“My eyes are dim with childish tears,
My heart is idly stirred,
For the same sound is in my ears
Which in those days I heard.”
That suggestion of Cuthbert Ramsay’s of latent madness in the
lodge-keeper came upon Theodore like a flash of lurid light, and
gave a new colour to all his thoughts. It was in vain that his
friend reminded him of the wide distinction between the fury of the
homicidal lunatic and the settled melancholy of a mind warped by
misfortune. After that conversation in the Park he was haunted by
Mrs. Porter’s image, and he found his mind distracted between two
opposite ideas; one pointing to the man who had claimed Mrs. Danvers
as his wife, the deserted and betrayed husband of James Dalbrook’s
mistress; the other dwelling upon the image of this woman living at
his kinsman’s gate, with an existence which was unsatisfactorily
explained by the scanty facts which he had been able to gather about
her former history.
He recalled her conduct about her daughter, her cold and almost
vindictive rejection of the penitent sinner; her stern resolve to
stand alone in the world.
Was that madness, or the consciousness of guilt, or what? It was
conduct too unnatural to be accounted for easily, consider it how he
might. He had heard often enough of fathers refusing to be reconciled
with erring or disobedient children. The flinty hardness of the
father’s heart has become proverbial. But an unforgiving mother seems
an anomaly in nature.
He determined upon confiding Ramsay’s opinion and his own doubts to
Lord Cheriton without delay.
Whatever abnormal circumstances there had been in Mrs. Porter’s
history, her benefactor was likely to be acquainted with them; and if
those circumstances had affected her intellect it was vital that he
should be made aware of the fact before evil of any kind could arise.
He contrived an after-dinner stroll upon the terrace with his kinsman
as upon the previous evening, and entered upon the subject without
loss of time.
“Ramsay and I took our afternoon-tea with Mrs. Porter,” he said.
“Indeed! How did that come about? She is not a sociable person in a
general way, or accessible to strangers.”
“It was to gratify a fancy of Ramsay’s that I went there. He admired
her cottage and was interested in her history, and took it into his
head that she was a woman of exceptional character.”
“He was not far wrong there, I believe. Mrs. Porter is a very hard
nut to crack. I have never been able to fathom her.”
“And yet with your knowledge of her previous history you must have
the safest clue to her character.”
“I don’t know about that. There is nothing exceptional in her
history—and there is much that is exceptional in her character, as
your friend says. Pray what was the result of his observation of the
lady in the leisure of afternoon tea-drinking?”
“He believed that he saw the traces of madness in her countenance
and manner; madness either past, present, or impending. He could not
decide which.”
There was not light enough upon the terrace to show Theodore any
change in his cousin’s countenance, but the movement of Lord
Cheriton’s hand as he took the cigar from his mouth, and the sudden
slackening of his pace were sufficient indications of troubled
thought. It could hardly be pleasant for him to hear so melancholy a
suggestion about the pensioner whom he had established in comfort at
his gate, intending that she should enjoy his bounty for all the days
of her life.
“Upon what does your friend base this fantastical notion?” he asked
angrily.
“Upon physiological and psychological evidence. You can question him,
if you like. It appears to me that you ought to know the truth.”
“I have no objection to hear anything he may have to say, but it is
very unlikely I shall be influenced by him. These young men, who are
by way of being savants, are full of crochets and theories. They look
at every one as Darwin looked at a Virginia creeper or a cowslip,
with a preconceived notion that they must find out something about
him. I believe Mrs. Porter, with her calm, impassible nature, is much
better able to reckon up your friend Ramsay than he is able to come
to a correct opinion about her.”
“I should like you to discuss the question with him, at any rate,”
said Theodore. “The horror of last year’s calamity is a reason you
should have nobody about the estate whom you cannot trust.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that while you have madness at your gate you may have murder
in your house.”
“Theodore! You cannot be so cruel as to associate that unhappy woman
with Godfrey Carmichael’s death?”
“God knows! That murder has to be accounted for somehow. Can you, as
Juanita’s father, know rest or peace till it has been accounted for?
I could not, in your place.”
