“The little bird now to salute the morn
Upon the naked branches sets her foot,
The leaves still lying at the mossy root;
And there a silly chirruping cloth keep
As if she fain would sing, yet fain would weep.
Praising fair summer that too soon is gone,
And sad for winter too soon coming on.”
DRAYTON.
“Perhaps the wind
Waits so in winter for the summers dead,
And all sad sounds are nature’s funeral cries,
For what has been and is not?”
THE SPANISH GYPSY.
TO-MORROW then, I suppose, will see us at the Manor Farm,” said Geoffrey
the last evening of their travels.
Marion noticed he did not speak of his dwelling as “home,” and she
looked up quickly, for she fancied there was a slight, a very slight
quiver in his voice. But no, it must have been only fancy. He sat at the
table arranging his fishing book, apparently engrossed in its contents.
“I suppose so,” she replied indifferently.
“I wanted to tell you,” he said, “that you will not find the house in
particularly good order. That is to say it has not been ‘done up’ for
ages. I meant to have had some of the rooms refurnished, but there was
so little time before,” here he dropped a fly, and had to stoop down to
look for it on the carpet, “before we were married,” he went on with a
change in his voice, “that I deferred doing so, thinking you might like
to choose the furniture yourself. So as soon as we are settled I hope
you will order whatever you like for the rooms in which you will take an
interest. The drawing-room and dining-room. There is a nice little room
up stairs too which I think you might like as a sort of boudoir, or
whatever it is called. It opens out of the pleasantest of the bedrooms,
the one which I think you will probably choose for your own. I am very
anxious that you should arrange all just as you wish, and of course I
shall not in the least interfere with any of your plans. I shall keep
my own old rooms just as they were; they will do very well without
doing up. Indeed my old den would never be comfortable again if it were
meddled with.”
This was a long speech for the present Geoffrey to make, for he had
grown very silent of late. When alone with his wife, that is to say:
outsiders would probably have perceived no change in him.
“Thank you,” said Marion in a tone that was meant to be cordial. “I am
sure it will all be very nice. The house is very old, is it not?” she
went on, wishing to show some interest in the subject.
“Yes,” he replied, “very old, some parts of it in particular. I wish it
were my own—at least,” he went on, “I used to wish it. Now I don’t know
that I care much to own it.”
“I always thought it was your own,” said Marion with some surprise. “I
thought your father bought it long ago.”
“No,” answered Geoffrey, “he only got it on a long lease. It will be
out in a few years now. I got a hint once that Lord Brackley would not
object to selling it when the lease is out, but I don’t know that I
should care to buy it. As likely as not I shall leave no—,” but the rest
of his words were too low for Marion to catch.
“Then you have no land in Brentshire?” she enquired.
“Not a rood,” he replied, “nor anywhere else. The old place that
belonged to my grandfather, for I had a grandfather, though Miss
Tremlett would probably tell you I hadn’t, was over at the other side of
the country but neither my father nor I cared about it—it was ugly and
unproductive—and before he died my father advised me to accept the first
good offer I got for it. So I sold it last year very advantageously
indeed. The purchase money is still in the old bank. I should invest it
somehow I suppose, for it’s too large a sum to leave in a country bank.
But all I have is there, and I really don’t know what else to do with
it. I have always had a sort of idea I should buy another place. The
bank is as safe as can be of course—I am actually a sleeping partner in
it still. But I believe they don’t want to keep me. That new man they
took in lately has such heaps of money, they say, and he’s making all
sorts of changes.”
“Your father would not have liked that,” said Marion.
“No indeed,” replied Geoffrey. “Any sort of change, he always thought,
must be for the worse.” He was talking more naturally and heartily than
had been the case for some time, in the interest of the conversation,
appearing temporarily to forget the sad change that had come over
their relations. But suddenly he recollected himself. With an entire
alteration of manner he went on. “I am forgetting that these personal
matters can have no interest for you. I beg your pardon for troubling
you with them. Still perhaps,” he added thoughtfully, “it is as well for
you to understand these things, however uninteresting, they may be.”
Marion looked and felt hurt.
“Geoffrey,” she said reproachfully, “you go too far.”
He turned sharply and looked at her. But her face was bent over her
book, and she did not see the wistful entreaty in his gaze. He said
nothing aloud: but to himself he murmured. “Too far Ah, no! No more half
gifts for me, which in the end are worse than none. But she did not mean
it, poor child! Even now she understands me less than ever. As if her
kindness, her pity, were not far harder to bear than her scorn.”
