring whether he were
still at work in the north, with an expression which Marmaduke chose to
interpret as astonishment, although his questioner only intended to
prove his interest in the little lad whom he remembered running about
with the Miles children in the days when he was a younger man, and rode
out to Thorpe now and then when ordered forth by Mrs Featherly to take
a constitutional Marmaduke, however, imagined that his words implied
that wonder from which we are inclined to wince when it professes to be
excited in our behalf, a wonder that Mr Tregennas had not done more for
the nephew who was popularly looked upon as his heir, and he was careful
to avoid the old clergyman whenever it was practicable. On this day his
efforts had been in vain, and Mr Featherly kept him for an unusual
length of time to tell him the story of some local event, which his wife
permitted no one but herself to relate in her presence, and which Mr
Featherly therefore hailed the opportunity of producing. Afterwards,
Marmaduke, who had not Anthony's many-sided interests, and found time a
wearisome weight, sauntered round by the canal, watched a coal-barge
dragged up to her moorings, and then strolled towards the post-office,
it being the custom at Thorpe for any responsible inhabitant who
happened to be at Underham after the arrival of the mail train, to call
for the letters due by the second delivery to the Vicarage, the Red
House, and Hardlands. He was not, however, sure whether the train had
come in, and stopped David Stephens, who was passing him, to ask the
question.
His own feelings towards David were rather favourable than otherwise;
not that his nature was sufficiently large to have a more just view of
the real intensity of the man's longings, or, indeed, that he could have
sympathised with any desires which were merely spiritual, and therefore
to his mind unreal, but that he knew that Anthony was opposing David
with all his might, and something within him inclined him to rank
himself in every matter on the side against Anthony. He had not a very
clear idea of what position David held amongst the dissenters, or of the
points at variance between him and Anthony, and he was not sorry for the
opportunity of putting one or two leading questions, which should at all
events let David see that he was not offending all the family by his
open warfare. He said in a conciliatory tone,--
"I heard something of your trying to get into the post-office, Stephens.
Have you succeeded?"
"I hardly know as yet, sir. I have not many friends among those who
have the disposal of the place; a dissenter seems necessarily to bring a
large amount of ill-will about his head."
"Not necessarily, I should suppose. It is hard to believe that any man
could be persecuted in these days for holding his own religious
opinions."
"There are many hard things that are true," said David bitterly. "One
would say that it is hard that so much as standing room should be denied
to those who would worship God as they believe right, and yet you know,
Mr Lee, whether that is true or not, and who has done it."
"Mr Anthony does not think much of the feelings of those who oppose
him," said Marmaduke, slowly lighting a cigar. "I am afraid it is of no
use for me to say anything, Stephens. You had better give it up, unless
you really see a chance of succeeding in spite of him."
"Until to-day I had hopes, sir, but I find he has been more inveterate
than I could have supposed. Mr Maddox has gone back from his word
altogether; the fear of man has been too strong for him to battle
against, even with the fear of another world before him. I thank you,
sir, however, for your kindness."
He went on quickly, as if he were afraid of adding more, and Marmaduke
strolled leisurely after him to the post-office, where the clerk handed
him three letters for Mr Mannering, one for Hardlands, and none for the
Vicarage. Setting off to walk homewards, however, he heard steps
behind, and Stephens, overtaking him, said,--
"Mr Tucker overlooked one letter, sir."
"Thank you, Stephens. Are you going this way?"
"I am making haste to a cottage where they want me, and I have to be
back at the office by an hour's time. Good day, sir."
For the second time they parted, and Marmaduke looked at the letter. He
saw at a glance that it was for the Vicarage, and for Anthony, but he
saw at the same moment something which brought a red flush into his
face. The letter was for Anthony, and it came from Mr Tregennas.
To ordinary persons it might have seemed a not unnatural thing for Mr
Tregennas to have written to Anthony, who had once or twice been his
guest; but to Marmaduke the sight of the handwriting broke down the
barriers which had hitherto stemmed in his slowly accumulating
suspicions, and let loose a very torrent. The thoughts could not have
leapt to life in that moment, but they leapt from their hiding-places.