“I hope you do not think it necessary to teach me my duty to my
daughter,” said Lord Cheriton coldly; and Theodore felt that he had
said too much.
His cousin addressed him upon some indifferent subject a minute or so
afterwards, when he had lighted a fresh cigar, and his manner resumed
its usual friendliness. There was no further mention of Mrs. Porter
that night, but on Sunday Lord Cheriton walked home from church with
Cuthbert Ramsay, and questioned him as to his impressions about the
lodge-keeper.
“Theodore has exaggerated the significance of my remark,” explained
Cuthbert. “I take it Mrs. Porter’s case is one of slight aberration
brought on by much brooding upon troubles, real or imaginary. If my
power to diagnose is worth anything, her mind has lost its balance,
her thoughts have lost their adjusting power. She is like a piece of
mechanism that has got out of square, and will only work one way.
You may hardly consider that this amounts to madness, and I may have
done wrong in speaking of it: only were Mrs. Porter concerned in
my existence, I should feel it incumbent on me to watch her; and I
recommend you to have her watched, so far as it can be done without
alarming or annoying her.”
“I will do what I can. I will get another opinion from a man of long
experience in mental cases. I have an old friend in the medical
profession, a specialist, who has made mental disease the study of
his life. He will give me any advice I want.”
“You cannot do better than get his opinion of Mrs. Porter, if you are
interested in her welfare.”
“I am interested in all who are dependent upon me, and in her
especially, on account of old associations.”
* * * * *
Lady Carmichael drove over to Cheriton after luncheon, upon one of
those Sunday visits which she paid from time to time in deference
to her father, albeit she could never approach the house without
pain. She came in the useful family landau, which had carried the
Misses Carmichael to tennis parties, dinners, and dances, before they
married, and which now conveyed the nurse and baby on their visits to
Cheriton. She came for what Lady Cheriton called a long afternoon,
and she was received in the library, which was now the most used room
in the house. No one cared to occupy that fatal drawing-room; and
although it was always accessible, and there was a feint of daily
occupation, its cold elegance was for the most part untenanted.
“And over all there hung a cloud of fear.”
To-day, for the first time, Theodore discovered numerous alterations
in the arrangement of pictures and furniture in the hall. He had
promised Cuthbert to show him the portraits of the Strangways, and
most particularly that picture of the Squire’s three children,
painted nearly forty years before; but he found that this picture,
among others, had been removed, and that a fine Rhodian plate
occupied its place on the dark oak panelling.
He noticed the fact to his cousin.
“I am sorry to miss the family group,” he said. “It was a really
interesting picture.”
“Interesting to you perhaps, who knew the history of the race,”
answered Lord Cheriton, “but very uninteresting to a stranger.
I think I’ve made an improvement over there. That plate is a
splendid bit of colour, and lights up a dark corner. But that was
not my motive. I wanted to make such trifling alterations as would
change the aspect of the hall for Juanita, without any ostensible
refurnishing. I have done the same thing in the library. The changes
there are slight, but the room is not as it was when she and her
husband occupied it.”
“I should like to show Ramsay the Strangway portraits, if they are
get-at-able.”
“They are not just at present. The canvases were rotting, and I have
sent them to London to be lined. You can show them to your friend
by-and-by, when I get them back.”
Mr. Ramsay’s thoughts seemed a long way from the Strangway portraits
this afternoon, although he had expressed a curiosity as to the
lineaments of that luckless race. He was out in the garden—in Lady
Cheriton’s rose garden—with Juanita and her son, and was giving
further proofs of his adaptability to infantile society. The
grandmother was of the party, looking on with profound admiration
at that phase of awakening intellect which is described as “taking
notice.” It was held now as an established fact that the infant
Godfrey James Dalbrook took notice, and that his notice dwelt with
especial favour upon Cuthbert Ramsay.
“I think it must be because you are so tall and big,” said Juanita
lightly. “He feels your power, and he wants to conciliate you.”