The next day they returned Brentshire.
Geoffrey as thankful when it was over; and they had settled down into a
sort of commonplace routine, and to a great extent independence of
each other in their daily lives. It was grievously hard upon him—this
broken-spirited, heartless “coming home.” Harder to bear, I think, than
if his joyous anticipations had been cut short by death itself. For had
it been a dead bride he was thus bringing home, he would not have felt
so far, so utterly separated from her, in all that constitutes the real
bitterness of disunion, as he felt himself now from his living, unloving
wife—the pale, cold Marion, whose terrible words still rang in his
ears. “I did love him even then with all the love of my nature, and, oh,
Geoffrey, I love him now.”
They both, though they did not allude to it, dreaded intensely the first
visit to Miss Veronica. By tacit agreement they did not pay it together,
by tacit agreement too, they decided that the secret of their fatal
“mistake,” should, if possible, be concealed from the affectionate and
unselfish friend, who, to some extent, was responsible for their
having committed it. But they reckoned without their host! Veronica’s
perceptions, naturally acute, and rendered still more so by her
reflective life and in her present case by her loving anxiety, were not
so easily to be deceived. Though no word of misgiving escaped her, she
yet saw too clearly that Geoffrey’s gaiety was forced—that Marion’s
expressions of content and satisfaction wore not genuine—that neither of
the two confided in her as of old. She was the last person in the world
to take offence or be hurt by their silence. That its motive was to
spare her pain she divined by instinct. Still on the whole, I think it
was a mistake. Poor Veronica suffered, I believe, more acutely from the
mystery surrounding her friends’ evident alienation from each other,
than would have been the case had they taken her into their confidence
and related to her the whole of the strange and exceptional history. On
their side both Geoffrey and Marion paid no light price for the reserve
they thought it their duty to maintain. For the first time since
childhood Geoffrey felt himself forced to shun the society of the friend
to whom he had carried every grief and perplexity, every interest, every
joy of his life. And to Marion likewise, it was no small trial to be
deprived at this critical time, of the wisest woman friend she had ever
known; of the gentle sympathy which during the many dreary months of her
Mallingford life, had never failed her.
The Manor Farm was one of those rather anomalous habitations, half farm,
half gentleman’s house, of which in some of the agricultural counties
one sees so many. With no special characteristics of its own, save
perhaps that it was somewhat quaint, and decidedly old fashioned: hardly
picturesque and not exactly ugly; it was the sort or house that takes
its colouring mainly from the lives of its inhabitants. All dwellings
are not of this description: there are venerable walls which we cannot
but associate with gloom and solemnity, however merry may have been
the voices, however ringing the laughter which there we may have heard
resound; there are “rose-clad” cottages, which our memory refuses to
depict save as smiling in the sunshine, though our sojourn therein may
have been of the most sorrowful, and the brightness without seemed but
to mock the aching hearts and tear-laden eyes within. But the Manor Farm
was by no means an impressive abode. It was comfortable already, and
with a little trouble might have been made pretty: but alas, at this
time there was no grace or sweetness in the heart of the young girl who
came with reluctant steps to be its mistress, whose youth and brightness
had been swamped in the deep waters through which she had passed.
Unconsciously she was entering on a new phase in her experience. The
first effect of her again meeting with Ralph had been to revive in her
the consciousness of his irresistibly strong personal influence. For
a time she felt very near to him; as if indeed she only lived in the
immaterial union with him which she had before imagined was at an end.
This did not surprise her. It seemed to her that the bar on her side of
a loveless marriage was in point of fact no bar at all: whereas so long
as she had believed in his union to another, she had felt herself more
utterly divided from him than by death itself. Woman’s indefensible
logic, no doubt, but so she felt, and so she expressed it to herself.
She was wrong—mistaken to a great extent—she had been drifting away from
Ralph. Only his actual presence, his personal influence had recalled
her: of which he himself was conscious when he deliberately resolved
utterly to sever himself from her life; by no species of intercourse or
communication, however apparently innocent or irreproachable, to keep
alive in her the consciousness of an influence so fatal to her prospects
of peace as the wife of another man.
