THE RUBICON.
Of course Walter Joyce was a hero of heroes for days after the
ice-accident. Lady Hetherington for the time being threw off every
semblance of insolence and patronage, complimented him in the highest
terms on his bravery and presence of mind, and assured him that he had
established a claim upon their gratitude which they could never repay.
Lord Hetherington was visibly affected, and had great difficulty in
thanking his sister's preserver in anything like a coherent manner,
lapsing into wild outbursts of "Don't you know!" and explaining that
it would be impossible for him to express the feelings and that kind
of thing under which he laboured. The gentlemen from the barracks, who
had hitherto regarded "old Hetherington's secretary-fellow" as a
person utterly unworthy of notice, began to think that they had been
mistaken. Young Patey sent a short account of the incident to the
sporting paper of which he was an esteemed correspondent, and made a
mental note to ask Joyce to play in a football-match which was about
to come off, and of which he had the direction. Colonel Tapp not
merely assisted in carrying Joyce's senseless body to the tent,
whereby he became much damped with drippings, which he nobly ignored,
but sent off one of the men for the surgeon of the depôt and evinced
an amount of interest and attention very rare in the self-sustained
old warrior. Mr. Biscoe said very little indeed; he had been the only
person close to the ridge of the broken ice, and he might have heard
what Lady Caroline whispered in Joyce's ear, and he might have formed
his own opinion of how matters stood from what he saw of them then.
But he said nothing. His lips wreathed into a peculiar smile two or
three times in the course of the evening, but nothing escaped them;
and as he was smoking his after-dinner cigar in his study, he chuckled
in a manner which was not to be accounted for by the perusal of
anything in the _Guardian_, which he was supposed to be reading, more
especially as he dropped his eyeglass, lay down the paper, and rubbed
his hands with intense enjoyment. Just before he dropped asleep, he
said--
"It's a thousand pities Joyce is not in orders! He'd have had
Chudleigh Rectory when old Whiting goes, as safe as possible; old
Whiting can't live long, and Chudleigh must be worth twelve hundred a
year."
"Mr. Joyce have Chudleigh? Why should he have had Chudleigh? What
makes you think that, Robert?" asked the partner of his joys, from the
neighbouring pillow.
"Ah! what indeed?" was all the answer Robert made, and was snoring in
an instant.
What did Lady Caroline herself say? Very little. She had a slight
access of fever for three days, and kept her room for a week. The
first time Joyce saw her was in the library, where he was at work. She
came across the room with outstretched hand, and in a few very simple
words told him she owed her life to him, and had come to tell him so,
and to thank him for it. She was looking wonderfully beautiful; Joyce
thought he had never seen her to such advantage. The usual pallor of
her cheeks was relieved by a deep rose flush, her violet eyes were
more than ever luminous, and she had departed from her usual style of
coiffure, her chestnut hair being taken off her forehead, and gathered
up in a huge plait at the back of her head.
"You recollect my first mention to you of the intention of having that
dreadful ice-party, Mr. Joyce?" said Lady Caroline, after the first
speeches of acknowledgment.
"Perfectly; it was in this room, almost where we are sitting now."
"Don't you remember--I hope you don't, and if you don't, it's silly in
me to remind you, though I can't help it--that I had been quizzing you
about the way in which you remained devoted to your writing, and
assured you that we should only attempt to tear you away from it, and
to get you to join us on one other occasion before we went to town,
and that was to this skating affair? It would have been but a poor
look-out for one of the party if you hadn't been there."
"You're giving me much greater credit than I deserve, Lady Caroline;
and indeed during all the past week I've felt that I've been placed in
a false position in the hero-worship I've received. It certainly
happened that I got to the lake before Mr. Biscoe, and I was in
quicker than he, but that was because I was a little younger, and had
longer limbs. But what I've done to be made so much of, I really don't
know!"
"You've saved my life, Mr. Joyce--and won my eternal gratitude!"
And again she stretched out her hand.
"The last is ample reward for the first, Lady Caroline! No other
recognition is necessary!"
And he took her hand, but he merely held it for an instant, and bowed
over it and let it go. Did not even press it, never thought of
attempting to raise it to his lips. Lady Caroline withdrew it quietly
with a half laugh. He was the coldest, most insensate, impassible man
in the world, she thought; clever, and with a great amount of odd
indescribable fascination, but a perfect stone.