In those few feebly written words he saw revealed a very network of
treachery, and walked on mechanically, looking at the letter as he
walked with a kind of dumb rage. What did it conceal from him? What
plot was weaving round him its web of ruin? How had Anthony toiled and
dug, and how much had he gained? Gained away from him,--his own as he
had thought it, and called it, and counted upon it! How had he been so
blind? Jealousies that hitherto had been vague and unacknowledged took
shape and rose up in fierce array. He said to himself that Anthony had
seemed abstracted of late, and called himself a fool as he recollected
that just before he went to London a week ago he had noticed a letter in
his hand, the address upon which stirred him with a half-memory. As he
walked quickly on, shut in by green lanes, he lashed himself by a
hundred evidences into the conviction that Anthony was a traitor, and
that in his hand he carried the letter which held the key to this
treachery.
In his hand.
It was a strange power. To his excited imagination the thought dawned
like the beginning of retribution. How many chances were there not
against its thus coming into his possession! Had justice so guided it
that he, of all others, should be the one to whose care it was
delivered? Had Anthony's absence and Miss Philippa's fancies all worked
for this end? He looked at the letter as if there, hidden only by a
slender cover, lay the means of confounding his enemies, at first with a
kind of angry triumph that so much at least had been gained. The letter
was in his hands, and that was the first step.
After all, however, he became soon aware that it was only a step. To
himself it might be conclusive proof, but that was not sufficient, and
he felt irritated and baffled. In what shape did the danger threaten,
and would it be yet impossible for him to turn its tide? He had thought
of giving Anthony Miles the letter, and so openly accusing him as to
force from him a confession of his shamelessness; but, with a passionate
impotence, he acknowledged this to be a vain manner of confronting the
blow. He was not in the position to make good his claim. He must meet
his enemy with all the subtlety of self-defence. But what had he to
meet? How should he know what lay before him, from which side the
thrusts should be parried, in what shape grew the threat? The questions
beat in his brain with recurrent strokes, as if a hammer were smiting
dull iron. All the keenness of suspicion could do no more than bring a
shadowy uncertainty before him; nothing could solve the problem except
the letter, with its poor feeble failing writing, which he held in his
hand.
For there, to be sure, lay the certainty; there was hid the proof or the
acquittal, as the case might be. He began to look at it as though
Anthony were the prisoner on trial before him, while he himself was the
person who possessed the clew, and could determine the guilt. To his
distorted reasoning it became almost a sin against Anthony not at once
to decide the question, when, after all, he might be innocent, and
surely it would be better that this innocence should be placed beyond
the power of doubt, than that so cruel a suspicion should divide two
friends. For Anthony's own sake it seemed to Marmaduke a duty to
determine the truth forever. The letter had been given to him for some
purpose, he argued, as a man will argue, himself clothing the temptation
in the strong armour with which it comes to meet him at last, mighty and
irresistible. It needed only one look to convince himself, a look which
could not harm Anthony Miles in any way, only put Marmaduke on his
guard, and show him how to defend his rights. One look--nothing more--
at the letter which was in his hands.
He opened it. And as he did so, out of some background of old
associations, there rushed upon him such an intolerable loathing for his
own action that for a few moments his eyes refused to see its contents.
The false pleading with which he had covered it was no longer to be
called up, could never any more be called up. It was with a sense of
desperate degradation that he forced himself to master the writing,
pathetic in its feebleness, confused and indistinct. "I think it is all
coming to an end at last," it said, with a forlornness which might have
touched him at another time, "and that my successor will soon be free of
my shoes, such as they are. I don't talk about repenting, but somehow
my girl's face comes before me night and day,--I might have been more
patient with her, though I did no more than I told her to look for.
Your father seems a just man; people call me a hard old fellow, but I
have still a feeble belief in human nature, and I believe in him. If
you choose you may place a decision in his hands, and if he tells me the
thing should be done, I will make an alteration in my will, half the
money shall go as it is now settled, and half to Ellen Harford,
Margaret's child. But should he think the change unnecessary, I do not
wish to be pestered by replies or arguments. Silence will answer me
fully. I shall understand that he thinks my proposal unadvisable, and I
shall never break it by an allusion."