I hardly think this first phase of her suffering, though acute almost to
agony, was after all the worst. There is a great compensatory power in
strong excitement—the after days of grey depression are to my thinking
the most to be dreaded. On these she was now entering; for though she
knew it not, the full strength of his immediate influence was already
beginning to fade. The entering on a new life, the return to scenes with
which he was in no wise associated, had much to do with this. Still, at
times the first sharp agony returned to her; but generally when
roused by some external agency. The sight of any silly trifling thing
associated with him—a book out of which he had read to her, hand-writing
resembling his, even little details of dress recalling him—all had power
to stab her. Ah, yes! Even to the day of her death she felt that the
scent of honeysuckle would be to her unendurable, for that fatal day
in his excitement Ralph had plucked a spray off the luxuriant branches
overhanging the old arbour, and ruthlessly crushing it in his hands, the
strong, almost too sweet perfume had reached her as she sat before him.
But these acute sensations gradually grew to be of rarer occurrence;
very possibly, had her new life at the Manor Farm been fuller and more
congenial, had Geoffrey been more experienced, less humble, and perhaps
less unselfish, at this crisis things might have mend. By allowing her
to see that, notwithstanding all that had passed he yet loved her as
fervently as before, that yet she was to him a very necessity of his
being; the husband might gradually have drawn her out of herself and
eventually led her at once to cling to and support, the man who truly,
as he had once said, found “life without her” a very mockery of the
word.
But Geoffrey could not do this. He pitied her too much; he hated himself
for what he had brought upon her. He went to the extreme of fancying
himself actually repulsive to her. He guarded himself from the slightest
word or sign of familiarity or affection, imagining that the revulsion
these would engender would drive them yet further and more hopelessly
apart.
“At least,” he thought, “she shall live in peace. All I can now do to
please her is to keep out of her way and not disgust her by constantly
reminding her of her bondage.” So, though his whole existence was full
of her, though her slightest wish was immediately, though unobtrusively,
attended to, he yet left her to herself, maintaining an appearance of
such indifference to her and adsorption in his independent pursuits,
that the girl was almost to be excused for imagining that Geoffrey was
“more of a farmer than a man,” incapable of very refined or long-lived
affection, and that, after all, so far as he was concerned, what had
happened did not so much matter. “He would have been pretty sure to get
tired of me before long in any case,” was the reflection with which she
threw off all sense of responsibility with respect to him, and stifled
for the time the pangs of reproach for the blight which through her had
fallen on his sunny life.
There was little society of any desirable kind in the neighbourhood of
the Manor Farm. The other side of the county was much more sociable, but
about Brackley there were few resident county families—the great man of
the place a permanent absentee. Besides which the Baldwins’ position had
been a somewhat anomalous one, lying rather on the border lands, for the
father’s status as banker in Mallingford naturally connected him
with the little town, while at the same time it induced a species of
acquaintance with the out-lying districts. Geoffrey’s rooted aversion
from earliest childhood to anything in the shape of office or desk, or
indeed to indoor occupation of any kind, had led to the removal to the
Manor Farm some time before the old man’s death. Hunting, shooting,
and so on, with the sons of the few squires in the neighbourhood, had
brought about the sort of bachelor friendliness between him and these
families which was pleasant enough so far as it went, but committed
the other side to nothing in respect of the future Mrs. Baldwin. Had he
married quite in his own sphere, or slightly beneath him, he would have
sunk, as a Benedick, into peaceful obscurity. But when it was known that
his bride, though poor, was a daughter of the well-known Hartford Vere,
himself a cadet of one of the “best” Brentshire families, mammas began
to think they must really call at the Farm, and “show a little attention
to her, poor young thing!” To which disinterested amiability on the part
of their spouses, papas, being in general more liberal-minded in such
matters, made, of course, no objection.
So Marion received some visitors, of whom the Copleys of the Wood were
the only ones in whom she felt the slightest interest. A moderate amount
of invitations to dreary dinner-parties, or still more trying “candle
visits,” followed. Geoffrey thought it right to accept them, so, feeling
that to her, change of scene was but the replacing of one kind of
dulness by another, Marion agreed to his decision, and they went.
It was really not lively work, but the dreariness no doubt lay chiefly
in herself. For after all there were sensible, kindly people among their
entertainers, and though the world “is not all champagne, table-beer
is not to be despised.” Not certainly when we are young and fresh, and
vigorous; inclined, as youth should be, to the use of rose-coloured
spectacles, and to mistaking electro-plate for the genuine article. But
young Mrs. Baldwin was censorious because unhappy, difficult to please
because dissatisfied with herself. People were kindly inclined to her.