“Artful little beggar! No, that is much too low a view. There is a
magnetic affinity between us—love at first sight. When babies do
take a fancy they are thoroughly in earnest about it. Loafing about
in the New Cut sometimes, studying human nature from the Saturday
night point of view, I have had a poor woman’s baby take a fancy to
me—a poor little elfin creature, a year old perhaps, and not half
so big as this bloated aristocrat, a sour-smelling baby which would
give you _mal au cœur_, Lady Carmichael; and the wretched little waif
would hook on to my elephantine finger and cleave to me as if I were
its mother. Oh, how sorry I have felt for such a baby—with the pure
starry eyes of infancy shining in the flabby withered face that has
grown old for want of cold water and fresh air! For such infancy and
for stray dogs I have suffered acutest agonies of pity—and yet I have
done nothing—only pitied and passed on. That is the worst of us. We
can all pity, but we don’t act upon the divine impulse. You may be
sure the Levite felt very sorry for the wounded traveller, though he
did not see his way to helping him.”
This was one of Cuthbert’s tirades, which he was wont to indulge in
when he found himself in congenial society; and Juanita’s society was
particularly congenial to him. He felt as if no other woman had ever
sympathized with him or understood him—and he gave her credit for
doing both. Never had he felt so happy in the society of any woman,
as he felt in this sunlit garden to-day, among the roses which were
just now blooming in a riotous luxuriance, the branching heads of
standards top-heavy with great balls of blossom, swaying gently in
the summer wind.
He had expected to see her a gloomy creature, self-conscious in her
grief—but the child’s little fingers had loosened her heartstrings.
If she was not gay, she was at least able to endure gaiety in others.
She listened to the young man’s rhapsodies and paradoxes with a
gentle smile; she admired her mother’s roses. She cast no shadow
upon the quiet happiness of the summer afternoon, that tranquil
contentedness which belongs to the loveliness of Nature, and which
makes a blessed pause in the story of human passion and human
discontent. It was one of those summer afternoons which make one say
to oneself, “Could life be always thus what a blessed thing it were
to live!” and then the sound of evening bells breaks the spell, and
the shadows creep across the woods, and it is dinner time, and all
that halcyon peace is over.
How lovely she looked in her simply-made black gown, with its
closely-fitting bodice and straight flowing skirt, of that thick
lustreless silk which falls in such statuesque folds! The plain
little white crape cap seemed in perfect harmony with that raven
hair and pure white forehead. She was unlike any other woman
Cuthbert Ramsay had ever known. There was not one touch of society
slang, nor of the society manner of looking at life. She had passed
through the fiery ordeal of two London seasons unscorched in the
furnace. Love had been the purifying influence. She had never lived
upon the excitement of every-day pleasures and volatile loves, the
intermittent fever of flirtations and engagements that are on and off
half a dozen times in a season. The influence that guided all her
thoughts and all her actions had been one steadfast and single-minded
love. She had cared for no praises but from her lover’s lips; she had
dressed and danced, and played and sung, for none other than he. And
now in her devotion to her child there was the same concentration and
simplicity. She did not know that she was looking her loveliest in
that severe black gown and white cap; she did not know that Cuthbert
Ramsay admired her far too much for his peace. She only felt that
he was very sincere in his devotion to the baby, and that he was a
clever young man whose society suggested new ideas, and made her for
the moment forgetful of her grief.
It was evening before she left Cheriton. She had stayed later than
usual, and the shadows were creeping over the park as she walked to
the west gate with Theodore and his friend, the carriage following
slowly with nurse and baby ensconced among light fleecy wraps, lest
vesper breezes should visit that human blossom too roughly. Theodore
had proposed the walk across the park, and Juanita had assented
immediately.
“I am always glad of a walk,” she said. “I have so few excuses for a
ramble nowadays. I have to stay at home to take care of baby.”
“Do you doubt the capabilities of that highly-experienced nurse?”
asked Ramsay laughingly.
“I doubt every one but myself, and I sometimes doubt even my own
discretion where my precious one is concerned.”
“You will have more reason to doubt by-and-by when your precious one
is old enough to be spoilt,” said Theodore. “He has begun to take
notice, and before very long he will notice that he is monarch of all
he surveys, and that everybody about him is more or less his slave.