He was not. He was a simple, single-minded man, unaccustomed to the
ways of flirtation, and utterly uncomprehending any of the mysteries
of the craft. He had felt naturally proud of the notice which Lady
Caroline had taken of him, had written of it to Marian, attributing
it, as he honestly thought it was due, to Lady Caroline's superior
education and greater love of books attracting her to him for
companionship. He was by no means an observant man, as but few
students are, but he had noticed, as he thought, a certain amount of
freedom in manners generally at Westhope, which was very different
from anything he had previously seen. He ascribed it to the different
grade of society, and took but little notice of it. He must, however,
have been more than blind not to have seen that in Lady Caroline's
conduct towards him at the time of the accident there was something
more than this; that in that whispered word, "Walter!" and the tone in
which it was whispered, there was an unmistakable admission of a
sentiment which he had hitherto chosen to ignore, and which he
determined to ignore still.
Walter Joyce was but human, and it would be absurd to deny that his
vanity was flattered. He had a sufficient feeling for Lady Caroline,
based on gratitude, and nurtured by general liking, to experience a
certain compunction for her, placed as she must inevitably find
herself by his mode of treatment of her; but regarding that mode of
treatment he had never an instant's doubt. He had been brought up in
far too strict a school of honour ever to palter with himself for a
moment, much less with any one else. His heart was in Marian Ashurst's
keeping, his liege love, and in not one single pulsation should it be
false to her. All this he had thought out before the interview with
Lady Caroline, and his conduct then was exactly as he had prescribed
to himself it should be. He took no credit to himself for his coldness
and reserve, nor indeed did he deserve any, for he felt as calmly and
coldly as he acted. There was but one person in the world with power
to make his heart leap, his pulses fill, to rouse his energy with a
look, to cloud his hopes with a word. Why was she silent, then? She
could not know how critical the time might have been, she should never
know it, but he felt that he wanted her advice, advice on the general
questions of his life, and he determined to write to her in a way that
should elicit it.
Thus he wrote:
"Westhope, Friday.
"MY DEAREST MARIAN,
"I am still without any news of you, although this is the
third letter I have written since I received your last. I know that
you must have been very much and very specially engaged. I know, as
you will have gathered from my last hasty few lines, that poor Tom
Creswell is dead, and I feel that you must have been called upon to
your utmost to play the part of comforter, and to bring your keen
sympathies and busy brains into active use to restore something like a
semblance of ordinary comfort to that disordered and desolate
household. That you are the mainstay of the family in their trouble,
as of course few would be, I happen to know. Did I tell you how? Mr.
Gould, who is Lord Hetherington's principal business agent, showed me
a letter he had had from you, written in Mr. Creswell's behalf, about
the impossibility of the poor old gentleman's carrying out some sale
of land, about which he had been previously negotiating, under the
existing melancholy circumstances. It seemed so strange to see the
handwriting, so familiar, and so dear to me, addressed to another;
treating of business topics, and yet conveying information, which was
surely interesting to me, but of which I was yet ignorant. However,
you had your duty to do to the people who had been so kind to you, and
who had done much more than their duty by you during the time of your
trials, and I, who know you so well, have no doubt that you have done
it, not merely in the letter but in the spirit.
"I suppose that by this time the first shock of grief will have passed
away, and that the household at Woolgreaves will be assuming something
like its normal state, and I presume, therefore, that you and Mrs.
Ashurst will be soon thinking of bringing your visit to an end, even
if by this time you have not already entered upon the lodgings which
you told me you had in view. I have no doubt that if this be so now,
or whenever it comes, both you and Mrs. Ashurst will much miss the
material comfort which you have enjoyed during the last few months. It
is impossible that it should be otherwise, but you, at all events,
have long had a clear idea of your future, and so long as you are with
her I do not fear Mrs. Ashurst's becoming a prey to despair. The woman
who battled so bravely by your dear father's side is not likely to
give way now that the heat of the contest is over, and a retreat,
humble indeed, but sufficient for existence, is provided for her. I
should almost rather fear the effect of the change upon you. I should
very much fear it if I laid much stress upon the opinions with which
the last letter I received from you was rife, opinions breathing the
very essence of worldly philosophy, but scarcely such as one would
expect to find in a young girl's letter to her lover. However, I do
not lay much stress on these opinions; I know that it is the fashion
just now to affect a cynicism which is not really felt, and to ascribe
to one's self faults and follies which have no substantial basis. I am
sure that you must have become infected with this idea, and that you
wrote under its influence, for nothing could be more opposite than
your new doctrine to the teachings of your youth and the example of
your parents.
