An address is not everything: there must be the will and the power to
write, there must be the letter produced, and the address obtained. The
very first step was hard. To go up to Bedloe and ascertain from the
brother, who was “that cad” to Langton, where Winifred had gone, and
thus betray his ignorance and the separation between them--the idea of
this was such a mortification and annoyance to him as it is difficult to
describe. He could not bear to expose himself to their remarks, to
perhaps their laughter, perhaps, worse still, their pity. A few days
elapsed before he could screw up his courage to this point, and when at
last he did so, his brief and cold note was answered by George in
person, whose dejected aspect bore none of the signs of triumph which
Langton had expected.
“I was coming to ask you,” George said. “My sister went off in such a
hurry she left no address. She left her maid to pack up her things. I
did not even know she was going. It was a great disappointment to my
wife and me. We should have been very glad to have had her to stay with
us until--well, until her own affairs were settled. She would have been
of great use to Alice,” George continued, with an unconscious gravity of
egotism which was almost too simple to be called by that harsh name.
“She could have put my wife up to a great many things: for we haven’t
just been used, you know, to this sort of life, and it is very difficult
to get into all the ways. And then the children were so good with
Winnie, they took to her in a moment. Speaking of that, I wish you would
just come up and look at Georgie. My wife thinks he is quite well, but I
don’t quite like the little fellow’s look,” the anxious father said.
Langton was not mollified by this unexpected invitation. The idea of
becoming medical attendant to George Chester’s children and at the beck
and call of the new household at Bedloe filled him indeed with an
unreasonable exasperation. He explained as coldly as he could that he
did not “go in for” children’s ailments, and recommended Mr. Marlitt, of
Brentwood, who was specially qualified to advise anxious parents. He was
indeed so moved by the sight of the new master of Bedloe, that the
purpose for which George had come was momentarily driven out of his
head. Why it should be a grievance to him that George Chester was master
of Bedloe he could not of course have explained to any one. He had not
been exasperated by George’s father. Disappointment, and the sharper
self-shame with which he could not help remembering his own imaginations
on the matter, joined with the sense of angry scorn with which he beheld
the place which he had meant to fill so well, filled so badly by
another. George thanked him warmly for recommending Dr. Marlitt, “though
I am very sorry, and so will my wife be, that you don’t pay attention to
that branch. Isn’t it a pity? for surely if anything is important, it’s
the children,” he said in all good faith.
It was only after he was gone that Edward reflected that he had obtained
no information. It soothed him a little to think that she had not let
her brother know where she was going. It had been, then, a sudden
impulse of disgust, a hasty step taken in a moment when she felt herself
abandoned. Edward did not forgive her, but yet he was soothed a little,
even though excited and distressed beyond measure by his failure to know
where she was. A day or two passed in the lethargy of this
disappointment and perplexity as to what to do next. Then he thought of
Mr. Babington. He wrote immediately to the old lawyer, begging him to
find out at once where Winifred was. “I don’t ask if you can, for I know
you must be able to do it. People don’t disappear in these days.”
But Mr. Babington, with a somewhat peevish question whether he knew how
many people did disappear, in the Thames or otherwise, and were never
heard of, in these famous days of ours, informed him that he knew
nothing about Winifred’s whereabouts. She had gone abroad, and with Miss
Farrell, that was all he knew. By this time Edward Langton had become
very anxious and unhappy, ready almost to advertise in the _Times_ or
take any other wild step. He resolved to lose no further time, not to
delay by writing, but to go off at once and find her as soon as he had
the smallest clue. This clue was found at last through the bankers (for
Langton was quite right in his certainty that people with a banking
account who draw money never do really disappear in these days), who did
not refuse to tell where the last remittances had been sent. He was so
anxious by this time that he went up to London himself to make these
inquiries, and came back again with the fullest determination to start
at once in search of Winifred. He sent to Mr. Marlitt, of Brentwood, who
was a young doctor, but recently established and much in want of
patients, to ask whether he could take charge of the few sick folk at
Bedloe, and made all his preparations to go. It was November by this
time, and all the fields were heaped with fallen leaves. He had settled
everything easily on the Saturday, and on Sunday night was going up to
town in time to catch the Continental mail next day.