They knew she had long been motherless, and of late fatherless as well,
her only brother separated from her by half the world, her present
position, though the wife of “as fine a fellow as ever breathed,” far
lower, socially speaking, than originally she might have aspired to.
Altogether a good deal of kindness, really genuine so far as it went,
might have been received by her, had she encouraged it. But she did not,
“could not,” she told herself. So her new acquaintances felt repelled,
naturally enough, and she, sensitive to a fault, felt she was not liked,
and drew back still further into her shell of cold reserve. “Pride,” of
course, it was called. And “what has she to be proud of?” next came to
be asked, when the poor girl’s name was brought on the tapis.
After one of these visits she was invariably more depressed than before.
She was not hardened to feeling herself disliked, nor callous to the
womanly mortification of knowing she had not been seen to advantage. She
fancied she was growing ugly; she knew she had grown unamiable, and she
was angry with herself, while yet she was bitter at others. Geoffrey
above all. When in company, he looked so well and in such good spirits,
that at times Marion thought she almost hated him. Truly she was hard
to please! Had he allowed himself to appear depressed, or in any way
different from his former well-known joyous self, she would in her heart
have accused him of indelicacy, of obtruding upon her regardless of her
feelings, the pain she had brought upon him, the wreck she had made of
his life.
And the season too was against her. Autumn again, nature’s dying hour,
when all around was but too much in harmony with her desolate life, but
too apt to foster the morbid unhealthiness which was fast enveloping her
whole existence.
The jog-trot dullness of her daily life came to have a strange
fascination for her. Its regularity seemed to be beating time to some
approaching change, some crisis in her fate. For that some such was
at hand, she felt convinced. The present was too unendurable, too
essentially unnatural to be long, continuance.
So, in the intervals of her irritation at her husband, she lived, to all
appearance, contentedly enough, in the death-in-life monotony so fatal
to all growth and healthy development. Geoffrey had no idea how bad
things were with her. He thought he was giving her all she would accept,
undisturbed peace and perfect independence. Yet his very heart bled for
her, often, very often when she little suspected it. He made one grand
mistake; he gave her no responsibilities, no necessary duties. Her time
was her own; the housekeeping was all attended to by a confidential and
efficient servant, whose accounts even were overlooked by the master
instead of by the mistress of the establishment.
Money Marion had in plenty, more than she knew what to do with; for she
had never been “fanatica” on the subject of dress, and even her old love
of books and music seemed to be deserting her. She would not ride. The
horse destined for her use stood idle in the stable; and more than once
Geoffrey so nearly lost heart that he was on the point of selling it.
He had one great advantage over Marion. He was the possessor of that
mysterious, and to mere spectators, somewhat irritating gift, known
as “animal spirits.” There were times when, in spite of all, his
unspeakable disappointment, his bitter self-reproach, the young man
could not help feeling happy. An exciting run, a bracing frosty morning
in his fields, filled him for the time with his old joyousness, the
exhilaration of life in itself, apart from all modifying circumstances.
Poor fellow! She need not have grudged him, what afterwards on looking
back through a clearer atmosphere, she believed to have been the only
compensatory influence in the lonely, unsympathised-with existence,
to one so frank and affectionate, more trying even than she, with her
greater powers of reserve and self-reliance, could altogether realize.
Now and then, though rarely, the cloudy gloom of mutual reserve and
apparent indifference, into which day by day they were drifting
further, was broken, painfully enough, by stormy flashes of outspoken
recrimination and wounding reproach. Naturally, they were both
sweet-tempered, but this wretched state of things was fast souring them.
Scenes miserable to witness, had any friend been by, lowering in the
extreme to reflect upon in calmer moments, from time to time occurred.
In these it is but justice to Geoffrey to say that he was rarely, if
ever, the aggressor.
One dull, foggy morning, a “by-day,” unfortunately, for Marion, yielding
to atmospheric influences, was in a mood at once captious and gloomy,
little disposed to take interest in anything—least of all in her
husband’s stable—on this uninviting morning, she was sitting,
discontented and unoccupied, in the little boudoir she had not yet
found heart to re-furnish, when the door opened suddenly and Geoffrey
appeared. He burst in, looking eager and happy. Like his old self, for
the time at least.
