“And one, an English home—gray twilight poured
On dewy pastures, dewy trees,
Softer than sleep—all things in order stored,
A haunt of ancient Peace.”
Theodore and his friend betook themselves to Cheriton Chase on the
following Friday, for that kind of visit which north country people
describe as “a week end.” They carried their portmanteau in that
portion of the dog-cart which is more legitimately occupied by a
leash of spaniels or Irish setters, and they arrived in the golden
light of the afternoon, just when that sunk lane approaching the west
gate was looking its loveliest. Hart’s-tongue and rocky boulder, the
great brown trunks of the oaks and the polypodium growing amidst
their cloven branches were all touched with sun-gleams, while evening
shadows lay soft and cool upon the tall flowering grasses in the
meadows on either side of the deep gully.
“That is Mrs. Porter’s cottage,” said Theodore, indicating the
gatekeeper’s house with a turn of his whip towards the end of the
lane where the clustered chimneys showed through a gap in the trees.
Ramsay had been introduced to Miss Newton, and had constituted
himself honorary surgeon and medical adviser to that lady and all
her humble friends. He had been invited to the tea-parties in
Wedgewood Street, and had interested himself in the young woman
called Marian, and in her probable identity with the lodge-keeper’s
missing daughter, for which reason he had a keen desire to make the
lodge-keeper’s acquaintance.
“From your account of the lady she must be a piece of human adamant,”
he said. “I like to tackle that kind of individual. I’ve met a few
of them, and I’m happy to say that if I haven’t been able to melt
them I’ve generally succeeded in making them smart. I should enjoy
exhibiting my moral aquafortis in the case of this lady. I shall
get you to accompany me in a morning call upon her while we are at
Cheriton.”
“My dear Cuthbert, I would sooner call, uninvited and without
credentials, upon the Archbishop of Canterbury. I don’t forget how
she froze me when I tried to be friendly with her last New Year’s
Day. She was more biting than the north-east wind that was curdling
the ponds in the Park.”
“A fig for her bitingness. Do you suppose I mind? If you won’t take
me to her, I shall go by myself. A character of that kind has an
irresistible fascination for me. I would go a hundred miles any day
to see a bitter, bad woman.”
“She is bitter enough, but she may not be bad. She may be only a
creature who mistakes fanaticism for religion, who has so misread her
Bible that she thinks it her bounden duty to shut her heart against a
beloved child rather than to forgive a sinner. I believe she is to be
pitied rather than blamed, odious as she may seem.”
“Very likely. A hard heart, or an obstinate temper, is a disease like
other diseases. One ought to be sorry for the sufferer. But this
woman has a strong character, anyhow, for good or evil, and I delight
in studying character. The average man and woman is so colourless
that there is infinite relief in the study of any temperament which
touches the extreme. Think how delightful it would be to meet
such a man as Iago or Othello—picture to yourself the pleasure of
watching the gradual unfolding of such a mind as Iachimo’s, and
consider how keen would be one’s interest in getting to the bottom
of a woman like that poisoning stepmother of Imogen’s whose name
Shakespeare does not take the trouble to record. So this is the
lodge—charming Early English cottage—real rustic English, not Bedford
Parkish—half-timbered, thatched gables, dormers like eyes under bushy
eyebrows, walls four feet thick, lattices two hundred years old. It
might be the very cottage in which Grandmamma Wolf waited for the
dear, plump little girl, with chubby cheeks shining like the butter
in her basket, and with lips as sweet as her honey. Poor little
girl!”
The servant-maid ran down the steps to open the gate, and as the
wheels stopped an upper casement swung suddenly open, and a woman’s
face appeared in the golden light—a pale, wan face, whose most
noticeable expression was a look of infinite weariness—
“Anæmic,” said Cuthbert, as they drove in at the gate. “Decidedly
anæmic. I should suspect that woman——”
“Of what?”
“Of being a vegetarian,” answered Cuthbert, gravely. “But I’ll call
to-morrow, and find out all about her.”
Lord Cheriton received his kinsman’s friend with marked cordiality,
and seemed to enjoy his freshness and spontaneity. They talked of
Cambridge—the Cambridge of forty years ago and the Cambridge of
to-day,—and they talked of the continental schools of medicine, a
subject in which the lawyer was warmly interested. There were no
other visitors expected before September, when three old friends of
Lord Cheriton’s were to shoot the partridges. In October there was
to be a large party for the pheasant shooting, which was the chief
glory of Cheriton Chase. There had been no shooters at the Chase last
year, and Lord Cheriton felt himself so much the more constrained to
hospitality.
“You fellows must come in October, when we have our big shoot,” he
said; but Cuthbert Ramsay told him that he must be at work again in
London before the end of September.
Cuthbert was much impressed by the master of Cheriton Chase, and
the grave and quiet dignity with which he wore success that might
have made a weaker man arrogant and self-assertive. It would seem
as if scarcely anything were wanting to that prosperous career. Yet
Cuthbert saw that his host was not free from a cloud of care. It was
natural, perhaps, that he should feel the tragedy of his son-in-law’s
death as a lasting trouble, not to be shuffled off and forgotten when
the conventional period of mourning was past.
