WHAT THE WOMAN MEANT.
A month had elapsed since Margaret Hungerford's return to her father's
house, and had brought with it certain changes in the situation of
things at Chayleigh, which, though they could not have been understood
by outsiders, were very keenly appreciated by the actors in the small
domestic drama there.
It had brought to Margaret more calm and peace. It had not changed her
intention of leaving Chayleigh, of seeking some independent means of
providing for herself; but it had decreased her anxiety to put this
intention into immediate, or even into very early, execution. The main
element in this alteration was her perception of her father's pleasure
in her society.
"It is not much to bear for _his_ sake," she said to herself, "to put up
with Mrs. Carteret. I have had worse things than that to endure
without the power or the prospect of escaping from them either, and I
will stay for six months with papa. James Dugdale thinks it the right
thing, and, if Mrs. Carteret is convinced that it is to be only for
six months, she will see that her best policy, in pursuit of her
favourite plan of making things pleasant for papa, in order to have
her own way thoroughly in things she really cares about, is by
behaving properly to me. I will take care she shall labour under no
delusive fears about my having come to take up my abode here; and then
I am much out of my calculations, and egregiously mistaken in my
amiable stepmother, if she does not change her tactics altogether."
The result justified Margaret's calculations. She took an early
opportunity of informing Mrs. Carteret that she did not contemplate a
long stay at Chayleigh.
The intimation was received by her stepmother with much propriety of
manner, but without the slightest warmth. She designed to let Margaret
perceive that while she (Mrs. Carteret) was too ladylike, too
perfectly trained and finished in the polished proprieties of life to
fail in the fulfilment of the exact laws of hospitality, it had never
occurred to her to consider Margaret in any other light than that of a
guest; and that she therefore regarded the communication as merely
relating to the duration of her visit.
Margaret clearly perceived her meaning, but she did not resent it, nor
did it grieve her. The peace of a settled resolution had come to her.
Mrs. Carteret condescended to express her approbation of Margaret's
determination, and her readiness to assist her in carrying it into
effect.
"Nothing is more admirable in young people than an independent
spirit," said the approving lady; "and, notwithstanding your
unfortunate marriage, Margaret, I consider you as a young person
still. You are quite right in considering it unjust that your father
should be expected to provide for you twice over--first, in handing
over the money you were not really entitled to, to that unpleasant
person, Mr. Hungerford, and a second time, by having you to live
here."
"My father is not expected, either by me or by any one that I know of,
to do anything of the kind," interrupted Margaret, with a slight
quivering of the lips and a transient accession of colour to the pale
cheeks.
"That is just what I am saying, my dear. I highly commend your very
proper view. It would be quite my own. Indeed, I am sure, were I in
your position, I could not endure dependence, even if my father were a
much richer man than yours is. I cannot understand any one not doing
anything to secure independence."
Margaret smiled, rather a hard kind of smile, as she thought there was
one thing she certainly would not do to attain independence, and that
one thing was precisely what Miss Martley had done in becoming Mrs.
Carteret.
The elder lady continued to talk for some time longer in the same
strain, and at length she asked Margaret how she intended to procure
occupation.
"I have not thought about that part of it yet," she replied.
Then Mrs. Carteret allowed the truth to slip out; then she betrayed
her real consciousness of the meanness she was perpetrating. She
shifted her eyes uneasily away from Margaret's face, as she said,
"I should not mention the matter to any one about here if I were you,
Margaret. People talk so oddly, and your father might not like it. I
always think, when anything of the kind is to be done, it had better
be away from home, and among a different connection."
Margaret answered her with hardly-disguised contempt:
"Your warning comes rather late. I have already told Lady Davyntry of
my intention, which she approves as much as you do. She has been good
enough to promise me her friendship and interest in settling matters
to my satisfaction. As for papa, he will not mind how I do it, when I
can succeed in reconciling him to my doing it at all."
Mrs. Carteret felt strongly tempted to get into a violent rage, and
relieve her vexation, which was intense, by saying anything and
everything which anger might suggest to her, to Margaret.