“Oh, Marion,” he exclaimed, “do put on your hat and come round with me
for a moment to the stables. That new mare I bought last week has just
come. She is such a perfect beauty. Do come.”
But Marion did not move, but sat there, her face turned from him,
affecting to warm her hands at the fire. Then she glanced at the door
which Geoffrey had left open, and said peevishly:
“I wish you would remember that other people feel the cold if you don’t.
The draught along the passage makes this room almost uninhabitable.
Geoffrey closed the door gently, with a ready apology for his
carelessness. Then he returned to the charge.
“You will come out though, won’t you? I am really so anxious to show you
my new purchase. She is rather young to do much work this year, but
by another, she will be all I could wish. I really never saw a more
beautiful creature.”
“I am glad you are pleased,” said Marion, coldly, “but you must excuse
my joining in the chorus of admiration which I have no doubt is going on
in the stable-yard. I should I only disappoint you, for I really could
not get up the proper amount of ecstasy.”
Geoffrey’s face fell.
“You used to take some interest in my horses, Marion,” he said,
deprecatingly.
“Very possibly,” she replied, in a somewhat sneering tone. “Barley-sugar
isn’t a bad thing in its place. But as for living on it altogether,
that’s a different matter. Long ago I could afford to be amused by your
stable ‘fureur,’ now and then. But it never seem to occur to you that
it’s possible to have too much even of the charms of bay mares and
such-like! You must excuse my bad taste.”
“I don’t understand you,” replied Geoffrey. “I cannot feel that
I deserve to be taunted with having bored you with anything that
interested me.”
“I don’t suppose you do understand me,” she answered, in the same
contemptuous manner. “You made one grand mistake, for which we are both
suffering—that of imagining you ever could do so. Go back to your hones,
with whom, I can assure you, you have more in common than you could ever
have with me. Only do not, I beg of you, delude yourself with the idea
that a being who has the misfortune to possess something in the way of
mind and soul, is the right person to apply to for sympathy in the only
interests you seem capable of.”
The extreme contempt, the insulting scorn of her words and manner stung
him to the quick. With a muttered expression of some kind, of which she
could not catch the words, he turned from her sharply, and for once
in his life slammed the door behind him violently, as, half mad with
misery, he rushed away from the sound of her cold, mocking words.
When he had gone, Marion rose from her seat and sauntered to the window.
She stood there gazing out at the dreary garden, desolate and bare, save
for the leaves thickly strewing the paths and beds. Already her heart
was reproaching her for her cruelty; already her conscience was bitterly
accusing her. She had done very wrong; she knew, she owned it to
herself. But she could not feel responsible, even for her own misdeeds.
“They are all a part of the whole,” she cried, “all a part of the
wretched, miserable whole.”
She “could not help it!” “It was not in her nature to be good when she
was miserable.” “And I am no more to blame,” she thought, defiantly,
“for being wicked than a flower for not blooming without sunshine.”
But does the poor flower resolutely turn from the light? Does it not
rather welcome eagerly each narrow ray that penetrates to its dark
dwelling, and with humble gratitude make the most of the sunshine
vouchsafed to it?
Half-an-hour later Marion heard a clatter in the direction of the
stables, voices eager and excited—more clatter, the dogs barking. Then
the sound of a horse’s feet gradually sobering down into a steady pace,
as they were lost in the distance. Geoffrey had gone out riding. And on
the new mare, the footman told her, when she rang for coals, and made
some indirect enquiry.
“Very handsome she is, ma’am,” added he, “but very awkward at starting.
My master had some trouble to get her out of the yard. She took fright
at a heap of bricks lying there for repairs. Perhaps you heard the
noise, ma’am?”
“Yes,” said Marion, indifferently, “I thought I heard the dogs barking.”
In her heart she felt rather uneasy. She wished she had gone out with
her husband to admire his favourite; she wished they had not separated
with such angry feelings; she wished he had not chosen to-day for trying
the new mare!
She put on her hat, and, with a book in her hand, ensconced herself in
a sheltered nook, which after some difficulty she succeeded in finding.
Out of doors it felt less chilly than in the house, and gradually she
grew soothed and calm. She thought to herself she would stay out them
for some hours; the day was, after all, mild and pleasant, and the
perfect quiet would do her good. But her anticipations were doomed to be
disappointed. In less than an hour she heard from her retreat the sound
of approaching carriage-wheels, then ladies’ voices at the hall door;
and in a few minutes James appeared, breathless in hunting for her in
all her usual haunts.