Theodore had some private talk with his cousin on the first evening
of his visit, walking up and down the terrace, while Cuthbert was
looking at the books in the library, under Lady Cheriton’s guidance.
He had it fully in his mind that the time must come when he would be
obliged to take Lord Cheriton into his confidence, but he felt that
time was still far off. Whenever the revelation came it must needs be
infinitely painful to both, and deeply humiliating to the man whose
hidden sin had brought desolation upon his innocent daughter, and
untimely death upon the man whose fate had been linked with hers. It
was for his dishonour, for the wrongs inflicted by him, that those
two had made expiation.
No, the time to be outspoken—the time to say in the words of the
prophet, “Thou art the man,” had not yet come. When it should come
he would be prepared to act resolutely and fearlessly; but in the
mean time he must needs go on working in the dark.
He remembered his last conversation with Lord Cheriton on that
subject—remembered how Cheriton had said that he believed Godfrey
Carmichael incapable of a dishonourable action—incapable of
having behaved cruelly to any woman. Had he who pronounced that
judgment been guilty of dishonour—had he been cruel to the woman
who sacrificed herself for him? There are so many degrees in such
wrong-doing! There is the sin of impulse: there is the deliberate
betrayal, the coldly planned iniquity, the sin of the practised
seducer who has reduced seduction to a science, and who has no more
heart or conscience than a machine. There is the sin of the generous
man, who finds his feet caught in the web of circumstance, who
begins, innocently enough, by pitying a neglected wife, and ends by
betraying the neglectful husband. Theodore gave his kinsman credit
for belonging to the category of generous sinners. Indeed, the fact
that he had lived aloof from the world for many years, sharing the
isolation of the woman who loved him, was in itself evidence that he
had not acted as a villain; yet it was possible that when the final
hour came, the hour for breaking those illicit bonds, the rupture
may have been in somewise cruel; and the remembrance of that cruelty
might be a burden upon the sinner’s conscience at this day. Such
partings can never be without cruelty. The fact that one sinner is
to marry and begin a new life, while the other sinner is to finish
her days in a dishonoured widowhood, is in itself a cruelty. She may
submit, as to a fate which she foresaw dimly, even in the hour of her
fall—but she would be more than human if she did not think herself
hardly used by the man who forsakes her. Nothing he can do to secure
her worldly comfort or to screen her from the world’s disdain will
take the sting out of that parting. The one fact remains that her day
is done. He has ceased to care for her, and he has begun to care for
another.
“Nothing has occurred since I was here to throw any new light upon
the murder, I suppose?” Theodore said quietly, as they smoked their
cigars, walking slowly up and down in the summer night.
“Nothing.”
“Did her ladyship tell you that I have met a girl in London, whom I
believe to be no other than Mercy Porter?”
“Yes, she told me something about that fancy of yours, for I take it
to be nothing more than a fancy. The world is too wide for you and
Mercy Porter to meet so easily. What was your ground for identifying
her with the lodge-keeper’s girl?”
“The lodge-keeper’s girl!” There was something needlessly
contemptuous in the phrase, it seemed to Theodore: a studied disdain.
“It was she herself who suggested the idea, by her inquiries about
Cheriton. She confessed to having come from this part of the world,
and she has an air of refinement which shows that she does not
belong to the peasant class. She is a very good pianiste—plays with
remarkable taste and feeling; and Lady Cheriton tells me that Mercy
had a talent for music. I have no doubt in my own mind that this
young woman is Mercy Porter, and I think her mother ought to go to
London and see her, even if she should not think fit to bring her
back to the home she left.”
“Mrs. Porter is a woman of peculiar temper. The girl may be happier
away from her.”
“Yes, that is very likely—but the mother ought to forgive her.
The penitent sinner, whose life for the last few years has been
blameless, ought to feel that she is pardoned and at peace with her
mother. I tried to approach the subject, but Mrs. Porter repelled
me with an almost vindictive air; and I do not think it would be
any good for me to plead for my poor friend again. If you or Lady
Cheriton would talk to her——”
“I will get my wife to manage her. It is a matter in which a woman
would have more influence than you or I. In the mean time, if there
is anything I can do to make Mercy Porter’s life easier, I shall be
very glad to do it, for her father’s sake.”
“You are very good; but she is not in want, and she seems content
with her lot.”
“What is she doing for a living?”
“Her employment is fine needlework. She lives in one small back room
in Lambeth, and has only one friend in the world, and that friend
happens to be a lady who once lived in this house.”
“A lady who lived in this house!” exclaimed Lord Cheriton. “Who, in
Heaven’s name, do you mean?”
“Miss Newton, who was governess to Miss Strangway nearly forty years
ago.”
“What brought Miss Newton and you together?”
“That is rather a long story. I took some trouble to find the lady in
order to settle one question which had disturbed my cousin Juanita
since her husband’s death.”
“What question?”
