PAGES FROM THE PAST.
The woman who was now returning to her native land after a long and
painful exile looked back, in her retrospective fancy, upon a home
which had external beauty, calm, and comfort to recommend it. She was
the daughter of a gentleman named Carteret, a man of small but
independent fortune, and whose tastes, which had been too extensively
and exclusively cultivated for the happiness of his son and daughter,
led him to prefer a life of quietness and seclusion, in which he
devoted himself to study, and to the pursuit of natural history in
particular.
Mr. Carteret, who is an old man now, might have been the original of
"Sir Thomas the Good," whose wife, "the fair Lady Jane," displayed
such becoming resignation on his death. Mr. Carteret, like the worthy
knight, "whose breath was short, and whose eyes were dim," would "pore
for an hour over a bee or a flower, or the things that come creeping
out after a shower:" but he was sadly blind to the subtle processes of
the human heart in the development of the human beings under his own
roof, which were taking place around him.
He had lost his wife very soon after the birth of his daughter, and
when his son was three years old; and within little more than a year,
a resolute young woman, who had long made up her mind that a pretty
little country place within easy distance of London,--for Mr. Carteret
lived in Reigate,--a fair position in the county society, and a
comfortable income, were desirable acquisitions, married him.
People said Miss Hartley made all the preliminary arrangements,
including even the proposal, herself; and though that statement was
probably exaggerated, there can be little doubt that the suggestion,
that it would be an advisable and agreeable circumstance that Miss
Martley should become Mrs. Carteret, originated with the lady.
She was rather young, and rather pretty; and there really was not so
much to be said against the match, except by Mr. Carteret's servants,
who naturally did not like it. They liked it still less when the new
mistress of the establishment, emulating the proverbial new broom,
swept them all away, and replaced them by domestics of her own
selection.
The novel state of things was not a happy condition for Mr. Carteret.
He was a gentle-natured man, indifferent, rather cold, and indolent,
except where his particular tastes were concerned; he pursued his own
avocations with activity and energy enough, but his easy-going
selfishness rendered him a facile victim to a woman who managed him by
the simple and effectual expedient of letting him have his own way
undisturbed, in one direction,--that one the most important to
him,--and never consulting his opinion or his wishes in any other
respect whatever.
Mr. Carteret might spend time and money on "specimens," on books, and
on visits to naturalists and museums; he might fill his own rooms with
stuffed monkeys and birds, and indulge in the newest form of cases for
impaled insects, and even display very ghastly osteological trophies
if he pleased; his wife in nowise molested him. But here his power was
arrested--here his freedom stopped. Mrs. Carteret ruled in everything
else; and he knew it, and he suffered it "for the sake of a quiet
life." He had a conviction that if he tried opposition, his life would
not be quiet; therefore he never did try opposition.
The new Mrs. Carteret did not actually ill-treat the children of the
former Mrs. Carteret; she only neglected them--neglected them so
steadily and systematically that never was she betrayed into
accidentally taking them, their interests or their pleasure, into
consideration in anything she chose to do or to leave undone.
The servants understood quickly and thoroughly that if they meant to
retain their places they must keep the children from annoying Mrs.
Carteret, from incommoding her by their presence, or intruding their
wants upon her. They understood as distinctly, that if this fact were
impressed by any misplaced zeal upon the attention of Mr. Carteret,
the imprudence would be as readily repaid by dismissal; and as they
liked and valued their places,--for Mrs. Carteret, provided her own
comfort was secured in every particular, was a liberal and careless
mistress,--the imprudent zeal never was manifested.
Thus the two young children grew up, somehow, anyhow, well-fed and
well-clothed, by the care of servants; but in every particular, apart
from their mere animal wants, utterly neglected. People talked about
it, of course; and just at first the neglect of her husband's children
threatened to be a little detrimental to the popularity which Mrs.
Carteret ardently desired to attain. But she gave pleasant
garden-parties, at which neither husband nor children "showed:" she
dressed very well; she was very kind to the young ladies of the
neighbourhood who were still on their preferment; her well-trained
household were discreetly silent; and she had no children of her own.
