“A malady
Preys on my heart that medicine cannot reach,
Invisible and cureless.”
Mrs. Porter’s evanishment created considerable talk in the little
village of Cheriton, and would doubtless have been the occasion
of still greater wonder but for the impenetrable stupidity of the
young maid-servant, from whom no detailed account of her mistress’s
departure could be extorted. Had the girl Phœbe been observant and
loquacious she might have stimulated public curiosity by a lively
narrative of events; setting forth Theodore Dalbrook’s emotion at
finding the lodge deserted; and how he had sent up to the house for
his Lordship; and how his Lordship and Mr. Dalbrook had remained in
earnest conversation for nearly an hour in the lodge parlour; and how
Mrs. Porter had left a mahogany box upon the table, a flat mahogany
box with brass corners, which Phœbe had never seen before; and how
this very box had disappeared mysteriously when the two gentlemen
left. All this would have afforded mental pabulum for the acuter wits
of the village, and would have formed the nucleus of an interesting
scandal, to be uttered with bated breath over the humble tea-tray,
and to give zest to the unassuming muffin in the back parlours of
small rustic shopkeepers. As it was, thanks to Phœbe’s admirable
stolidity, all that was known of Mrs. Porter’s departure was that she
had gone to London by the early train on a certain morning, and that
her luggage had been sent after her, address unknown.
It was the general opinion that Mrs. Porter had had money left
her, and that she had reassumed her position in life as a genteel
personage. This afforded some scope for speculative gossip, but not
for a wide range of conjecture, and in less than a month after Mrs.
Porter’s departure the only talk in relation to the West Lodge was
the talk of who would succeed the vanished lady as its occupant.
This thrilling question was promptly settled by the removal of the
head gardener and his wife from their very commonplace abode in the
village to the old English cottage.
Cheriton was furnished with a more interesting topic of discourse
before the end of October, when it was “given out” that Lord and
Lady Cheriton were going to winter abroad, an announcement which
struck consternation to a village in which the great house was the
centre of light and leading, and the chief consumer of butcher’s
meat, farm produce—over and above the supply from the home-farm—and
expensive groceries; not to mention hardware, kitchen crockery,
coals, saddlery, forage, and odds and ends of all kinds. To shut up
Cheriton Chase for six months was to paralyse trade in Cheriton.
To draw down the blinds and close the shutters of the great house was
to spread a gloom over the best society in the neighbourhood, and to
curtail the weekly offertory by about one-third.
Everybody admitted, however, that his Lordship had been looking
ill of late. He had aged suddenly, “as those fine, well set-up men
are apt to do,” said Mr. Dolby, the doctor. He looked careworn and
haggard. The village solicitor hoped that he had not been dabbling
with foreign loans—or had invested blindly in the fortune of an
impossible canal—yet opined that nothing but the Stock Exchange
could make such a sudden change for the worse in any man. Mr. Dolby
declared that Lord Cheriton’s lungs were as sound as a bell, and that
if he were ordered abroad it was not on account of his chest.
Everybody pitied her Ladyship, and talked of her as despondingly as
if it had been proposed to take her to Botany Bay in the days of
transportation for felony. It was so cruel to separate her from her
flower-gardens, her hothouses, her poultry-yard, and her daughter;
for all which things a correct British matron was supposed to exist.
To take her from these placid domestic pleasures, from these strictly
lady-like interests, and to plunge her in a hotbed of vice such as
Monte Carlo—as pictured by the rustic mind—would be a kind of moral
murder. Cheriton recovered its equanimity somewhat upon hearing that
his Lordship was going to winter at Mustapha Supérieure—but it was
opined that even there baccarat and Parisian morals would be in the
ascendant, and a photograph of a square in Algiers, which looked like
a bit broken off the Rue de Rivoli, was by no means reassuring.
Yet, whatever Dr. Dolby might say as to the soundness of his lungs,
there remained the fact that his Lordship had altered for the worse
since the shooting season began. He who used to go out daily with
the guns, had this year not gone with them half a dozen times in the
whole season. He whose active habits and personal superintendence of
his estate had been the admiration of his neighbours had taken to
staying at home, dreaming over Horace or Juvenal in the library.