"It is time, however, my dear Marian, that we should each shake
ourselves free from any little affectations or delusions which have
hitherto possessed us, and make up our minds to look our position
resolutely in the face. I say both of us, because I am perfectly
conscious of having permitted myself to start in life as the victim of
a delusion of a very different kind from yours. I was as sanguine as
you were depressed, and when, on the day we parted, you had a notion
that there was an end to all happiness to be enjoyed mutually by us, I
bad a feeling that I was taking my first step towards the premiership,
or the governorship of the Bank of England. I pray God that your idea
was as baseless as mine. I _know_ that my position can never be a
great or a wealthy one, that all I ever get I must earn by my
handwork, and I am perfectly content, so long as I have your approval
of my steps, and you yourself as my reward.
"But we must not dream any more, Marian, either of us, and you,
especially, must not suffer yourself again, for whatever reason, to be
tempted out of your regular sphere. All your attention henceforth must
be given to the joint interests which must be paramount in your heart.
Life progresses, dear. How the months have slipped away since we
parted! and we must not let youth and health and all that is best pass
out of it, and leave us still pursuing a flying shadow, and waiting
for better days till we shall come together. Not now, or ever, will I
take any step as regards my future without your counsel and consent,
considering as I do that that future is yours as much as mine. But I
want to be assured of your hearty interest and desire for co-operation
in my affairs, Marian. I feel sure I have it; I know it is almost
absurd in me to doubt its existence, but I have been so long away from
you, and you have been so long without writing to me, that I long to
read the assurance in your own hand. What would I not give--if I had
anything, poor wretch!--to hear it from your lips! but that is
impossible just yet.
"Now, what we have to think of is definite and pressing. I must give a
decisive answer within a week, and you will see the bearing and
importance of that decisive answer on our future. I believe I could
stay on here for any time I chose. The big history-book, though I work
hard at it every day, is as yet only in its commencement, and I am
told that when the family goes to town next week I am to accompany
them, and to devote my time in London to purely secretarial work,
correcting my lord in his speeches, writing his letters, etc., while
the history of the Wests is to remain in abeyance until the autumn.
Everybody is particularly kind to me, and had I never 'lifted my eyes
to my master's daughter,' like the 'prentice of old, I might have been
very happy here. But I have other hopes in view, and a married private
secretary would be impossible. It's lucky, then, that there is another
opening--yes, Marian, a new chance, which, I think, promises,
splendidly promises, to realise all we have hoped--all I have hoped
for, all you can have justly anticipated--speedy union for us both,
under decent competence when united. Listen.
"My old friend Byrne, of whom you heard so much when I was in London,
wrote to me some time since, telling me that my name had been
suggested as the correspondent then required for a London newspaper in
Berlin. I thought but little of it at the moment, for though, thanks
to old Dr. Breitmann, in the dear old days at Helmingham, I knew
myself to be a tolerable German scholar, I doubted whether I had
sufficient 'nous' and experience of the world for the post. I wrote
this to Byrne, and I think he was rather of my opinion; but the man
with whom the recommendation rested, and who knew me from having met
me constantly during those weeks I was living with Byrne, and knew
also some of my qualifications, as it was through him I obtained those
odd jobs on the press, declared that I would be the very man for their
purpose, and has so pressed the matter that I have agreed to let them
have their answer with my decision in a week's time. For that decision
I come to you. They offer me a year's engagement to start with, with
the certainty of renewal if I fulfil their expectations, and four
hundred a year, with the prospect of a rise. Four hundred a year,
Marian, and in a country where money goes much further than in
England! Four hundred a year, and we united for ever, and dear Mrs.
Ashurst for, of course, she will be with us--with a son as well as a
daughter to tend and care for her! Now you see why I made the
commencement of my letter rather sombre and gloomy, in order to
heighten the brilliancy of the finish. Now you see why I talked about
the lodgings and the privations--because there is no need to submit to
any of them.
"Marian darling, you must answer this instantly! I have no doubt as to
the tone of your reply, but I can do nothing until I get it, and time
presses. Don't be afraid of any ill-feeling on the part of Lord
Hetherington or any one here. I have been able to render them
something of a service--I will tell you about it when we meet--and
they will all be delighted at anything which brings good fortune to
me. And now good-bye! Think how little time now before I shall hold
you in my arms! Write at once. God bless you, now and ever.
"Your WALTER."
Sunday morning at Woolgreaves; bright splendid sunshine, the frost all
gone, and Nature, renovated by her six months' sleep, asserting
herself in green bud and lovely almond blossom, and fresh sprouting
herbage on every side. Far away on the horizon lay Brocksopp, the
week-day smoke cloud, which no wind dispelled, yet hovering like a
heavy pall over its sabbath stillness; but the intervening landscape
was fresh and fine, and calculated to inspire peaceful thoughts and
hopeful aspirations in all who looked on it. Such thoughts and such
aspirations the contemplation of the scene inspired in old Mrs.
