"Anthony Miles is gone to London," said Mr Robert Mannering, walking
into the library of the Red House, on the day following that described
in the last chapter.
Mr Mannering looked with a shiver at the door his brother had left open
behind him. He had a cold, and a great many theories about its
treatment.
"I don't know what good he can do himself by going up," added Mr Robert
in a perturbed tone.
"He will be able to see Pitt," suggested Mr Mannering, drawing nearer
the fire.
"I wish I could feel there was any chance of his convincing Pitt. It's
a bad business, Charles."
Mr Mannering looked up with a little surprise; for although his brother
frequently indulged in cynical speeches, he had never yet known him to
believe in them, or take anything but a largely hopeful view of
individualised human nature.
"My dear Robert--would you object to shutting the door?--"
"I beg your pardon," said Mr Robert hastily, doing as he was requested
with an abstracted bang, which made Mr Mannering wince. But he went
on.
"Look calmly at the matter. What do we know of the contents of that
letter? How is it possible to judge of the terms in which the
suggestion was made?--of the burden it may have inflicted upon Anthony?"
"That is not the question," said his brother, shaking his head. "He
denies, you must remember, having received any suggestion whatever.
Pooh, the thing's absurd. Besides, young Lee seems to have implied that
he was aware of what had taken place."
Sometimes they are odd things which warp our judgments. Robert
Mannering was an old lawyer, with a red face and short iron-grey hair,
and yet it took a very little thing to turn aside his shrewd every-day
sense. Only a woman's name, and a curl of brown hair out of which the
living light had faded.
"I have said all I can for him to the Squire," he went on. "We shall
see when he comes back. But--"
He walked to the window, and stood with his hands behind him, looking
out. There was a threatening of snow in the air, and a few solitary
flakes, the more dismal for their want of companionship, came fluttering
down upon the empty beds. That "but" sounded like the key-note of all
dreary disbelief.
"Nobody can tell," said Mr Mannering, who usually took a more
desponding view of human nature than his brother. "My own opinion is
that you are all deciding hastily, but with the wind where it is, I
don't believe there's a man alive could give an unprejudiced judgment.
As to these hot-water pipes, Jane contrives to convert them into
conductors of cold air, with an ingenuity worthy of a better cause."
"The room is like a hot-house," said Mr Robert, a little shortly, and
still keeping his back turned. "That fool Stokes has not had the sense
to mat up the red geranium. He'll have got rid of every flower in the
garden before long, that's certain. Commend me to this place for
incapable idiots."
While he spoke, Mr Mannering with great care and deliberation proceeded
to fold a handkerchief, and to tie it round his head, thus imparting an
extraordinarily rueful expression to his face.
"Yates tells me they're going to push the Bill for connecting the two
lines," he said, fastening the knot.
"So I supposed. Nothing is too fraudulent for me to discredit, and I'm
quite aware that you may pick as many pockets as you please, if only you
do it on a large enough scale."
"Come, come, Robert. You'll be had up for a libel."
"I dare say. There's no bigger libel than truth in these days."
And then he suddenly turned round with a laugh at himself. To do him
justice, he was not often so cross, but then he was not often so sore
and disappointed at heart. It was very bitter to him to think of
Anthony Miles committing a dishonourable action, and it smote him again
to remember the injustice to the dead. He could not get one predominant
feeling, and that irritated his natural sense of orderliness.
Winifred, of whom he thought much at this time, was, perhaps, more
impatient than grieved, having an unflinching faith in the triumph of
right, which to such natures is as the very air they breathe. Only she
had not lived long enough to know that though the triumph comes, it is
not always the thing we picture to ourselves, laurel crowns, joyful
music, and the people looking on and shouting. There are other triumphs
besides this, wounds and tears, and a slow struggle upwards.
She believed that every shadow of blame would be swept away from Anthony
as soon as he returned from seeing Mr Pitt, and though keenly sensitive
to the reproaches she was forced to hear, took a pride in treating them
indifferently, as stings too slight even to require defence. When Mr
Robert met her one day and would have said something, she was very cool
with him.
"When Anthony returns," she said, scarcely stopping, "we shall know
exactly how such a mistake can have arisen."
"Anthony is come back," said Mr Robert, gravely.
She could not resist the rush of blood to her heart, which made her ask
hastily, "When?"
"He came last night. I have just seen him," Mr Mannering said in the
same tone.
"Well?"
"You will hear from himself, no doubt. Only, my dear, don't set your
heart too strongly upon things being made straight."
Winifred had grown a little pale, but there was not one shade of doubt
in her clear eyes as she looked at him.
"I do not understand you," she said quietly. "Things must be made
straight, as you call it, in the end; and in the mean time, of course,
no one who knows Anthony can doubt him for a moment. That such a report
should have ever lived for an hour is the real hardship that we have to
regret."
She was so unflinchingly steadfast, that Mr Robert, who believed there
was more trouble in store for her, left his warnings alone, and went
away mute. After all, she would know soon enough.
