Thanks in a great measure to Mr Robert's policy, the news of Anthony's
clearing spread rapidly through the neighbourhood. The Milmans had a
luncheon party about a week afterwards, and as Lady Milman said to her
daughter beforehand, it was really quite a comfort to have something to
talk about. She contrived, very skilfully, to keep the welcome topic
out of the desultory conversation before luncheon, feeling that it was
too valuable to be broken into fragments, as would then have been its
fate. But in the first pause after they were seated in the dining-room,
Mrs Featherly's voice was heard emphatically declaring,--
"A very strange and unsatisfactory story this, about Anthony Miles. Not
that I ever expected the matter to be cleared up in the manner one has a
right to desire, but with his father vicar and all, I often told Mr
Featherly that I should make a point of hoping against hope."
"Well, I don't know about its being unsatisfactory," said Lady Milman,
looking very handsome, and inclined to take a kindlier view of things.
"It's odd, of course, and unlucky that we can't hear the whole affair,
but so long as he did not receive the letter it is really no difference
who did. I always liked Anthony Miles, and I think his jumping into the
water and saving the man who had done him so much harm was a very fine
thing."
"O, but it was in the dark, so he could not possibly have known. I can
tell you precisely how it all occurred," said Mrs Featherly, who would
have scorned to have been unable to give a precise account of anything
which happened within a circuit of ten miles. "He had that minute left
the Bennetts', and heard a scream and a splash, and saw some one in the
water, so of course he could do nothing less than jump in. There were
the steps close by, and there was no possible danger."
"Ah, it's a capital thing to be able to economise one's neighbours'
virtues," said old Mr Wood of the Grange, helping himself to
mayonnaise.
"Well, if Anthony Miles knew who it was," said Mrs Featherly, tartly,
"he showed a very proper spirit, a dissenter and all. Dissenters are
never to be trusted, and this one behaved in a most reprehensible
manner, going about in my husband's parish and making himself
exceedingly troublesome,--though I should be the last person to speak
ill of the dead."
"It is unsatisfactory, as you say, because they can't feel it," put in
Mr Wood again, in a tone of assent, which Mrs Featherly accepted as a
tribute to her argument.
"I have no doubt that it is all true so far as that David Stephens acted
very wrongly," she continued, "but then I do feel that if one hears part
one should hear all. I should like to know, if Anthony Miles did not
get the letter, who did?"
Mr Mannering had already laid down his knife and fork, and joined the
tips of his fingers together, divided between a desire to speak and a
fear of impoliteness.
"Excuse me," he said, in his pleasant, courteous tones, "but I cannot
but feel with Lady Milman that here we open another subject. I am sure
Mrs Featherly, with her usual candour, will admit that Anthony Miles's
conduct may be considered blameless in the matter?"
"Indeed, I am not so presumptuous as to call any human being's conduct
blameless," said Mrs Featherly aggressively, "especially that of a
young man who has the snare of no profession. Not that anything seems
to have any effect nowadays. There is that young Warren, good for
nothing but to dance attendance upon Miss Ada Lovell. I have told Mr
Featherly he really must make a point before long of speaking to Mr
Bennett."
"Warren?" said Sir Thomas Milman, joining in from the end of the table.
"That will be his cousin whose death was in yesterday's paper. It must
have been sudden, very sudden. He only came to the title about four
months ago, and now it goes, I should say, to this young fellow's
father. Isn't it so, Mannering?--you're up in all this sort of thing."
"Sir Henry Warren is undoubtedly dead, and if this young man's father is
his uncle, it must be as you say," said Mr Mannering, a little
startled. "But I always understood theirs to be a family of great
possessions. I had no idea this young Warren belonged to them."
"Well, as often as not there's a poor branch hanging on to the big stem,
though they don't very often get such a puff of good luck as this to set
them straight. But there's no doubt about the money."
"O, they creak of money," said Mr Wood. "Their pedigree is not long
enough to have given them time to spend it as yet. They must wait for
that till they get a little good blood into the family."
"I shall make a point of calling upon Mrs Bennett this afternoon," said
Mrs Featherly, who had been listening in blank amazement, "so that I
may learn exactly what has happened. Mr Warren the son of a baronet!
