DISCOMFITURE.
When the engagement between Godfrey Hungerford and Margaret Carteret
had lasted six months, during which time James Dugdale had contrived
to learn several facts to that gentleman's disadvantage, Haldane
Carteret made his appearance unexpectedly at Chayleigh. Margaret's
first look at her brother revealed to her quick instinctive fears that
his errand had in it something unfriendly to her love. With all the
selfishness which comes of an engrossing feeling, she was insensible
to any other impulse of alarm.
Margaret was right; her brother was come to unsay all he had said of
Godfrey Hungerford--to tell his father that he had been deceived in
his friend--to try to undo the work he had helped to do.
"He drinks and gambles, Margaret; for God's sake, don't marry a man
with such vices," said Haldane eagerly to his sister.
Her father roused himself, and warned her too; but the girl was
obdurate. She only knew of such things by name; they had no meaning to
her as terrible realities of life; and then she had her lover's
letters--the priceless, charming, incomparable letters--and they told
her that her brother had come round to Dugdale's way of thinking, and
had turned against him because he had interfered to keep him out of
some boyish scrapes.
The strongest and most spurious of all arguments too, used to a loving
foolish girl, were not wanting. If even he were guilty of some
follies, granting that he was not a perfect being, could he fail to
become so under her influence--could he resist such perfection as
hers, become the light and guidance of his home? It is needless to
repeat the flimsy foolish strain of the arguments which bewildered and
beguiled the girl. She met her father and her brother with vehement
opposition, and replied to everything they urged, that she alone knew,
she only understood Godfrey, and she was not going to forsake him to
serve the turn of interested calumniators.
This taunt, aimed at the brother, did not hit the mark. He had not the
least notion to what it referred. The young man spoke frankly and
gently to the infatuated girl, lamented his own easy credulity which
had at first betrayed his judgment, and finally left the matter in his
father's hands, only entreating him to be firm, and to take into
consideration, in addition to what he had told him, certain
circumstances which had come to the knowledge of James Dugdale. For
himself, the pain of enforced association with his quondam friend
would soon be at an end. The brigade of Royal Artillery to which he
belonged was then under orders for Canada, and this was to be his
farewell visit to his home.
The brother and sister parted, in sorrow on Haldane's part--in silent
and sullen estrangement on Margaret's. The girl's heart was full of
angry and bitter revolt, and of the keen indignation which
inexperienced youth feels against those who strive to serve it against
its will. They were trying to protect her from herself--to save her
from the worst of evils--the most cruel of destinies; and she treated
them as if they had been, as indeed she believed them to be, her worst
enemies.
But they were not to succeed--Margaret was not to be saved. The girl's
life at home--though no one molested her--though her father, if the
matter were not pressed upon his attention, took no notice--though her
stepmother was, as usual, coldly but civilly negligent of her--though
James Dugdale maintained his inoffensive reserve--became intolerable
to her; intolerable through its loneliness--intolerable by reason of
its cross-purposes. The one thought, the one image, the one hope for
which she lived was not only unshared, but condemned by those with
whom she lived. The one name precious to her heart, delightful to her
ears, was never spoken within her hearing--the little world she lived
in ignored him who was all the world to her.
When Haldane Carteret had been three months in Canada, Godfrey
Hungerford was dismissed the service for conduct unbecoming an officer
and a gentleman; and in another month, Margaret Carteret had
clandestinely left her home, joined her lover, and become his wife.
The shock to her father was very severe. It was the first misfortune
of his life, including his first wife's death, to which "specimens"
offered no alleviation. It was not an evil which brought finality with
it; and Mr. Carteret therefore found it difficult to bear. If Margaret
had died, her father would have grieved for her, no doubt, but there
would have been an end of it; now, though no one could foresee or
foretell the end, it was easy to prognosticate evil as the result, and
impossible to hope for good.
Like all men of his sort, Mr. Carteret had a great horror of the
openly violent and aggressive vices of men. He was incapable of
understanding the amount of suffering to be inflicted upon women by
the supineness, selfishness, indolence, imprudence, or eccentricity of
their husbands and fathers; but the mere idea of a woman being in the
power of a man who actually got drunk, lost or won money at cards or
dice, used bad language, or had any stain of dishonesty on his name,
was terrible to his harmless, if valueless, nature.
Mrs. Carteret was extremely indifferent. Of course it was an
unpleasant occurrence, and people would talk unpleasantly about it;
but she had never pretended to care much for, or interfere with Miss
Carteret,--and no one could blame her.
Of all those who had shared her life, who had seen her grow from
childhood to girlhood, James Dugdale was the only one who had made
Margaret Carteret's character a subject of close and loving study--the
only one who understood its strength and its weakness, its forcible
points of contrast, its lurking dangers, its unseen resources. He knew
her intellectual qualities, he knew her imaginativeness, and
understood the danger which lurked in it for her--a danger which had
already taken so delusive and fatal a form. With all the prescience of
a calm and unselfish affection, he feared for the girl's future, and
grieved as only mature wisdom and disinterested love can grieve over
the follies and illusions, the inevitable suffering and
disenchantment, of youth and wilfulness.
"She has a dreadful life before her," said her misjudged and despised
friend to himself, as he left Margaret's father, after the two had
discussed the letter in which the misguided girl had informed him of
her marriage; "a dreadful life, I fear, and believe; but, if she lives
through it, and over it, and takes it rightly, she may be a noble and
strong woman yet, though never a happy one."
For some time Margaret Hungerford's communications with her family
were brief and infrequent. She said nothing in her letters of
happiness or the reverse, and she made no request to be permitted to
revisit her former home. She never wrote to or heard from her brother.
After a while a formal application was made to Mr. Carteret by Mr.
Hungerford for pecuniary assistance, as he had determined to try his
fortune in Australia. To this Mr. Carteret replied that he would give
Margaret half the small fortune which was to have been hers on his
death, but required that it should be distinctly understood that she
had nothing more to expect from him.
Mr. Carteret went up to London and drew the sum he had named, 500_l_.,
out of the funds, and availed himself of that opportunity to make his
will, by which he bequeathed to his son all his property, a
life-interest in the greater part of which had been secured to his
wife by settlement. This done, and provided with the money he had
named, he went to see Margaret and her husband. The meeting was brief
and final. Mr. Carteret returned on the following day to Chayleigh.
Godfrey Hungerford and his wife were to sail for Sydney in a
fortnight, he told Mrs. Carteret, in reply to her polite but quite
uninterested inquiries. Nor was he much more communicative to James
Dugdale.
"How does she look?" he asked.
The father made no reply, but shook his head, and moved his hands
nervously among the papers on the table before him.
"Already!" said James Dugdale, when he had softly left the room, and
then he went away and shut himself up alone.