Yes, Lord Cheriton was a broken man. From the hour in which his
daughter had laid her head upon his breast, and sobbed out fond
words of compassion and forgiveness for the weakness and the sin
that had brought about her one great sorrow—from that hour James
Dalbrook’s zest of life dwindled, and the things that he had cared
for pleased him no more. His heart sickened as he rode his cob by the
familiar lanes, and surveyed wide-spreading cornfield and undulating
pasture—sickened at the thought of that wretched creature whose
dream he had darkened, whose long-cherished hope he had ruthlessly
disappointed. The image of Evelyn Darcy, eating out her heart in
the dull monotony of a private madhouse, came between him and that
sunlit prospect, haunted and tortured him wherever he turned his eye.
He had to give up the quiet morning rides which had once been the
most restful portion of the day, his thinking hours, his time for
leisurely discursive meditations, for indulgence in happy thoughts
and humorous reverie.
His wife saw the change in him—knowing nothing of the cause—and urged
him to take advice. He gratified her by seeing Sir William Jenner,
confessed to being fagged and out of spirits, and obtained just
the advice he wanted—complete change of scene—a winter in Egypt or
Algiers.
“We’ll try Algiers first, and if we don’t like it we can try the
Nile,” he said, and his wife, who would have gone to Vancouver Island
or Patagonia just as cheerfully, forthwith ordered her trunks to be
packed, and began to take leave of her grandson, an operation which
would require weeks.
They left England in the middle of November, just when the last
leaves were being stripped from the oaks and beeches by the
blustering south-west wind, which is a speciality in that part of the
country, where it comes salt with the bitter breath of the sea, and
sometimes thick and gray with sea fog.
Mrs. Porter had been nearly three months at Cheshunt Grange, and
Theodore had been three times to see her in that carefully-chosen
retreat, and on two of those visits had met her daughter Mercy, who
went to her twice a week.
He had found Dr. Mainwaring’s patient strangely calm and tractable,
professing herself contented with her life, and having established
her reputation among the other patients as a lady of blameless
character and reserved manners.
“I sometimes wonder how they would feel if they knew what I did that
night,” she said to Theodore once, with a sinister smile. “They think
me a commonplace person. They call my complaint nervous debility.
Nobody here would believe me if I were to tell them that I murdered a
man who never offended me by so much as an uncivil word. They don’t
believe that such a deed as that would be possible in our day, and
in our country. They think it was only a couple of centuries ago in
Southern Europe that women knew the meaning of revenge.”
This was the solitary occasion on which she spoke of her crime.
On the other visits he found her apathetic. Although she was
elaborately polite, it was evident that she did not recognize him.
She had, however, recognized her daughter, and now received her with
some faint show of tenderness, but not without a touch of fretful
impatience. It was evident that Mercy’s presence gave her no pleasure.
“I go to see her as often as Dr. Mainwaring allows me,” Mercy told
Theodore, as they walked to the station together. “It is all I can
do—and it is very little.”
“Have you thought any more of Lord Cheriton’s earnest desire to
improve your position? Have you learnt to take pity upon him, to
think more kindly of him, on account of all he has suffered?”
“I am very sorry for him—but I can never accept any favour at his
hands. I can never forget what my mother’s life has been like, and
who made her what she is.”
“And is your own life to be always the same—a monotony of toil?”
“I am used to such a life—but I have some thought of a change in
my employment. I had a long talk with your friend Mr. Ramsay last
night at Miss Newton’s, and through his help I hope to learn to be a
sick-nurse. I should be of more use to my fellow-creatures in that
capacity than in stitching at fine needlework for rich people’s
children.”
“It would be a hard life, Mercy.”
“I am content to live a hard life. I had my span of a soft life—a
life of idleness on a summer sea, amidst the loveliest spots upon
earth—a life that would have been like a glimpse of Heaven itself,
if it had not been for the consciousness of sin and disgrace. Do you
think I forget those days on the Mediterranean, or forget that I have
to atone for them? The man I loved is dead—all that belonged to that
life has vanished like a dream.”
They parted at the railway station, she to go to her place in a
dusty third-class carriage, he to a smoking carriage to smoke the
meditative pipe, and think sadly of those two blighted lives which
had been ground beneath the wheels of Lord Cheriton’s triumphal car.