Then--according to the usual perversity of human affairs--the epidemic
came all at once, which he had invoked some time before. It broke out on
the very Saturday when all his arrangements were made--two cases in one
house, one in the house next door. He perceived in a moment that this
was no time to leave his duty. Next day there were three more cases in
the village, and in the evening, just at the moment when he should have
been starting, the brougham from Bedloe drew up at his door, with an air
of agitation about the very horses, which had flecks of foam on their
shoulders, and every indication of having been hard driven. George
Chester entered precipitately, as pale as death.
“Oh, Langton,” he cried, “look here! don’t stand on ceremony. I never
did anything against you. You attend the children in the village; why
don’t you attend mine? Little Georgie’s got it!” the poor man cried out,
with quivering lips.
It is not for a moment to be supposed that Edward could resist such an
appeal. He went with the distracted father, and fought night and day for
two or three weeks for little Georgie’s life, as well as for the lives
of several other little Georgies as dear in their way. Here he had what
he wanted, but not when he wanted it. When he woke up in the morning
from the interrupted sleep, which was all his anxieties allowed him, he
would remember in anguish that even the clue given by the bankers would
serve no longer. But during the day, as he went from one bedside to
another, he had too much to remember, and so the dark winter days wore
away.
Winifred had taken refuge in the universal expedient of going “abroad.”
It is difficult to tell all that this means to simple minds. It means a
sort of cancelling of time and space, a flying on the wings of a dove,
an abstraction of one’s self and one’s affairs from the burden of
circumstances, from the questions of the importunate, from all that
holds us to a local habitation. Winifred was sick at heart of her
habitual place, and all the surroundings to which she had been
accustomed. It was not possible for her, she thought, to explain the
position, to answer all the demands, to make it apparent to the meanest
capacity how and why it was that her own heirship was at an end. She
fled from this, and from the unnatural (she said) prejudice against her
brother and his wife which seized her as soon as it became apparent that
Bedloe was in their hands--and she fled, but not so much from Edward, as
from what she thought his desertion of her. What she thought--for after
a while she too, like Edward himself, began to feel uncertain as to
whether he had deserted her--to ask herself whether she had been
blameless, to say to herself that it could not be, that it was
impossible they could part like this. What was it that had parted them?
It had been done in a moment, it had been her brother’s foolish
accusation--ah, no, not that, but her own tacit refusal of his counsel
and aid. When Winifred began to come to herself, to disentangle her
thoughts, to see everything in perspective, it became gradually and by
slow degrees apparent to her that if Edward was in the wrong, he was yet
not altogether or alone in the wrong. Her mind worked more slowly than
did Langton’s, partly because it had been far more strained and worn,
and because the complications were all on her side. She had to disengage
her mind from all that had troubled and disturbed her life for weeks
and months before, and to recover from the agitation of so many shocks
and changes before she could think calmly, or at least without the
burning at her heart of wounded feeling, hurt pride, and neglected love,
of all that concerned her lover. It was some time even before she spoke
to Miss Farrell of the subject that soon occupied all her thoughts. Miss
Farrell had felt Edward’s silence on her pupil’s account with almost
more bitterness than Winifred herself had felt it. She had put away his
name from her lips, and had concluded him unworthy. She avoided talking
of him even when Winifred began tentatively to approach the subject. “My
darling, don’t let us speak of him,” she had said. “I have not command
of myself: I might say things which I should be sorry for afterwards.”
“But why should he have changed so?” Winifred said; “what reason was
there? He was always kind and true.”
“I don’t know about true, Winnie.”