Ashurst, who sat propped up by pillows in a large easy-chair in her
sitting-room, gazing out of the window, looking at nothing, but
enjoying everything with the tranquil serenity of old age. For several
years past there had not been much life in the old lady, and there was
very little now; her vital powers, never very strong, had been
decaying slowly but surely, and Dr. Osborne knew that the time was not
far distant when the widow of his old friend would be called away to
rejoin the husband she had so dearly loved in the Silent Land.
"A case of gradual decay, my dear sir," said the little doctor, who
had been up all night, bringing the heir of a neighbouring squire into
the world, and who had stopped at Woolgreaves on his way home, and
asked for breakfast--a meal which he was then taking in company with
his host; "what we call the _vis vitae_ quietly giving way."
"And by what I gather from you, doctor, I fear our old friend will not
be much longer with us?"
"It is impossible to say, but I should think not. Sad thing for the
daughter; she's very much attached to her mother, and will feel the
loss very much. Wonderful girl that, sir!"
"Miss Ashurst? She is, indeed!" said Mr. Creswell abstractedly.
"Such a clever head, such individuality, such dominant will! Let her
make up her mind to a thing and you may consider it done! Charming
girl, too; simple, unaffected, affectionate. Dear me! I think I can
see her now, in frilled trousers, bowling a hoop round the schoolhouse
garden, and poor Ashurst pointing her out to me through the window!
Poor Ashurst! dear me!"
Dr. Osborne pulled out a green silk pocket-handkerchief ornamented
with orange spots, buried his face in it, and blew a loud and long
note of defiance to the feelings which were very nearly making
themselves manifest. When he reappeared to public gaze, Maude and
Gertrude had entered the room, and the conversation took a different
turn. The young ladies thought it a lovely morning, so fresh and nice,
and they hoped they would have no more of that horrid winter, which
they detested. Yes, they had seen dear Mrs. Ashurst, and she seemed
much the same, if anything a little brighter than last night, but then
she always was brighter in the mornings. Miss Ashurst had gone for a
turn round the garden, her mother had said. And did uncle remember
that they must go to Helmingham Church that morning? Oh! Dr. Osborne
didn't know that Hooton Church was going to be repaired, and that
there would not be service there for three or four Sundays. The snow
had come through on to the organ, and when they went to repair the
place they found that the roof was all rotten, and so they would have
to have a new roof. And it was a pity, one of the young ladies
thought, that while they were about it they didn't have a new
clergyman instead of that deaf old Mr. Coulson, who mumbled so you
couldn't hear him. And then Dr. Osborne told them they would be
pleased at Helmingham Church, for they had a new organist, Mr. Hall,
and he had organised a new choir, in which Miss Gill's soprano and Mr.
Drake's bass were heard to the greatest effect. Time to start, was it
not? Uncle must not forget the distance they had to walk. Yes, Maude
would drive with Dr. Osborne with pleasure. She liked that dear old
pony so much. She would be ready in an instant.
Marian went with the rest of the party to church, and sat with them
immediately opposite the head-master's seat, where she had sat for so
many years, and which, was directly in front of the big school pew.
What memories came over her as she looked across the aisle! Her eyes
rested on the manly figure and the M.B. waistcoat of Mr. Benthall, who
sat in the place of honour; but after an instant he seemed to
disappear as in a dissolving view, and there came in his place a bowed
and shrunken elderly man, with small white hands nestling under his
ample cuffs, all his clothes seemingly too large for him, big lustrous
eyes, pale complexion, and iron-gray hair. No other change in the
whole church, save in that pew. The lame man who acted as a kind of
verger still stumped up the pulpit-stairs, and arranged the cushion,
greatly to the horror of the preacher of the day, Mr. Trollope, who,
being a little man, could hardly be seen in the deep pulpit, and whose
soft little voice could scarcely be heard out of the mass of wood and
cotton velvet in which he was steeped to the ears. The butcher, who
was also churchwarden and a leading member of the congregation,
still applied to himself all the self-accusatory passages in the
responses in the Psalms, and gave them out, looking round at his
fellow-parishioners, in a tone of voice which seemed to say, "See what
an infernal scoundrel I am, and how I delight in letting you know it!"