This last was readily accepted as a very valid excuse; no one thought
of the total absence of wifely sympathy and womanly tenderness which
the argument conveyed. Mrs. Carteret could not be expected to care
about children--no one really did who had not children of their own
"to arouse the instinct," as a foolish female, who fancied the phrase
sounded philosophical, remarked. So the neighbourhood consented to
forget Mr. Carteret's children, and that contemplative gentleman
consented to remember them very imperfectly, and things were very
comfortable at Chayleigh for some years.
But Haldane and Margaret Carteret grew older with those years; the
little children, who had been easily stowed away in a nursery and a
playroom,--judiciously distant from drawing-room, boudoir, and
study,--were no longer of an age to be so disposed of. The boy must
either be sent to school or have a tutor,--he and his sister had
passed beyond the rule of the nursery governess,--the girl's education
must be attended to.
The latter case was especially disagreeable to Mrs. Carteret. It
forced upon her attention the fact that she was no longer in the first
bloom of her youth. A rather young and rather pretty stepmother is
capable of being made interesting, if the situation be judiciously
treated; but Mrs. Carteret had never treated it judiciously, and now
it could not avail.
She had nearly exhausted her _rôle_ of young matronhood at
thirty-seven, and Margaret was then twelve years old. True, there
would be a revival of its material pleasures, its gaieties and
dissipations, when Margaret should be "brought out:" but Mrs. Carteret
found feeble consolation in the anticipation of the pleasures and
importance of chaperonage. They can only be reflected at the best; and
Mrs. Carteret cared little to shine with a borrowed light.
In the mean time, she had no notion of having a gawky girl, as she
called Margaret in her thoughts, always about her at home, growing old
enough to interfere, and perhaps to attract her father's attention
unduly and put absurd ideas into his head. Margaret Carteret was not
at all gawky; but even then, at the least beautiful period of life,
gave promise of the grace and distinction which, afterwards
characterised her.
Mrs. Carteret made up her mind, and then informed her husband of the
resolution she had taken, and the arrangements she had made. He
acquiesced, as he always did; and when Margaret, startled, confused,
not knowing whether to be frightened at or pleased with the novelty
which the prospect offered, asked him if it was really true that she
was going to school at Paris, and was not to return for a whole year,
he said placidly,
"Certainly, my dear. Mrs. Carteret has arranged it all; and I have
told her to be sure and ask the school people to take you to the
Jardin des Plantes."
Then Mr. Carteret, who never perceived that his daughter was no longer
a baby, sent her away with a pat on the head, and turned his attention
to investigating the structure of a "trap-door spider's abode," which
had reached him the day before, having been sent by a friend and
fellow-naturalist from Corfu.
The education of Haldane Carteret had been differently provided for.
It chanced that the one human being besides herself for whom Mrs.
Carteret entertained a sentiment of affection was her cousin, James
Dugdale, a young man who had no chance of success in any active career
in life, being deformed and in delicate health--anything but a
desirable tutor for a delicate retiring boy, like Haldane Carteret,
people said--a boy who needed encouragement and companionship to rouse
him up and make him more like other boys. But Mrs. Carteret evinced
her usual indifference to the opinion of "people" on this occasion.
She chose to provide for her cousin a mode of life suitable to his
mental and physical constitution.
James Dugdale came to live at Chayleigh. The deformed young man had
much of the talent, and all the unamiability, which so frequently
accompany bodily malformation, and he inspired Margaret Carteret with
intense dislike and repulsion--with admiration and some respect, too,
child as she was; for she soon recognised his talent, and succumbed to
his influence. James Dugdale taught Margaret as much as he taught her
brother; he implanted in her the tastes which she afterwards
cultivated so assiduously; but the boy learned to love him, while the
girl never faltered in her dislike. When she found her lessons easily
understood and soon learned at school, she knew that she had to thank
her stepmother's cousin--her brother's tutor--for the aid which had
rendered them light to her; but she never could bring herself to thank
him in thought or word. The girl's heart was almost void of love and
gratitude at this time of her life. She hardly could be said to love
her father; her stepmother she neither loved, hated, nor feared; for
her brother alone were all her kindly feelings hoarded up. She loved
him, indeed; and, next to that love, the strongest sentiment in her
heart was dislike of James Dugdale.