That Lady Davyntry, who had taken no notice of the advances she had
made towards an intimacy which would have been a social triumph to
Mrs. Carteret--Lady Davyntry who, since Margaret's return, had gone so
near ignoring her stepmother's existence as was consistent with the
observance of the commonest civility--that she should be admitted
behind the scenes, that Margaret should instruct her in the _dessous
des cartes_, was gall and wormwood to her. She had never been very far
off hating Margaret hitherto; her quiet stealthy dislike to the girl
now deepened into the darker feeling; and though she merely replied,
"O, then, in that case, it cannot be helped," Margaret knew that that
minute marked an era in Mrs. Carteret's feelings towards her.
"Never mind," she said to herself, as though she had been encouraging
another person; "never mind, it is only for six months. She will
always be civil to me, and it can't last."
She was right; Mrs. Carteret always was civil to her. She was a woman
in whom cunning and caution were at least as strong as temper, and she
took counsel of both in this instance. She was by no means free from
an uneasy suspicion that, if Margaret had formed a contrary
determination, her influence with her father would have outweighed
that which she herself could have exerted.
It behoved her, therefore, to be thankful that the occasion for
testing that unpleasantly-important point had not arisen, and to
confine her tactics to such consistently-ceremonious treatment of
Margaret as should keep her position as only a guest constantly before
her eyes, and maintain her resolution by the aid of her pride; while
all should be so contrived as to avoid attracting the attention of her
absent-minded husband.
Mrs. Carteret conquered her temper, therefore--an operation in which
she found the counting of the stitches of her everlasting fancy-work
afforded her a good deal of assistance--and, after a short pause, took
up a collateral branch of the same subject.
Margaret had dismissed Rose Moore, and the girl had gone on her
journey with a weight at her heart which she would have hardly
believed possible, seeing that she was going home. But she had come to
love Margaret very much, and she was very imperfectly consoled for
parting with her by the distant hope which the young widow held out of
a future meeting.
"You will be married, and away in a house of your own, my dear girl,
very soon, and you will not care much about anything else then; but I
promise you, if ever I want you very much, Rose, I will send for you.
I don't think I ever _can_ want you, in all my life, as much as I
wanted you when you came to me; and of course you never can want me;
your life is laid out for you too securely for that."
"None of us can tell _that_," said Rose Moore; "who knows?"
"Well, of course no one knows," said Margaret; "but it looks like it.
However, we shall never forget one another, Rose, and if either can
help the other, the one who can will." And with this understanding
they parted.
Mrs. Carteret had never taken any notice of Rose Moore, who, in her
turn, had held the lady of the house in slight reverence. Mrs.
Carteret had a constitutional aversion to the Irish. She considered
them half-civilised beings, with a natural turn for murder, a natural
unfitness for domestic service, and an objectionable predilection for
attending the ceremonial observances of their religion.
As an Irishwoman, then. Rose Moore was antipathetic to her; and as a
devoted though humble friend of her stepdaughter's, she was something
more. The Irish girl's bright-hearted love and sympathy for the young
widow was positively repulsive to Mrs. Carteret, because there was a
reproach in it.
But when Rose was actually gone, Mrs. Carteret found herself in a
difficulty. She disliked the idea of a successor to Rose being found,
because her narrow, grasping nature was of the small tyrant order, and
she could not endure that in her house there should be any one who did
not owe allegiance to _her_.
Another reason was to be found in Mrs. Carteret's parsimony. She was
as avaricious as she was despotic, and both these passions were
stirred within her when she asked Margaret, in the most distant and
uninterested tone which even she could assume, whether she had yet
made any arrangements about replacing Rose Moore. "Moore," she called
her, after the English fashion, which had been a deadly offence to
Rose.
"Calling you as if you were either a man or a dog," the indignant
damsel had said.
"It's the English fashion, Rose," Margaret had pleaded in mitigation.
"Then it's like more of their fashions, and they ought to be ashamed
of it, and would if they were Christians. However, I suppose English
servants put up with that, or anythin' else, for their four meals
a-day, and snacks into the bargain, and their beer, and the liberty
their clargy gives them to backbite their masters and mistresses."
Margaret tried to explain that neither in this nor in any other
particular were the objects of Rose's indignant scorn in the habit of
applying to their "clargy:" but this was an enormity which she found
the girl's mind was quite incapable of receiving as a truth.
Mrs. Hungerford replied to Mrs. Carteret's question, that she had no
intention of providing a successor for Rose Moore.