The boys in the school were in the same places--many of them were the
same boys; and the bigger ones, who had been in love with Marian when
she lived among them, nudged each other as she came in, and then
became scarlet from their clean collars to the roots of their freshly
pomatumed hair. Fresh faces nowhere but there. Change in no life but
hers. Yes, as her eye rested on Mr. Creswell's solemn suit of black
she remembered that life had changed also for him. And somehow, she
could scarcely tell how, she felt comforted by the thought.
They left the church when the service was ended, but it was some time
before they were able to start on their way home. Mr. Creswell came so
seldom into Helmingham, that many of his old acquaintances saw him
there for the first time since his wife's death, and came to offer
their long-deferred condolence, and to chat over matters of local
gossip. Marian, too, was always a welcome sight to the Helmingham
people, and the women gathered round her and asked her about her
mother's health, and of their prospects, and when they were going to
leave Woolgreaves; to all of which questions Marian replied with
perfect self-possession and without giving her querists any real
information.
At last they set out homeward. Maude and Gertrude started off at a
rapid rate, and were soon out of sight. Mr. Creswell and Marian walked
quietly on together, talking on various subjects. Mr. Creswell was the
principal speaker, Marian merely answering or commenting on what he
said, and, contrary to her usual custom, never originating a subject.
Her companion looked at her curiously two or three times during their
walk; her eyes were downcast, her forehead knit, and there was a
generally troubled expression in her face. At length, when they had
nearly reached their destination, and had turned from the high-road
into the Woolgreaves grounds through a private gate, he said----
"You are strangely silent to-day, missy. Has anything happened to vex
you?"
"To vex me? Nothing in the world. And it had not even struck me that I
was particularly silent. It seems to me as though we had been talking
ever since we left Helmingham."
"We? I, you mean. You have been almost monosyllabic in your replies."
"Have I? That was scarcely polite when you take the trouble to talk
to me, my kind friend. The fact is that I have been in a kind of
day-dream, I believe."
"About the future, Marian?" Mr. Creswell said this so earnestly that
the girl looked up into his face. His eyes fell before hers as she
said, steadily----
"No; about the past. The sight of the school pew, and of another
person there in papa's place, called up all sorts of recollections,
which I was revolving instead of listening to you. Oh no!" she added,
after a pause; "I love dreaming of the past, because, though it has
here and there its dim hues and its one great and ineffaceable shadow
of papa's loss, it was, on the whole, a happy time. But the
future----" and she stopped suddenly, and shuddered.
"You have no pleasant anticipations of the future, Marian?" asked Mr.
Creswell in a lower tone than he had hitherto spoken in.
"Can you ask me--you who know me and know how we are circumstanced? I
declare I---- There! I'm always apt to forget myself when this subject
is broached, and I speak out without thinking how uncalled for and
ridiculous it is. Shall we walk on?"
"Not for an instant. I wanted to say a few words to you. I was talking
to Dr. Osborne this morning about Mrs. Ashurst."
"About mamma?"
"The doctor said what cannot fail to have struck you, Marian, who are
so devotedly attached to your mother and so constantly in attendance
on her--that a great change has recently come over her, and that she
is much more feeble and more helpless than she used to be. You have
noticed this?"
"I have indeed. Dr. Osborne is perfectly right. Mamma is very much
changed."
"It is obviously necessary that she should not feel the loss of any
little comfort to which she may have been accustomed. It is most
essential that her mind should not be disturbed by any harassing fears
as to what might become of you after she was gone."
Marian was silent. Her face was deadly pale, and her eyes were
downcast.
"There is only one way of securing our first object," continued Mr.
Creswell, "and that is by your continuing in this house."
"That is impossible, Mr. Creswell. I have already explained to you the
reason."
"Not impossible in one way, Marian--a way too that will secure the
other object we have in view--your mother's peace of mind about you.
Marian, will you remain in this house as its mistress--as my wife?"
It had come at last, the golden chance! She knew that he understood
she had accepted him, and that was all. Mr. Creswell went on
rapturously, telling her how his love had grown as he had watched her
beauty, her charming intelligence, her discretion, and her worth; how
he had been afraid she might think he was too old for her; how she
should prove the warmth of his affection and the depth of his
gratitude. All this he said, but she heard none of it. Her brain was
running on her having at last achieved the position and the wealth so
long a source of bitter misery and despair to her. The end was gained;
now life would indeed be something to her.
When they reached the house, Mr. Creswell wanted to go with her at
once to Mrs. Ashurst's room; but Marian begged to be alone for a few
moments, and parted with him at the door. As she passed through the
hall she saw a letter lying on the table addressed to her. It was the
letter from Walter Joyce.