Time passed on, and Margaret grew up handsome, with a strongly
intellectual stamp upon her face, and, in her character, self-will
and impulsiveness prevailing. She liked the Parisian school--for she
ruled her companions, some by love, others by fear and the power of
party--and she cared little for her home, where she could not rule any
one.
Her father was not worth governing; her stepmother she treated with a
studious and settled indifference, forming her manner on the model of
that of Mrs. Carteret, but never attempting to gain any influence over
that lady, who was, however, not without a misgiving at times that
when Margaret should come home "for good" she might find it rather
difficult to "hold her own." Holding her own, in Mrs. Carteret's case,
rather implied holding every one else's, and that privilege she felt
to be in danger. It was, therefore, with but a passing reflection on
the fatal obstacle which such an occurrence must offer to her
maintenance of the "young married woman's" position in society, that
Mrs. Carteret, when Margaret was fifteen, began to speculate upon the
chances of getting Margaret "off her hands," when she should have
finally left school, by an opportune marriage.
A year later, and, much to the surprise of his father, and indeed of
every one who knew him except James Dugdale, Haldane Carteret
proclaimed his wish and intention of entering the army. His father did
not oppose; his stepmother and his tutor supported him in his
inclination; the interest of a distant relative of his mother's was
procured; and thus it chanced that, when Margaret came home "for
good," at a little more than sixteen years old, she found her brother
in all the boyish pride and exultation of his commission and his
uniform.
Then Margaret's fate was not long in coming. The first time her
brother came home, and while she had as yet seen little of the society
in which her stepmother moved, he brought a brother officer with him,
a handsome young man, named Godfrey Hungerford, with whom he had
contracted a friendship--the more enthusiastic because it was the
first the lad had ever experienced.
And now active antagonism arose between Margaret Carteret and James
Dugdale. The girl fell in love with the handsome young officer, whose
bold and adventurous spirit pleased her; whose manifest admiration had
a pardonable fascination for her; who raised even her father to
animation; and for whom Mrs. Carteret thought it worth while to put
forth the freshest of her somewhat faded graces.
Haldane paraded and boasted of his friend according to the foolish
hearty fashion of his time of life, and was delighted that his sister
felt with him in this too.
But the ex-tutor, who, it appeared, was to remain a fixture at
Chayleigh, conceived a profound distrust and dislike of the brilliant
young man, whom he quietly observed from his obscure corner of the
house--and of life indeed--and who had no notion of the scrutiny he
was undergoing.
Was James Dugdale's penetration quickened by the hardly-veiled
insolence of Godfrey Hungerford's manner to him--insolence which
sometimes took the form of complete unconsciousness, and at others of
an elaborate compassionate politeness? It may have been so; at any
rate, he made his observations closely, and, when the time came, he
expressed their result freely.
The time came when Godfrey Hungerford asked Margaret to become his
wife; and then James Dugdale, for the only time during his long
residence in Mr. Carteret's house, spoke to that gentleman in private
and in confidence.
"Insist on time, at least," he urged upon Margaret's father; "think
how young she is; think how little you know of this man. You have no
guarantee for his character but the praise of an enthusiastic boy. For
the girl's sake, insist on time; do not consent to less than a two
years' engagement; and then rouse yourself and go to work as a man
ought on whom such a responsibility rests, and find out all about this
man before you suffer him to take your daughter away from her home--a
girl, ignorant of the world and of life, in love with her own fancy. I
know Margaret's real nature better than you do, and I know she is
incapable of caring for this man if she knew him as he really is. It
is a delusion; if you can do no more, you can at least secure her time
to find it out."
"Find what out?" asked Mr. Carteret, fretfully; "what do you know
about Hungerford?--how have you found out anything?"
"I know nothing; I have not found out anything," said James Dugdale.
"I wish I had, then my interference might avail, even with Margaret
herself; but I have only my conviction to go upon, that this man is
not fit to be trusted with a woman's happiness; that Margaret is not
really attached to him; and, in addition, the suggestion of common
sense, that she is much too young to be permitted to settle her own
fate irrevocably."