Well, I must say he has always performed his duties in an exemplary
manner, and I shall be quite glad to show him a little attention, that
he may see we appreciate it. It is certainly one's duty to do so. I
shall make a point of it." Even Mrs Bennett had been raised to
something like excitement, when her husband told her of Mr Warren's
sudden prosperity.
"So much happens every day that it quite takes away my breath," she said
comfortably from the soft chair in which she was sitting. "Then, my
dear Tom, Mr Warren will not stay with you? Dear me, Ada, you and I
shall be quite sorry to lose him, he has really always made himself so
pleasant and so attentive. I hope he will come and tell us all about
it. And the poor young man who is dead, how sudden for him! Only
three-and-twenty, too!"
"He takes it very properly," said Mr Bennett, rubbing his hands. "Of
course it puts me to a little inconvenience, and he spoke very well
about it, very well. Offered to stay, and said quite the right thing.
But I should not take any advantage of that sort, as you may suppose.
He'll go to the University, I imagine, and probably to the bar
afterwards. Odd world, Ada, my dear, isn't it?" As for Ada, the tears
had rushed suddenly into her eyes. She murmured something in reply, but
the weight of disappointment which she felt almost frightened herself,
and when she made a faint attempt to assure herself that Mr Warren was
nothing to her, it was only to become conscious that he was truly the
embodiment of those things for which she most cared,--brightness,
compliments, admiration, attention; and now--how much more besides! Ada
was only romantic when romance did not interfere with more solid
comforts, but to have all within her reach, and yet to be obliged to
turn away, was a trial which touched her sorely. It seemed to develop a
vein of bitterness, as opposed as possible to the petty prettinesses of
her life, which made her thoroughly uncomfortable, and which she tried
to dignify by the name of misery, although her feelings were at no time
deep enough to admit of strong names. It added to her vexation that, so
short a time ago, Anthony should himself have offered to free her from
her engagement. Her vanity found so pleasant an excuse for his words in
setting them down to a fear on his part that she should not be fully
satisfied, that she felt no anger towards him for what he had said, but
it provoked her that it should not have been later, when she might have
been guided by these new circumstances. Marriage with Mr Warren had
hitherto been out of the question; and now that its possibility was
suddenly presented to her, Ada wept the bitterest tears of
disappointment she had ever shed in her life. People with whom life has
gone smoothly are not disposed to admit of any course of events whereby
they are defrauded, as they think, of the good things that yet should
fall to their share; the very shadow of withdrawal astonishes them in a
manner which is not without its pathetic side to those who have tasted
draughts out of the depths. There is, too, in these natures, often a
curious power of centralisation, so that their own life becomes the
point round which all others revolve, and in relation to which all
others are considered. Ada would have understood the sin of another
girl acting in what the world would call a heartless fashion; yet, so
far as Anthony's heart was concerned, she looked at it only as made for
the satisfaction of her own; so that it would not have entered her head
that suffering which seemed wrong and unendurable for herself might not
properly have fallen to his share, and indeed there was, perhaps, a
feeling as if a balance were struck with Providence, by admitting the
necessity of tribulation for other people. It was not the pain she
might inflict which weighed upon her now, but a vague dissatisfied
conviction that her uncle and aunt would not permit her to throw over
Anthony; a kind of dim sense, it might be, of honour, growing out of an
atmosphere which, if easily selfish, was not dishonourable. Marrying
him, she would feel all her life long that a great injury had been done
her, yet she was aware that, cruel as it was, she might be called upon
to endure this wrong.
Things seemed so harshly upset that, for the first time in her life, Ada
caught sight of her tear-stained face in the glass, and her pretty eyes
swollen and discoloured, without any answering impulse being awakened to
put aside what so greatly marred her beauty, as easily crushed as a
flower by a storm. On the contrary, she was touched by a sort of
despair that the prettiness of which she was wholly conscious could not,
after all, give her what she had a right to expect from it. It was a
curious petty turmoil, yet for one of Ada's nature it marked serious
disturbance that she should have gone down stairs after only languidly
pushing back her hair, without the usual marks of trim order which
characterised her, and that she should have been pettish in her answers
to her aunt. She was so evidently out of spirits when Anthony came in,
that it was impossible for him not to remark it, but he was almost
grateful for the change. Her constant flow of smiles grew at times to
be full of weariness, the weariness which makes people feel
conscience-stricken at the little repulsion that rises up. He looked
very ill, and unlike a man from whom a heavy burden had just been
lifted. Is it not so often?--what we want comes, and it is no longer
what we want,--the load is taken off, but we would fain have it back
again, if its weight might only be exchanged for the aching pain that
has grown up elsewhere; we rail at the present, and lo, it passes away,
and in its vanishing shadow we see the glory of an angel's face, and
stretch out our hands with vain weeping.