* * * * *
Cheriton Chase was deserted, the blinds down, the servants on board
wages, the flower-beds empty and raked over for the winter; but at
Milbrook Priory all was life and movement. The sisters and their
husbands were again established in their favourite rooms. Lady Jane
was again at hand to assist her daughter-in-law to bear the burden
of a family party, and all was much as it had been in the previous
winter, except that Juanita had a new interest in life, and was able
to take pleasure in many things that had been an oppression to her
spirits last year.
Most of all were her feelings altered towards Mrs. Grenville and her
nursery. She was now warmly interested in the history of Johnnie’s
measles, and deeply sympathetic about that constitutional tendency
towards swollen tonsils which was dear little Lucy’s “weak point.”
For must not her Godfrey inevitably face the ordeal of measles, and
might not his tonsils show a like weakness at the growing age? All
those discussions about nursery dinners—the children who fed well and
the children who fed badly—those who liked milk puddings and those
who could not be induced to touch them—the advisability of a basin
of cornflour or bread-and-milk at bedtime, the murderous influence
of buns and pastry, and the lurking dangers of innocent-seeming
jam—all these things, to hear of which last year bored her almost to
exasperation, were now vital and spirit-moving questions.
The little visitors’ nurseries were near the infant Sir Godfrey’s
rooms, and it was a delight to find the baby taking pleasure in
his youthful cousins’ society, and revelling in their noise. His
own young lungs revealed their power and scope as they had never
done before, and led the infant orchestra. Juanita spent hours in
this noisy society, sitting on the floor to be crawled over by her
son—who was just beginning to discover the possibility of independent
locomotion—and to have her hair pulled affectionately by the younger
Grenvilles, who found her the most accommodating playfellow. She
insisted that the children should dine at the family luncheon table,
much to the gratification of their mother and grandmother, and to the
exasperation of Mrs. Morningside, who, having left her own children
with their conscientious governess and nurses, in the North of
England, did not see why her midday meal should be made intolerable
by the boisterous egotism of her nephews and nieces.
This was the condition of things at Christmas when Theodore
reappeared at the Priory, having come to Dorchester for his holidays,
after three months’ earnest work. He had been reading with a man of
some distinction at the Chancery Bar, and he had been writing for one
of the Law Journals. He was struck by the change in his cousin. She
looked younger, brighter, and happier than she had ever looked since
her husband’s death. No one could accuse her of having forgotten him,
of having grown indifferent to his memory, for at the least allusion
which recalled his image her expression clouded, and her eyes grew
sad. But there could be no doubt that the dawn of a happier existence
was beginning to disperse the darkness of her night of grief. The
influence of her child had done much; the solution of the mystery of
her husband’s death had done more to relieve her mind of its burden.
She was no longer tortured by wonder; her thoughts were no longer
forced to travel perpetually along the same groove. She knew the
worst, and pity for her father prompted her to try to forget the
wretch who had blighted her young life.
She received Theodore with all her old kindness, with that easy
cordiality which was of all indications the most hopeless for the man
who loved her. She took him to the nurseries, where Christmas fires
blazed merrily, and Christmas gifts strewed the carpet, a plethora
of toys, a litter of foil paper and gold and silver fringe, and
tissue-paper cocked hats and Pierrot caps, from the wreck of cracker
bonbons. The children were masters of the situation in this Christmas
week.
“It is _their_ season,” said Juanita tenderly. “I don’t think we can
ever do too much to make our children happy at this time, remembering
that He who made the season sacred was once a little child.” She took
her baby up in her arms as she spoke, and pressed the little face
lovingly against her own.
“Why does Mr. Ramsay never come to see me?” she asked with a sudden
lightness of tone. “He used to be so fond of baby.”
“He is working hard at the hospital.”
“And is he not to have any holiday with you?”
“I fear not.”
Her manner in making the inquiry, light as it was, told him so much;
and he noticed how she bent her face over the child’s flaxen head as
she talked of Ramsay.
“Why does he work so hard?” she asked, after a silence.
“He has never given me any reason, yet I have my own idea about his
motive.”
“And what is your idea?”
“Have you ever heard of a man trying to live down a hopeless
attachment—trying to medicine a mind diseased with the strong physic
of intellectual labour. That is _my_ case, Juanita; and I am inclined
to think that it may be Ramsay’s case too. He has altered curiously
within the last few months. I cannot get so near his inner-self as I
used to get; but I know him well enough to form a shrewd opinion.”