Then Winifred faltered a little, remembering how he had advised her to
humour her father. She made a little pause of reflection, and then
abandoned the subject for the moment; but only to return to it a hundred
and a hundred times. She was not one of those that prolong a
misunderstanding through a lifetime. She pondered and pondered, and it
was her instinct to think herself in the wrong. She had been hasty, she
had been self-absorbed. And had he not a right to be offended when she
so distinctly, of her own will, by no one’s suggestion, put him aside
from her counsels, and let him know that she must deal with her brothers
alone? It made her shiver to think what a thing it was she had thus
done. She would have done it again, it was a necessity of the position
in which she found herself. But yet when you reflect, to put your
betrothed husband away from you in a great crisis of fate, to reject his
aid, to bid him--for it was as good as bidding him--leave her to arrange
matters in her own way, what an outrage was that! She could not think
how she could have done it, and yet she would have done it over again.
To get Miss Farrell to see this was difficult, but she succeeded at
last; and then they both trembled and grew pale together to think of
what had been done. Poor Edward! and all those days when Winifred had
sat miserable in her room, feeling that her last hope and prop had
failed her, and that she was left alone in the world, what had he been
thinking on his side? That she had thrown him off, that she would have
none of him? In their consultations these ladies made great use of the
man’s wounded pride. They allowed to each other that it was the wrong
of all others which he would be least likely to bear. It was not only a
wrong, it was an insult. How could they ever have thought otherwise? It
was he who was forsaken, and that without a word, without a reason
given.
They had settled themselves, after some wanderings, in one of those
villages of the Riviera, which fashion and the pursuit of health have
taken out of the hands of their peasant inhabitants. It was not a great
place, full of life and commotion; but a little picturesque cluster of
houses, small and great, with an old campanile rising out of the midst
of them, and a soft background of mild olive-trees behind. They had
thought they would stay there till the winter was over, till England had
begun to grow green again, and the east winds were gone; but already,
though it was not yet Christmas, they were beginning to reconsider the
matter, to feel home calling them over the misty seas. Christmas! but
what a Christmas! with roses blooming, and all the landscape green and
soft, the sea warm enough to bathe in, the sunshine too hot at noon.
Winifred had begun to weary of the eternal greenness, of the skies which
were always clear, of the air which caressed and never smote her cheek,
before they had long been established in the little paradise which Miss
Farrell, even with all her desire to see her child happy, could not
pretend not to be pleased with.
“I cannot believe it is Christmas,” Winifred said discontentedly. “No
frost, no cold, even flowers!” as if this were a kind of insult.
“Everything,” she cried, “is out of season. I don’t see how we can spend
Christmas here.”
“It is not like Christmas weather,” said Miss Farrell; “but still, my
dear, neither was it in the Holy Land, I should suppose, not like what
we call Christmas,” she added, faltering a little; “but it is very nice,
Winnie, don’t you think, dear?”
“No, I don’t think it is nice: it is enervating, it is unmeaning, it has
no character in it. It might be May,” cried Winnie; and then she added
with a sudden outburst of passion, “I don’t think I can bear it any
longer. I cannot bear it any longer. Oh, Miss Farrell, Edward! what can
he be thinking of me, if he has not given up thinking of me altogether?”
“No, dear, not that,” Miss Farrell said, soothing her.
“What, then? he must be beginning to hate me. I cannot let Christmas
pass and this go on. Think of him alone amongst the frost and the snow,
nothing but his sick people, no one to cheer him, called out perhaps in
the middle of the night, riding miles and miles to comfort some poor
creature, and no one, no one to comfort him!”
“My dear child!” Miss Farrell cried, taking Winifred into her kind arms.
At this moment there was a tinkle at the queer little bell outside--or
rather it had tinkled at the moment when Winifred spoke of the frost and
snow. When Miss Farrell rose and hastened to her, to raise her downcast
head and dry her tears, the old lady gave a start and cry, displacing
suddenly that head which she had drawn to her own breast. Winifred, too,
looked up in the sudden shock; and there, opposite to her in the
doorway, a cold freshness as of the larger atmosphere outside coming in
with him, stood Edward Langton, pale and eager, asking, “May I come in?”
with a voice that was unsteady, between deadly anxiety and certain
happiness.
They said a great deal to each other, enough to fill volumes; but so far
as the present history is concerned, there need be no more to say.