And this was the letter which Marmaduke must deliver.
For a quarter of an hour he stood motionless with it in his hand. Over
his head was the sweet changeable April sky, and on either side of the
road a little green copse in which the birds were chirping and
twittering. He looked up at last, with a fierce gesture of impatience
at their glad piping, at the tender sunshine; a sudden storm, a wild
rending of all these pretty gentle things, would have been more
congenial to him just then than the burden of their joy. Two men jogged
by him in a cart, and looked at him curiously as he stood by the
roadside. It raised a quick fear that they might discover his secret,
and he began to walk slowly on again, reading and rereading the letter
in obedience to some mechanical impulse, for the first sight had burned
the words into his brain. It was remarkable that he had no longer any
fear of Anthony as a rival, probably from his own frame of mind being
such that it was impossible for him to realise a sane man putting such a
choice into the hands of his heir, and conceiving the idea of his
exercising it in any way but one. It was only a robbery of himself
which was revealed to him; an iniquitous deprival of half of his
inheritance. For he needed no assurance of what Mr Miles's decision
would be. He had a half-uncomfortable, half-slighting contempt for the
Vicar's notions, which he classed with other antiquated forms of thought
belonging to the old world. Anthony's words came back to him with a
sting which they had not at the time they were spoken, when he believed
them to be powerless, and he knew that half of those good things on
which he had so long counted would go out of his grasp forever as soon
as this letter was delivered. As soon as it was delivered,--but the
question immediately forced itself on his thought of why such a letter
should exist at all to harrow them with its sentence of deprivation.
Was not the Vicar himself concerned, Marion's interests being equally
involved with his own? And it was for the sake of a girl who knew
nothing, hoped nothing, and whose father was as equally averse to a
reconciliation as Mr Tregennas had been. Then he thought angrily that
the decision, if there were one, should have been offered to himself.
Indeed, fate said the same thing, and, resenting the injustice, gave him
the needed opportunity. If he did not embrace it, he was yielding his
own property, and sealing a gross injustice. The thought grew, it rang
in his brain as he walked along,--alas, no song of birds could drown it!
He tore the letter across and across without a renewal of those accusing
feelings which had rushed upon him when first he opened it, having
wrought himself into a condition in which right and wrong became mere
accidents dependent on his own will. He set his teeth and tore it into
a hundred fragments, dropping them, as he walked, upon the grass by the
side of the lane, and almost taking a pleasure, as it seemed, in their
symmetrical destruction. No sense of pity touched him for the failing
life that had there made its last vain effort, and the notion that he
was baffling an act of injustice he was able by a strong and
concentrated pressure of conscience to keep uppermost in the place it
had usurped.
A little farther along the lane he once more met David Stephens, letting
him pass this time without comment, and congratulating himself that the
man had not timed his return earlier. It was, however, noticeable that,
having delivered himself from his previous haunting suspicions of
Anthony's rivalship, he should, nevertheless, immediately decide that he
would in some hidden manner assist Stephens, thinking that the fortune
which was to come into his hands would enable him to do this, and siding
more strongly than even an hour ago with any attempt to oppose Anthony's
influence.
David himself, accustomed to observe keenly, was aware of some
disturbance in Marmaduke's face as he passed him, wondering, too, at his
having gone so short a distance since they parted. It is possible that
the surprise made him quick to notice trifles, for the tiny atoms which
had fluttered on the grass would naturally have escaped his observation.
As it was, he stooped and gathered some of them into his hand. They
were torn so closely as to make it almost a matter of impossibility to
fit one piece with another, unless he had bestowed long attention upon
the work, and no impulse moved him to do this. But a scrap of the
envelope, which Marmaduke had destroyed with less care, showed enough of
the postmark for Polmear to be distinguishable, and Polmear had been
stamped on the letter which Stephens had handed to Mr Lee. One or two
other half-words there were, which, his curiosity being a little
excited, he tried to put together as he went along, but for the most
part they were illegible. Something, however, gave him an uneasy
feeling as he hurried on to the post-office to hear whether his
application had been successful.