“I am sorry for you both,” she said, with a little nervous laugh,
still hiding her face against the baby’s incipient curls and wrinkled
pink skin. “I am sorry you should be so sentimental.”
“Sentimental, Nita! Is it sentimental to cherish one love for the
best part of a lifetime, knowing that love to be hopeless all the
time? If that is your idea of sentimentality, I confess myself
sentimental. I have loved you ever since I knew the meaning of
the word love—and I have gone on loving you in spite of every
discouragement. I loved you when your love was given to another. Yes,
I stood aside and harboured not one malevolent thought against the
man you had so blest and honoured. I have loved you in your sorrow,
as I loved you years ago in your light-hearted girlhood. I shall
love you till I am dust; but I know that my love is hopeless. Your
very kindness—in its level uniformity of sweetness—has told me that.”
“Dear Theodore, if you knew how I value you—how I admire and respect
you—I think you would be content to accept my sisterly regard”, she
said, looking up at him with tearful eyes. “Perhaps, had we met
differently, as strangers, I might have felt differently—but from my
earliest remembrance you have been to me as a friend and brother. I
cannot teach myself any other love.”
“Ah, Nita, that other love comes untaught. You want no teaching to
love Cuthbert Ramsay. Don’t be angry! I can’t help speaking of that
which has been in my mind so long. I saw my doom in your face when
Cuthbert was here. I saw that he could interest you as I had never
interested you. I saw that he brought fresh thoughts and fancies into
your life. I saw that he could conquer where I was beaten.”
“You have no right to say that.”
“I have the right that goes with conviction, Juanita, and with
disinterested love. I have the right of my loyal friendship for the
man who has shown himself loyal to me. Unless you or I make some sign
to prevent him, Cuthbert Ramsay will have made himself an exile from
this country before the new year is a month old.”
“What do you mean, Theodore?”
“I mean that he is in treaty with the leader of a scientific
expedition to the Antarctic Ocean. The ships will be away three
years, and if he join that expedition as doctor he will be absent for
that time, with the usual hazard of being absent for ever.”
“Why is he going?”
“He has never given me any reason, but I suspect that the reason
is——you.”
“Theodore!”
“If I read his secret right, he left this place deeply in love with
you. He knew I loved you, and that was one reason for a man of his
generous temper to withdraw. You are rich and he is poor, that makes
another reason. He is too honourable to come between his friend and
his friend’s love. He is too proud to offer himself with only his
talents and his unfulfilled ambition to a woman of fortune. So he
takes his old mistress Science for his comforter, and is going to the
other side of the world to watch the planets in the Polar skies, and
to keep the crew free of fever and scurvy, if he can.”
“Three years,” faltered Juanita. “It would not be so very long
anywhere else—but those Polar expeditions so often end in death.”
“Shall I tell him not to go?”
“Pray do.”
“I’m afraid I shall hardly prevail with him, unless——”
“Unless what?”
“Unless you will let me say that you wish him to stay.”
She blushed deepest crimson, and again had resource to the baby’s
pink little head as a hiding-place for her confusion.
“Tell him anything you like. Ask him to come and romp with the
children next Easter. He is fond of children, and I am sure he would
like my nephews and nieces. Ah, Theodore,” she cried, holding out her
hand, “now you are indeed my brother. Forget that you ever wished to
be more, and let me hear of your having found a new love by-and-by.”
“By-and-by is easily said, Juanita.”
* * * * *
What would that by-and-by have revealed could the curtain of the
Future have been lifted that Christmas Eve, as the children danced
in the shadowy room while their elders sat beside the fire in the
winter dusk? A coffin brought by land and sea, and laid with stately
ceremonial in the cemetery at Dorchester. A respectful obituary
notice of Lord Cheriton, with a laudatory biography, setting forth
his remarkable gifts and his honourable career: much wonderment
among his Lordship’s friends at the premature termination of that
prosperous life—a man of sixty who had looked ten years younger, and
whose vigorous constitution and grand bearing had denoted one of the
semi-immortals—a Brougham, a Lyndhurst, or a St. Leonards.
What else? A lovely matron, proud of her handsome Scotch husband and
his scientific successes, reigning over one of the most delightful
houses in London, a house in which the brightest lights of the
intellectual world are to be found shining in a congenial atmosphere.