Anthony Miles had come that day with a determination to press his
marriage, and to take Ada away from Underham. They would settle in
London, by which he knew that he should fulfil one of Ada's dreams, and
there he would fling himself into work with a will, if not with much
heart. Something of that shame of disappointment which scourges into
fresh energy was upon him. He had resolved to be very gentle with Ada,
and the change in her manner made it more easy than usual. She was
sitting listlessly in an arm-chair near the fire, for her grief would
never be likely to interfere with her comforts, and at this moment a
sense of injury was uppermost, for which she instinctively felt
compensations to be her due.
"I am afraid you have another headache," said Anthony, standing before
her, and looking down, with a vague compassion in his heart.
"Nobody thinks anything about my headaches," said Ada, in a complaining
voice. "When Aunt Henrietta is ill herself, she makes a great fuss
about it, but she never cares about other people. This place does not
agree with me; Dr Fletcher has always said so, but they will not
believe him."
"Will you let me take you away from it, then?" said Anthony, speaking
sadly, but kindly, and trying to put away all thoughts but care for her.
"London, you know, might suit you better."
"Are you talking about our marrying?" Ada's face lit up for a moment
with a vision of her wedding-dress, but dropped again into its new
expression of dissatisfied listlessness. "My uncle must settle all
that."
"But you do not object?"
"I don't know,--I have a headache,--there can't be any hurry."
The indifference of the tone struck him, but it was too much an echo of
his own feeling to seem as if it were anything strange.
"Then I will speak to him?" he said.
"Very well," said Ada, turning away with tears in her eyes.
"Is there nothing I can do for you?" said Anthony, still touched with
the feeling that it was bodily suffering she was experiencing.
"No,--nothing. I can't talk. There is a ring, who is it?"
"I think I hear Warren's voice."
He did not expect to see her jump up, and turn with a smiling face to
greet the new-comer. Not a trace of her languor remained; she talked,
laughed, and congratulated, all in a breath. "What does it mean?"
thought Anthony, looking at her sparkling eyes in wonder. Sniff had
stolen in unperceived behind Mr Warren, and crept under his master's
chair; but seeing his hand hanging down could not, even at the risk of
detection, refrain from a rapturous lick. Anthony got the dog's head in
his hand and fondled it, while he sat and wondered mutely.
"And you are really going away?" Ada was saying. "We shall all miss
you so much."
"You may be certain I shall come back again."
"O yes, you must. Still--I don't know--I am afraid there will be
something different, and I dare say you will have forgotten all about
us."
"I am sure I shall never forget,--how could I?" said Mr Warren, turning
very red, and almost stammering in his eagerness. "I have met with so
much kindness in this house, I do not believe I shall be so happy
anywhere as I have been in Underham."
"O, but you will live in the country, and in such a beautiful place!"
Ada said, shaking her curl, and sighing involuntarily as she thought of
what her lot might have been.
"I like a sociable place like this better," said the young fellow
honestly, "and as to that, it's the people--"
He stopped suddenly, with a perception that Anthony was sitting and
looking grimly at him. He had a soft heart, and the idea of going away
from Ada was solidifying his feelings, which had hitherto scarcely taken
shape beyond the amusement of the moment, so that for the first time it
gave him an actual pang to remember that the real separation lay in this
engagement of Ada's. One or two discoveries were made in that moment.
Anthony awakened to the perception that another mistake must be added to
the list, and it was a mistake which, whatever may be a man's feelings,
is sure to gall him. An apparently transparent affection, such as
Ada's, had been grateful to him at a time when he was very sore with all
the world, and the fact of this soreness and of his own changed position
gave it an air of reality which he had never thought of questioning.