“She was haunted by an idea that Sir Godfrey’s murderer was one of
the Strangways, and his murder an act of vengeance by some member
of that banished race. It was in order to set this question at rest
for ever that I took some trouble to hunt out the history of Squire
Strangway’s two sons and only daughter. I traced them all three to
their graves, and have been able to convince Juanita that they and
their troubles were at rest long before the time of her husband’s
murder.”
“What could have put such a notion into her head?”
“Oh, it came naturally enough. It was only a development of Churton’s
idea of a vendetta.”
“She was always full of fancies. Yes, I remember she used to say the
house was haunted by the ghosts of the Strangways. I really think she
had a dim idea that I had injured that spendthrift race in buying
the estate which they had wasted. And so to satisfy Juanita you took
the trouble to ferret out Miss Newton? Upon my word, Theodore, your
conduct is more Quixotic than I could have believed of any young man
in the nineteenth century. And pray by what means did you discover
the _ci-devant_ governess?”
Theodore told the story of his visit to the scholastic agencies, his
journey to Westmorland, and his friendly reception by Miss Newton in
her Lambeth lodgings.
“She was much attached to Miss Strangway, who was her first charge,
and near enough to her own age to be more of a companion than a
pupil,” he said, “and she spoke of her melancholy fate with great
tenderness.”
“It was a melancholy fate, was it? I know she made a
runaway-marriage; but in what way was her fate sadder than the common
destiny of a spendthrift’s daughter—a girl who has been reared in
extravagance and self-indulgence, and who finds herself face to face
with penury in the bloom of her womanhood?”
“That in itself would be sad, but Miss Strangway’s destiny was sadder
than that—commonplace enough, no doubt—only the old story of an
unhappy marriage and a runaway wife.”
He could not help looking at Lord Cheriton at this point, thinking
how this common story of an unfaithful wife must needs remind his
kinsman of that other story of another wife which had influenced his
early manhood. He must surely have a sensitive shrinking from the
discussion of any similar story.
“She ran away from her husband! Yes, I remember having heard as much.
What did Miss Newton know about her—beyond that one fact?”
“Very little—only that she died at Boulogne nearly twenty years ago.
This fact Miss Newton heard from the lips of the man for whom Mrs.
Darcy left her husband. I had been at Boulogne a week or so before
I saw Miss Newton, and I had hunted there for any record of Mrs.
Darcy’s death, without result. But this is not very strange, as it
is quite likely that she lived at Boulogne under an assumed name,
and was buried in that name, and so lies there, in a foreign land,
dissevered for ever from any association with her name and kindred.”
“There are not many of her kindred left, I take it,” said Lord
Cheriton. “There seems to have been a blight upon that race for the
last half-century. But, now, tell me about some one in whom I am more
interested—the girl you believe to be Mercy Porter. I should be
very glad to make her life happier, and so I told her ladyship. You,
Theodore, might be the intermediary. I would allow her a hundred a
year, which would enable her to live in some pretty country place—in
Devonshire or Cornwall, for instance, in some quiet sea-coast village
where no one would know anything about her or her story.”
“A hundred a year! My dear Cheriton, that is a most generous offer.”
“No, no, there is no question of generosity. Her father was my
friend, and I was under some obligation to him. And then the girl
was my wife’s _protégée_; and, finally, I can very well afford it. I
am almost a childless man, Theodore. My grandson will be rich enough
when I am gone, rich enough to be sure of a peerage, I hope, so that
there may be a Baron Cheriton when I am in the dust.”
“You are very good. I believe this girl has a great deal of pride—the
pride of a woman who has drunk the cup of shame, and she may set
herself against being your pensioner; but if the matter can be
arranged as you wish she may yet see happier days. I think the first
thing to be done is to reconcile mother and daughter. Mrs. Porter
ought to go up to London——”
“To see Miss Newton’s _protégée_? On no account. I tell you Mrs.
Porter is a woman of strange temper—God knows how bitterly she might
upbraid her daughter. And if the girl is proud, as you say she is,
the mother’s reproaches would goad her to refuse any help from me or
my wife. No, Theodore, the longer we keep mother and daughter apart,
the better for Mercy’s chances of happiness.”
“But if this young woman should refuse to confess her identity with
Mercy Porter it will be impossible to benefit her.”
“That difficulty may be easily overcome. You can take my wife to see
her. She was always fond of my wife.”
“And you will leave the mother out of the question. That seems rather
hard upon her.”
“I tell you, Theodore, it is better to leave the mother out of the
question. She never acted a mother’s part to Mercy—there was never
any real motherly love—at least that was Lady Cheriton’s opinion
of the woman, and she had ample opportunity for judging, which, of
course, I had not. If you want to help the daughter, keep the mother
aloof from her.”
“I dare say you are right, and I shall of course obey you
implicitly,” said Theodore, inwardly reluctant.
He had an exalted idea of maternal love, its obligations and
privileges, and it seemed to him a hard thing to come between a
penitent daughter and a mother whose heart ought to be full of pity
and pardon. Yet he remembered his brief interview with Mrs. Porter,
and he could but own to himself that this might be an exceptional
case.