"I should have thought it quite unnecessary to tell you so," she said,
rather angrily. "You can hardly suppose I am in a position to keep a
maid. Even if I were for the present, to accustom myself to any luxury
which I must lose at the end of six months would be unpardonable folly
and weakness."
"You are quite right, my dear," said Mrs. Carteret, with a cordial
tone in her voice, and a side-glance in her eye of intense dislike of
the speaker. "I admire your correct and self-denying principle, but I
am not sure that your father will like it. While you stay with us, I
am sure he would not wish you to be without a maid."
Margaret did not take much trouble to conceal the contempt which
animated the smile that she permitted to pass slowly over her face as
she replied:
"Pray do not trouble yourself about that, Mrs. Carteret. If papa
thinks about it at all, which is very unlikely, he will know how
little personal attendance I have been accustomed to. But you and I
know the fact of there being a servant more or less in the house will
never present itself to his notice. Pray make your mind easy on that
point."
"But there's--" said Mrs. Carteret hesitatingly--"there's James, you
know; he is sure to know that Moore has left you, and to find out
whether you have got any one to replace her."
"Make your mind easy about _that_, too, Mrs. Carteret," said Margaret;
and the confidence in her tone was particularly displeasing. "I will
take care that Mr. Dugdale understands _my_ wishes in this matter."
So Mrs. Carteret carried three points. She avoided having a servant in
the house who should not be her servant; she escaped an additional
expense; and she was exempted, by Margaret's express disclaimer, from
offering her the services of her own maid--an offer which, had she
found herself obliged to make it, Mrs. Collins would probably have
declined to carry into execution. There was one person in the world of
whom Mrs. Carteret was afraid, and that individual was Mrs. Collins.
When the conversation between Margaret and Mrs. Carteret had come to
an end, to their mutual relief, Margaret went to her father. As she
approached the study, she heard voices, and knew she should not find
him alone.
"I suppose it is James," she thought, and entered the room. But it
was not James; it was Mr. Baldwin, who held a large old-looking volume
in his hand, and was discussing with Mr. Carteret a passage concerning
the structure of crustacea. He closed the book, and replaced it on the
table with great alacrity, as Margaret came in and spoke to him. Then
she turned to her father. "I was going to talk to you for a little
while, papa; but as Mr. Baldwin is here--"
"Never mind that, Margery," said her father; "Mr. Baldwin was just
going to the drawing-room to see Sibylla and you. He has a message for
you from Lady Davyntry."
Mr. Baldwin confirmed Mr. Carteret's statement, and took from his
waistcoat-pocket a tiny note, folded three-cornerwise. This was before
the invention of square envelopes and dazzling monograms; and female
friendship, confidences, and general gushingness usually expressed
themselves in the three-cornered form.
Margaret took the note, and, passing before the "specimen"-laden
table, went to the window and seated herself on the low, wide,
uncushioned ledge. She held the twisted paper in her hand, and looked
idly out of the window, before she broke the seal, unconscious that
Mr. Baldwin was looking at her with an eager interest which rendered
him singularly inattentive to the arguments addressed to him by Mr.
Carteret in pursuance of the discussion which Margaret's entrance had
interrupted.
The girlish gracefulness of her attitude contrasted strangely with her
sombre heavy dress; the soft youthfulness of her colourless face made
the harsh lines of the close crimped cap an odious anachronism.
"MY DARLING MARGARET,"--this was the note,--"I have such a cold, I
_cannot_ get to you. Do be charitable, and come to me. My brother will
escort you, and will see you home at night, unless you will stay.
"Always your devoted
"ELEANOR."
The renewed acquaintance with Lady Davyntry was at this time an event
of a fortnight old, and the irrepressible Eleanor had to a certain
extent succeeded in thawing the frozen exterior of the young
woman's demeanour. Kindness, if even it were a little silly and
over-demonstrative, was a refreshing novelty to Margaret, and she
welcomed it.
At first she had been a little hard, a little incredulous towards Lady
Davyntry; she had been inclined to treat her rapidly-developed
fondness for herself as a _caprice de grande dame_. But she soon
abandoned that harsh interpretation; she soon understood that, though
it was exaggerated in its expression, the affection with which she had
inspired Lady Davyntry was perfectly sincere.