“The Misses Copley, if you please ma’am, in the drawing-room.”
“Very well,” she replied, half provoked, and yet not altogether sorry
for the interruption, “I will be with them directly. The young ladies,
you said?”
“Yes, ma’am, Miss Copley and Miss Georgie.”
They were about the only people she ever cared to see. Really amiable
and affectionate; happy-hearted, and yet gentle, and perfectly
unacquainted with her previous history; with them she felt on safe
ground. They liked, and in a measure understood her. Their perceptions
were not of the quickest; they had no idea that all was not satisfactory
between her and Geoffrey, and her quiet manner did not to appear
either cold or proud, for they had known her since her first coming to
Mallingford, when there had been reason enough for her depression—and
so, as it were, they had grown accustomed to what struck strangers
as chilling and repellent. Besides, she liked them, and felt really
grateful for their consistent kindness. So of course they saw her to
advantage.
This morning they were the bearers of an invitation—“We want you and
Geoffrey to come and dine with us to-day, and stay over to-morrow,”
began Georgie, eagerly; and then Margaret took up the strain—
“Yes, you must come. I’ll tell you the great reason. Georgie’s ‘young
man’ is coming tonight, and we do so want you to see him. He has not
been here for some months; not since the time you were so ill. Then,
too, Papa has some draining on hand he wants Geoffrey’s opinion about.
You will come, won’t you?”
“I should like it exceedingly,” said Marion, cordially; but as to
Geoffrey, I can’t say. He has gone out, and I don’t know when he will be
in.”
“Of course,” exclaimed Georgie, stupid of us not to have told you. We
met him on our way—(by-the-by, what a beautiful mare that is he has got,
but what a vixen!)— and he said he would certainly come if you would. I
was to ask you to order his man to put up what clothes he will want, as
he said he would not return here, unless he hears at the Wood that you
are not coming. So it’s all right, isn’t it? Bring your habit, do; it’s
an age since we’ve had a ride together.”
“I have not ridden for months,” said Marion. “Hardly since I was ill.
I don’t think I care about it, and I don’t think the horse Geoffrey
intended for me is in riding condition.”
“You could ride one of ours,” suggested Margaret. But, “No, thank you,”
said Marion, resolutely.
She agreed, however, to all the rest of their proposals, and in an
hour or two’s time found herself with her friends in their comfortable
carriage, bowling briskly along the high-road to Copley Wood, in far
better spirits than early that morning she would have believed she could
possibly attain to.
Geoffrey met them at the hall door, and handed them out of the carriage.
Marion fancied he looked pale; though he began talking to her young
friends as brightly as usual. She felt grateful for their presence, as
otherwise their meeting after the scene in the morning could not but
have been uncomfortable for both. As it was, however, it was easy to
avoid any approach to a tête-à-tête.
“I am glad you have come,” he said, rather stiffly. This was the only
approach to a reconciliation that took place between them.
Then followed a hearty welcome from kindly, cheery Lady Anne and the old
Squire. It was impossible to resist altogether the genial influence of
the whole family, the pleasant atmosphere of goodwill and cordiality
pervading the dwelling. Yet even with this, there was mingled for Marion
much bitterness.
“Why can’t I be happy and comfortable, like these kind, good people?”
she asked herself, as she stood by the bright fire in the pretty
morning-room, and, glancing round, took in all the details of the
pleasant, home-like scene. The old portraits on the walls, the bookcases
with their tempting contents, the furniture with a general air of warmth
and colour about it, though sobered down by time and use to the quiet
hue which in dull houses looks dingy, in cheerful ones comfortable.
The bits of work and newspapers lying about, the fresh, brightly-tinted
flowers on the table—the two pretty girls flitting about—all made an
attractive picture. Geoffrey seemed to enjoy the pleasant influence: he
lay back lazily in his chair, looking up laughingly in Georgie’s face
as she passed him, his gold-brown hair and contrasting charm-blue
“well-opened” eyes, contrasting charmingly with the little brunette’s
darker locks, and quick, sparkling glances. She was only a pretty girl,
little Georgie Copley, a merry, robin redbreast sort of a creature, who
by no imagination could be idealised into a beautiful or stately woman;
yet for one little moment Marion felt a passing pang of jealousy of the
happy child.