And to know enough, in this case, simply meant to know nothing. Anthony
had come back as he went, with hard lines about his face, and the
bitterness deepened and intensified. His first care had been to go to
Mr Pitt's chambers, where he found the old lawyer polite, cold, and
unshaken. "I posted the letter myself, Mr Miles. You have
ascertained, I presume, that it is not to be heard of in the Dead-Letter
Office?" was the text to which he returned when all had been said. He
had not seen the contents, but Mr Tregennas had communicated them to
him. Anthony grew exceedingly angry, and lost his temper. Although he
was aware when he left him that it was absolutely imperative that he
should follow Mr Pitt's suggestions, which were of a very obvious and
practical nature, the manner in which they had been thrown out had
raised so strong an antagonism in his blood, that he was tempted to
fling them and all prudent dealing to the winds, and was, perhaps, not
without a feeling of satisfaction, when they proved altogether barren of
results.
It was a word, however, of Mr Pitt's about Marmaduke Lee, which gave
him something approaching to a clew, at first no more than an idea that
his brother-in-law might be able to assist him to grope in the darkness
in which he found himself, but gradually, after he went down to Oakham,
and had seen Marmaduke, growing by some instinctive power into a
perception of what had actually happened. Only those who have some
knowledge of the strength and weakness of a character like Anthony's can
conceive what a shattering of landmarks came with this perception. All
his impulses were full of indignation and contempt; he almost withered
Marmaduke with an outbreak of angry scorn, and yet felt compelled, by
the very intensity of this scorn to save so miserable a man from the
consequences that would have crushed him. Something in the excessive
meanness and cowardice of the act filled him with a loathing shame which
made it impossible to proclaim it. Naturally his connection with Marion
touched him more nearly with its dishonour, but without such a shield it
is probable that he would have shrunk from dragging such a deed from its
hiding-place, in order to shelter himself behind it. Yet, although
there was a certain generosity in this attitude, there was little mercy
in his heart. It enraged him to feel the helplessness of his position,
the impotence with which he must submit to the world's verdict His was a
nature to which injustice was the most unbearable form of persecution
that could have visited him, one, also, which seemed to raise all his
worst qualities in opposition, so as to sweep away with a crash the
noble ideal he had set up of men and things; and such a moment in a
man's life is full of danger and trial, his weakness concealing itself
so deceptively that it seems to himself to be the armour which enables
him to present an undaunted front.
In Marions case, it was pity which Anthony felt, and he was as anxious
as Marmaduke to spare her the disclosure; but this did not prevent a
hard contempt becoming visible in his manner, when she, as was daily the
case, openly displayed her enthusiastic admiration for her husband.
Naturally, this made her angry, and placed Anthony again in the wrong.
It was, as it often is in the world, although, in spite of the
repetitions of some thousand years, every experience comes to us with
the sense of novelty, the man who was most heavily weighted had the
least sympathy, the hardest blame, the sharpest judgments. Other
people, less bound to partiality than Marion, compared Anthony's
abruptness, and the strong lines which had grown round his mouth,
unfavourably with Marmaduke's easy-humoured placidity by which he had
become a popular neighbour. All the crooks and angles of Anthony's
disposition seemed to be showing themselves, and yet the poor fellow had
never so sorely wanted pity, and kindness, and patient treatment.
Whether he judged rightly or not, there was something even beyond
chivalry in accepting the burden of this hateful thing, to spare another
a more terrible weight. There was so much cowardice and feebleness in
Marmaduke's nature that to avoid the pain of disgrace he might, so
Anthony believed, have fled from it at any cost,--even life itself; and
though he scorned such cowardice, he had not the heart to leave it to
its fate.
He left Oakham with a bitter consciousness that a gulf was dug between
them, and a hot, sore feeling with the world which he was about to face
without the power of clearing himself from its accusation. He would
make no attempt to save anything out of the wreck; with the pride of
youth, he determined that he would not stoop to offer assurances.
Knowing how impossible it was that he could have done this deed,--as
careless of money as those can be who have never wanted it,--it cut him
to the heart that he should be suspected, and he revenged himself by a
simulated indifference. Nothing could have been more repellent than his
manner of meeting Mr Robert, or less satisfactory than the answers he
vouchsafed. He would make no appeal for trust. Little by little, the
people who wished to be friendly grew irritated, and the matter was
talked of more openly and more unfavourably for Anthony when, instead of
conciliating, he seemed to provoke war to the knife. When the Squire
passed him with a cool bow, he retaliated by taking no notice whatever
of the Squire the next time they met. Even kindness appeared to wound
him. Winifred was bewildered when Anthony would lift his hat and go by
as if he saw no appeal in her sad eyes. He put himself in opposition to
all the world, and as a natural consequence grew hard, bitter, and
mistrustful.
Perhaps our powers of endurance are never so near giving way as when we
are holding them tightly strung, yet conscious of every jar and
vibration in the effort; and poor Anthony, with his sensitive and
affectionate temperament, went about with a dumb misery in his heart.
He was rejecting friendship at the time he most needed it, and really
longed to stretch out the hands with which he repelled its sweet
kindness, in pitiful entreaty for some touch of fellowship which should
break the cold isolation he was creating for himself.