He will live in that atmosphere till you send him to Eton, and then
he will find himself suddenly confronted with the hard, cruel world
of strictly Republican boyhood, which will jostle and hustle him with
ruthless equality.”
* * * * *
Lady Cheriton had business in London early in the following week.
She was going to London to see her dentist, and her dressmaker, the
latter being one of the arbiters of fashion who never go out of
their way to wait upon their clients, but who do the rather exact
reverence and attention from those clients. She had shopping to do
at the West-end of London, that shopping which is so delightful to a
lady who spends two-thirds of the year in the country. Above all, she
had things to get at the “Stores,” an institution which was dear to
Lady Cheriton’s heart, in spite of all her husband’s lectures upon
political economy and the necessity of sustaining private enterprise
and the shopkeeping interest.
Hearing of these engagements, and that Lady Cheriton intended to
spend two nights in Victoria Street, Theodore suggested that he
should be allowed to accompany her ladyship to London and to arrange
a meeting between her and the young woman who called herself Marian
Gray.
“If you really wish to help her,” he concluded.
“I do really wish it,” answered Lord Cheriton earnestly, “and the
sooner the matter is put in hand the better pleased I shall be. Shall
my wife call on this person?”
“She is very proud and very reserved. It might be better to bring
about a meeting which would appear accidental. Marian goes for a walk
with Miss Newton once or twice a week. I could arrange with her good
friend that they should be walking in a particular place—Battersea
Park, for instance—at a certain hour, and Lady Cheriton could drive
that way with me, and we could meet them. It would be the easiest
way of arriving at the truth as to Marian Gray’s identity with Mercy
Porter.”
“Very good. You might suggest that to my wife.”
Lady Cheriton, who was the soul of good-nature, fell in at once with
Theodore’s idea.
“I would do anything in my power to help that poor girl,” she said;
“for I think her sadly to be pitied. Her girlhood was so dull and
joyless—such a ceaseless round of lessons and practice, without any
of those pleasures to which most school-girls look forward. Her
mother seemed to take a pride in keeping the girl apart from every
one, in dressing her plainly, and in making her whole life as dreary
as she could. I hardly wonder that the poor, hopeless creature
surrendered to the first tempter—a man whose manner to women had
always been called irresistible, even by women of the world, and a
man who would not shrink from any amount of falsehood in pursuing his
wicked aim. And now she is paying forfeit for her sin with a lonely
life of toil in a London garret. Poor Mercy! She was so pretty and so
refined—a lady in all her instincts.”
Cuthbert Ramsay left on Monday, promising to return at the end of
the week; and Theodore went up to town with Lady Cheriton on the
following Wednesday. He went straight from the terminus to Wedgewood
Street, where he saw Miss Newton, told her of Lord Cheriton’s
benevolent intentions to Marian, alias Mercy, and arranged the walk
in Battersea Park for the following afternoon. Miss Newton and her
_protégée_ were to be walking upon the pathway beside the river at
half-past three o’clock, when Lady Cheriton would drive that way.
Miss Newton had no difficulty in carrying out her part of the little
plot. Marian was always ready to put aside her work for the pleasure
of an afternoon with that one friend to whom her heart was ever open.
She met Miss Newton at the starting-place of the tramcar, and they
rode through the dusty crowded highways to the People’s Park, where
the flower-beds were gaudy with the rank luxuriance that is the
beginning of the end of summer’s good things, and where the geranium
leaves were riddled by voracious slugs. There was a dustiness and
worn-out air upon all the foliage and all the flowers, despite the
coolness that came from the swiftly-flowing river—an air of fading
and decay which pervades even the outermost regions of London when
the season is over and the world of fashion has fled—the air of a
theatre when the play is done and the lights are extinguished.
Sarah Newton and her young friend walked slowly along the gravel
pathway, looking dreamily at the bright river, with its gay movement
of passing boats and flowing waters. The elder of the two friends,
who was wont to be full of cheery talk of newspapers and books, the
history of the present, and the history of the past, was to-day
unusually grave and silent.
“I’m afraid you are not well, dear Miss Newton,” said Marian, looking
at her anxiously.