Even if he had discovered that her heart held no great depths, what was
there he believed to be all his own; and Mr Warren would have been the
last person presented to his thoughts as a possible rival until now,
when Ada's manner and sudden change from gloom to gaiety made him very
wroth, with the anger not of jealousy, but of wounded pride. Nor did
his own failure towards her soften him, for he satisfied himself by
thinking that he had at least told her the truth, and put the matter
into her own choice, while she had deliberately deceived him by liking
this young idiot, and showing her preference unblushingly the instant
the fellow's position was changed. Anthony's face grew blacker and
blacker, and Ada, perhaps desirous of driving him to desperation, put
out all her charms for Mr Warren. There was a certain comfortable
prettiness about the room, about the cheerful colouring, and the big
fire which looked brighter and brighter as the afternoon shortened, and
in the midst of it all one of those half-absurd, half-tragic
complications, which sometimes seem to get inextricably knotted round a
life. Anthony jumped up at last.
"I am glad your headache is better," he said shortly.
"Are you going? Good bye, then," said Ada, in an indifferent voice.
He stood still, and looked at her for a moment, so that her eyes fell
under his. But she recovered herself immediately, and glanced up as if
she were waiting for him to speak. He said no more, however, but went
out of the room, Sniff barking with delight the instant he found himself
safely in the hall.
As he walked home, his feelings could scarcely be called enviable, the
less so because, turn which way he would, there seemed no line of action
which he could take. It was impossible for him to find fault with Ada,
who, indeed, had done nothing against which he could bring a serious
complaint; it was more manner than words, and to fall foul of manner
requires a lover's quarrel, and a lover's quarrel a lover. He could no
more go seriously to Ada and blame her than he could fight smoke with a
sword. And after his one failure he said to himself that come what
would there should be no further attempt on his part to loosen the bond
which bound them to each other. But he was very miserable. For until
now he had felt that, although the deepest love was wanting which
happiest marriages need, something they both had towards a happiness
which, if not the greatest, might serve instead,--on her part a simple
unreasoning affection, on his a certain gratitude and tenderness. He
had not thought of these failing until this new turn of the wheel. Now
he could no longer feel the gentle kindliness to which he had trusted as
the foundation of a moderate happiness; and even at that, insufficient
as it once seemed, he looked back as a drowning man looks at the harsh
rock from which he has been torn. He could do nothing except wait, and
there was a passiveness about his future which made it seem utterly dark
and hateful to poor Anthony.
As he came near the Red House, the day brightened in some degree; the
faint beauty of the sun had gained strength, little cold lovelinesses
were creeping into life, a poor little pool of water was shining away,
and a scarlet glory of berries flamed from the hedge where a tiny wren
slipped in and out, scarcely moving the grass. Mr Robert was just
riding out of the gate, and pulled up to greet Anthony.
"This rainy weather has knocked poor Charles over altogether," he said,
"and I'm going to fetch Bowles. He always gets moped when he can't go
out. Ah, Anthony, in old days you would have been up to see us long
ago."
There was a little tone of sadness in Mr Robert's cheery voice, which
Anthony detected in a moment, and it may have been a proof that the
young man's own troubles were no longer hardening him, that it touched
him in the way it did.
"The old days--?" he said, his words almost failing him. Mr Robert
looked at him in an odd, questioning way.
"My dear fellow," he said, putting out his hand and grasping Anthony's,
"I'm ready to admit that I didn't stand by you as stoutly as you'd a
right to expect, and I ask your pardon for it. If you knew the story of
my life, for even red-faced old bachelors have stories, perhaps you'd
see some sort of reason for my feeling about it. But then we none of us
take what we don't see for granted." Anthony was utterly shamed and
overcome. "Don't, don't!" he said, putting up his hand to his face, for
he had a generous temper, quick to respond to kindness, and he felt now,
somehow, as if he had been in the wrong throughout. Mr Robert went on
in his kind grave voice,--
"Perhaps I'd no claim to it, but I wish you could have treated me as
your friend, and let me know how matters stood exactly. You'll not be
angry at my saying that I guess now what a painful position you were in.
I'm not sure that you were right, mind you, but I am sure that not one
man in twenty would have behaved as you did."
He wrung his hand again, and went on. The two men understood each other
at last; it is sometimes a little odd to think how a few minutes and a
word or two will mend or mar enough for a lifetime. Things did not seem
quite so sad to Anthony after that little interview. He would try to do
what was right to Ada, to everybody. The bitterness which made him
refuse to accept friendship, because it had disappointed him once, was
gone; for he had been too blind himself to demand that others should see
perfectly, and he felt as if he owed them all amends, if only for the
sake of Winifred, whom he had so misjudged.