The latter argument seemed to have some weight with Mr. Carteret, and
James Dugdale saw his advantage.
"Do you think," he said, "if her mother were living, she would permit
Margaret to marry at her present age? Do you think, if you knew you
would have to account to her mother for your care of her, you would
listen to such a thing?"
This reference to his dead wife was not pleasant to Mr. Carteret. He
was growing old, and he had begun of late to think life, even when
surrounded by specimens, and enlivened by numerous publications
concerning the animal creation, rather a mistake. So he assented,
hurriedly, to James Dugdale's arguments, and the interview concluded
by his promising to prevent Margaret's marriage taking place for two
years, when she would be nineteen.
But Mr. Carteret and James Dugdale both knew that the real decision of
that matter rested not with them, but with Mrs. Carteret, and that, if
she decreed that Margaret should be married next week, married next
week she inevitably would be. So the ex-tutor addressed himself to his
cousin, with whom he adopted a different line of argument.
"I know you don't care about Margaret," he said; "but I do; and I know
you admire Lieutenant Godfrey Hungerford, which I do not; but you care
what people say of you, Sibylla, as much as any one, I know; and you
will get unpleasantly talked about if the girl is allowed to marry, so
young, a man whom you know little or nothing about, and who is a
scoundrel, if ever there was one, or I am more mistaken than I
generally am. Take care, Sibylla, your husband is notoriously under
your guidance, and you will have to bear the blame if this marriage
takes place too soon; it is a serious thing, and you have never been a
fond stepmother, you know."
Mrs. Carteret loved her cousin, and feared him; she also had a great
respect for his judgment; and he had gone to work with her in the
right way. The result was satisfactory to the ex-tutor, who took
himself to task concerning his own motives, but found no room for
self-condemnation.
"If I could suppose for a moment," he thought, "that I am insincere in
this thing--that I am actuated by any selfish feeling or hope
regarding Margaret--I should hesitate; but I know I am not: my heart
is pure of such self-deception; my brain has no such cobwebs of folly
in it. Separated from him finally,--if I can contrive to part
them,--held back from her fate for a while, by my means, at all events
she will only dislike me the more. And my conviction respecting this
man,--is that prejudice?--is that an unjust dislike?--is it pique,
because he has good looks, and grace, and good manners, and I have
none of these? Is it spite, because he has been insolent to me when he
dared, and, in a covert way, more insolent still, when these simple
people did not understand him? No; I can answer to myself for
single-mindedness in this matter. I might not have seen so plainly had
not Margaret's happiness been at stake. But I do see; I do not only
fancy. I do judge; I do not only imagine."
So James Dugdale carried his point. Margaret resented his interference
bitterly; she learned that his arguments had induced her stepmother to
take the view to which her father had acceded; and she raged against
him and denounced him as insolent, presuming, intolerable.
But she liked the idea of the long engagement, too. She was romantic
and imaginative, and her bright pure young heart--all given up to what
was in reality a creation of her fancy, but in which she saw the
dazzling realisation of her girlish dreams--was satisfied with the
assurance of loving and being loved.
The presence of her lover was happiness, and his absence was hardly
sorrow. Had she not his letters? Were there ever such letters? she
thought; and while she exulted in all the delicious exclusiveness of
the possession of such treasures, she almost longed that the world
might know how transcendent a genius was this gallant soldier whom she
loved.
She was glad that Godfrey felt so much disappointment at the delay;
and the impertinence of any one who interfered to prevent the
fulfilment of any wish of his, no words could adequately describe.
But, for all that, Margaret was extremely happy, though she did hate
James Dugdale.
Her lover encouraged her in this feeling, and when he and her brother
had rejoined their regiment she restricted her intercourse with the
officious ex-tutor to the barest acknowledgment of his presence. James
Dugdale took this mode of procedure calmly, and applied himself to the
task of finding out all that was to be ascertained concerning the
circumstances, character, and antecedents of Lieutenant Godfrey
Hungerford.