Sir Godfrey Carmichael’s widow, now Cuthbert Ramsay’s wife, and one
of the leaders in all movements that tend towards the welfare and
enlightenment of mankind.
What else? A rising barrister, living quietly in a secluded old
house at Chiswick, with a sweet serious-looking wife, and two lovely
babies, supremely contented with his lot and with his home, which is
managed for him with that perfection of art which conceals art. His
wife and he are of exactly the same age, have the same deep love of
good books, good pictures, and good music, and the same indifference
to frivolous pleasures and fashionable amusements. They have a few
friends, carefully chosen, and of choicest quality, and amongst the
most honoured of these is Sarah Newton, still brisk and active,
though her abundant hair is snow white, and there are the deep lines
of age about her shrewd and kindly eyes. They have their garden with
its old cedars, and old walls shutting off the world of gig-and-villa
respectability. They have their boathouse and boats, in which they
live for the most part on summer evenings, and they have hardly
anything left to wish for—except a lock and weir.
The barrister is Theodore Dalbrook, and his wife’s name is Mercy.
He found her four years ago established as nurse at Cheshunt Grange,
administering to her mother till the day of her death, which
happened by a strange fatality within a few hours of that other
death in Algiers, a sudden death by cerebral apoplexy, swift as a
thunder-clap. He found her there, and saw her frequently in his duty
visits to the Asylum—visits paid in performance of a promise to his
unhappy kinsman—and little by little that sympathy which he had felt
for her in the first hour of their acquaintance warmed and ripened
into love, and in Mercy, the woman who had sinned and paid the bitter
penalty of sin, he found the consoling angel of his disappointed
youth.
The world knows nothing of her story. That dead past is buried deeper
than ever ship went down into the treacherous waters of the tideless
sea. To Mercy herself, in her plenitude of domestic bliss, it seems
as if it was another woman who shed those bitter tears and drank
that cup of shame. The world knows only that Theodore Dalbrook has a
lovely and devoted wife, who thoroughly understands and realizes the
duties of her position.
Lord Cheriton’s will, executed three months before his death at
Mustapha Supérieure, bequeathed a life interest in the sum of £20,000
Consols to Sarah Newton, spinster, the principal to go to Mercy
Darcy—otherwise Mercy Porter—upon that lady’s death.
THE END.
LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS
Transcriber’s Notes
pg 22 Changed: Do I ever catch cold, Godfrey?” said cried,
to: Do I ever catch cold, Godfrey?” Nita cried,
pg 35 Changed: you would remember us, at such at time.
to: you would remember us, at such a time.
pg 57 Changed: or entertaiments of any kind.
to: or entertainments of any kind.
pg 61 Changed: Who can have sent me a petit bleue?
to: Who can have sent me a petit bleu?
pg 65 Changed: evidencies of fancies that had passed
to: evidences of fancies that had passed
pg 80 Changed: had paid nearly three hundred pounda
to: had paid nearly three hundred pounds
pg 84 Changed: Ah, my love, what would not do.
to: Ah, my love, that would not do.
pg 86 Changed: oppressed him life a nightmare.
to: oppressed him like a nightmare.
pg 139 Changed: preferred taking of the stars
to: preferred talking of the stars
pg 172 Changed: Her loved her well enough to be able
to: He loved her well enough to be able
pg 195 Changed: one sees more of a horse from tho pavement
to: one sees more of a horse from the pavement
pg 218 Changed: she wore a black satin gownd
to: she wore a black satin gown
pg 237 Changed: so I had alway emptied the waste-paper baskets
to: so I had always emptied the waste-paper baskets
pg 247 Changed: no less famous a locality than Camberwell Green
to: no less famous a locality than Camberwell Grove
pg 271 Changed: You found an improvment in her
to: You found an improvement in her
pg 276 Changed: not unfrequeut consequence of continuous brooding
to: not unfrequent consequence of continuous brooding
pg 316 Changed: he wreaked his vemon upon her
to: he wreaked his venom upon her
pg 352 Changed: soon as possible at Myrtle Cottage, Camberwell Green
to: soon as possible at Myrtle Cottage, Camberwell Grove
pg 355 Changed: To got her away
to: To get her away