“Why didn’t he marry her?” she thought to herself; “she would have
suited him, and in their commonplace way they would have been happy. I
am too old for him, as well as too everything else.”
And with a slight shiver she turned round to the fire. She felt herself
like a skeleton at the feast, as her eyes caught the reflection of her
face in the mirror above the mantelpiece. Thin and pale and shadowy she
looked to herself, with large, unhappy-looking eyes, from which all the
lustre and richness seemed to have departed, closely bound round the
small, drooping head. “Showy,” in her best days, she never had been; nor
had she ever been inclined to do justice to her own personal charms.
“I am not ugly,” she had said to herself as a young girl, “but that is
about all there is to be said.” Now she would have hesitated to say even
as much.
Some one else was watching her just then, as she stood quiet and apart
by the fire. Someone who she little thought was thinking of her at all.
Some one who, as he chattered merrily to Georgie, was hardly conscious
of any other presence than that of the slight, drooping figure at the
other end of the room, whose bitter sneering words of the morning
were already forgiven, and, if not forgotten, remembered only to add
intensity to his yearning tenderness of pity, his deep, enduring,
ill-requited love.
Then came the announcement of luncheon, and a general move to the
well-covered table in the dining-room.
During the meal, plans for the disposal of the remainder of the day were
discussed.
“Captain Ferndale can’t be here much before dinner-time, Georgie,” said
her sister. “You don’t intend to stay in all the afternoon, I hope?”
“Oh dear no,” replied the sensible little woman, “I intend to ride with
you and Geoffrey. Unless Mrs. Baldwin will change her mind, and ride
my horse instead of me. Will you, Marion?” And “Oh do,” added Margaret;
“I’m quite sure it would do you good. Do help us to persuade her,
Geoffrey. I am sure I have a habit that will fit you.”
But Geoffrey only glanced at his wife, and, seeing the slight annoyance
in her face, said nothing.
“Now, girls, don’t tease,” said Lady Anne, as notwithstanding Marion’s
evident disinclination to make one of the riding party, her young
friends still attempted to persuade her to change her mind. “You really
must let Mrs. Baldwin decide for herself.” And with these words she
rose and led the way back to the morning-room. Reluctantly Margaret and
Georgie gave up the endeavour and went to dress for riding. Geoffrey
strolled to the stables to give some directions respecting the saddling
of his beautiful “Coquette,” whose behaviour in the morning had decided
him that she would be none the worse for a little more exercise.
“You’ll have some trouble to get her sobered down a bit, Sir,” said the
old coachman. “I’m a little afraid Miss Georgie’s ‘Prince’ will set
her off. Prince is fidgety like now and then, though he never does no
mischief when Miss Georgie’s riding him. But it wouldn’t take much to
upset this ’ere mare, Sir. She’s young and flighty, though handsome as a
pictur’.”
“I’ll be careful, Jackson, no fear but what I’ll take it out of her,”
said Geoffrey. “If she’s tiresome beside the young ladies, I’ll give her
a gallop across country to settle her down.”
Evidently some sedative of the kind was likely to be required! Coquette
showed the greatest reluctance to start in a becoming and ladylike
manner. True to her name she eyed Georgie’s Prince with evidently
mischievous intentions, and the very eccentric manner in which the
little party set out on their expedition was such as slightly to upset
even Lady Anne’s well seasoned nerves.
Marion watched the departure from the window. She had not yet exchanged
a word with her husband since the painful scene of the morning; and very
unreasonably she felt inclined to be angry with him, for having, as
she thought, given her no opportunity of showing that she regretted the
unkindly and undignified temper to which she had given way.
She felt somewhat uneasy as she watched the peculiar behaviour of the
new mare; but this feeling too she disguised from herself by turning it
in the direction of annoyance at Geoffrey.
“It is exceedingly inconsiderate, indelicate almost of him,” she said to
herself, “to parade in this way his complete independence of any sort of
wifely anxiety. I believe he chooses these vicious creatures on purpose.
And of course if I made the slightest remonstrance he would turn on me
with taunts that I had no right to interfere, that to me his personal
safety must be a matter of utter indifference. Evidently he now
despises what, if he had acted differently, might still have been his—my
friendship and regard. But he really need not go out of his way to
exhibit to strangers the state of things between us.” And with a hard
look on her face, she turned to Lady Anne, who now entered the room.