“Oh, yes, my dear, I am well enough. You know I am made of cast-iron,
and except for the toothache, or a cold in my head, I hardly know
what illness means. I am only a little thoughtful.”
They walked a few paces in silence, and then Miss Newton stopped
suddenly to admire an approaching carriage. “What a stylish Victoria!
Why, I declare there is Mr. Dalbrook, with a lady!”
The carriage drew up as she spoke, and Theodore alighted. Marian had
reddened a little at the mention of his name, but the flush upon her
cheek deepened to crimson when she saw the lady in the carriage,
and as the lady got out and came towards her the crimson faded to a
deadly white.
“Mercy, child, I am glad with all my heart to find you,” said Lady
Cheriton, holding out both her hands.
She was determined that there should be no doubt in the young girl’s
mind as to her friendship and indulgence—that there should be nothing
in the mode of her approach, in the tone of her voice, or the
expression of her countenance that could bruise that broken reed.
Love and pity looked out of those lovely southern eyes, which even in
mature age retained much of their youthful beauty.
Mercy Porter went towards her, trembling, and with eyes brimming with
tears. The calm, self-restrained nature had melted all at once at
those gentle words in the familiar voice which had given her words of
kindness and of praise in her desolate childhood. The transformation
filled Theodore with wonder.
“Dear Lady Cheriton, I thought you would long ago have forgotten the
wretched girl to whom you were once so kind,” she faltered.
“No, Mercy, I have never forgotten you. I have always been
sorry—deeply sorry for you. And when Mr. Dalbrook told me about
having met a person who interested him—a person associated with
Cheriton—I knew that person must be you. My dear girl, I thank God
that we have found you. My cousin will call upon you to-morrow and
talk to you about your future—and of our plans for making your life
happier than it is.”
“There is no need,” said Mercy, quickly. “I get on very well as I
am. My life is quite good enough for me. I hope for nothing better,
wish for nothing better.”
“Nonsense, Mercy. His Lordship and I are your friends, and we mean to
help you.”
“I will accept help from no one, Lady Cheriton. I made up my mind
about that long ago. I can earn my own living very well now. If ever
my fingers or my eyes fail me—I can go to the workhouse. I am deeply
thankful for your pity—but I ask for no more, I will accept no more.”
“We will see about that, Mercy,” said Lady Cheriton, with her gentle
smile, quite unable to estimate the mental force in opposition to her.
She could understand a certain resistance, the pride of a sensitive
nature painfully conscious of disgrace, unable to forget the past.
She was prepared for a certain amount of difficulty in reconciling
this proud nature to the acceptance of benefits; but she never for
one moment contemplated an implacable resistance.
“Let me see your friend, Mercy,” she said, “the lady who has been
kind to you.”
“Kind is a poor word. She has been my angel of deliverance. She has
saved me from the great dismal swamp of self-abasement and despair.”
Miss Newton had walked briskly ahead with Theodore, so as to leave
Lady Cheriton and Mercy together. Mercy ran after her friend, and
brought her back a little way, as Lady Cheriton advanced to meet her.
“Miss Newton, my one true and good friend in all this great world
of London, and the only friend of my miserable childhood, Lady
Cheriton,” said Mercy, looking from one to the other with that intent
look of thoughtful minds that work in narrow grooves.
“I thank you for being good to one in whose fate I am warmly
interested, Miss Newton,” said Lady Cheriton. “You have done the work
of the good Samaritan, and at least one wounded heart blesses you.”
They walked on a little way together, and Lady Cheriton spoke of the
old house and the old family, the vanished race with which Sarah
Newton had been associated in her girlhood.
“They are all dead, I understand?” she said, in conclusion.
“Yes, there is none left of the old family. They are not a fortunate
race, and I fear there are few who regret them; but I cannot help
feeling sorry that they are all gone. They have passed away like a
dream when one awakens.”
Lady Cheriton lingered on the river-side pathway for nearly
half-an-hour, talking to Mercy and Miss Newton. Theodore left them
together, after having obtained Mercy’s permission to call at her
lodgings on the following afternoon.