Hence it came that Margaret had told her friend what were her views
for her future; but she had not raised the veil which hid the past. Of
that dreadful time, with its horrid experience of sin and misery, with
its contaminating companionship, and the stain which it had left of
such knowledge of evil and all the meanness of vice as never should be
brought within the ken of pure womanhood at any age, Margaret never
spoke, and Lady Davyntry, though inquisitive enough in general, and by
no means wanting in curiosity in this particular instance, did not
seek to overcome her reticence.
She had considerable delicacy of mind, and, in Margaret's case,
affection and interest brought her not-naturally-bright intelligence
to its aid. She had noticed and understood the changeableness of
Margaret's moods. She had seen her, when animated and seemingly happy
in conversation with her or Mr. Baldwin (what a treat it was to hear
those two talk! she thought), suddenly lapse into silence, and all
the colour would die out of her cheeks, and all the light from her
eyes--struck away from them doubtless by the stirring of some painful
memory, aroused from its superficial slumber by some word or phrase in
which the pang of association lurked.
She had seen the expression of weariness which Margaret's figure had
worn at first come over it again, and then the drooped head and the
listless hands had a story in them, from even trying to guess at which
the kind-hearted woman, whose one grief had no touch of shame or dread
or degrading remembrance in it, shrunk with true delicacy and keen
womanly sympathy.
Lady Davyntry had been a daily visitor at Chayleigh since Margaret's
return. She treated Mrs. Carteret with civility; but she made it, as
she intended, evident that the attraction was Margaret, and Mrs.
Carteret had to endure the mortifying conviction as best she could.
Her best was not very good, and she never allowed an opportunity to
pass of hitting Margaret's friend as hard as her feeble powers of
sarcasm, which only attained the rank of spite, enabled her to hit
her. Lady Davyntry was totally unconscious, and Margaret was
profoundly indifferent.
It happened, however, on this particular day, after the conclusion of
Mrs. Carteret's conversation with her stepdaughter, and while she was
superintending the interesting operation, performed by Collins, of
altering the trimmings of a particularly becoming dress, that she came
to a determination to alter her tactics. She had not to dread a
permanent invasion of her territory, a permanent usurpation of her
place by Margaret; she would therefore profit by the temporary evil,
and so entangle Lady Davyntry in civilities that it would be
impossible for her to withdraw from so _affiché_ an intimacy when
Margaret should have left Chayleigh.
In all this there was not a particle of regard for Lady Davyntry, of
liking for her society, of a wish that the supposed intimacy should
become real. It would be quite enough for her that the Croftons and
the Crokers, the Willises, the Wyngroves, and the Savilles should know
that Lady Davyntry was on the most familiar terms with the Carterets,
and quite beyond those to which any other family in the neighbourhood
could lay claim.
Mrs. Carteret's busy small brain began to entertain an idea that
Margaret's stay might be made profitable, in a social point of view,
to her future position.
The writing of the note of which Mr. Baldwin was the bearer had been
the subject of some doubt and discussion between Lady Davyntry and her
brother.
"Do you think it would do to ask her here, to dinner and all that,
without asking Mrs. Carteret, and making a regular business of it?"
said Eleanor.
"Of course it would," returned Mr. Baldwin. "If you want to have Mrs.
Hungerford here, and do not want to have Mrs. Carteret, as I
understand you that you do, you could not have a better opportunity.
Now is your time. You have a cold, you can't go out, and you certainly
cannot see company. Write your note, Nelly, and I'll take it. I want
to see Mr. Carteret. You cannot have a better opportunity."
"Let me see," said Lady Davyntry, biting the top of her pen
contemplatively; "Mr. Dugdale is down at Oxford, isn't he?"
"Yes," said her brother; "gone to see his old tutor,--a fellow he is,
but I forget his name,--and won't be back for three weeks."
"Well, then, I _will_ ask Margaret alone. I thought, if Mr. Dugdale
had been at home, we might have asked him to come to dinner. But you
won't mind seeing Mrs. Hungerford home, Fitz, will you? She could have
the carriage, of course, and go round by the road; but I am sure she
would not like that."
Mr. Baldwin was exceedingly complaisant and agreeable. So far from
growling an assent in an undertone, sounding much more like a protest
than an acquiescence, as is the usual manner of men with regard to the
bosom friends of their sisters, he expressed his readiness to
undertake the task of seeing Margaret home with a cheerful readiness
quite beyond suspicion of its sincerity.
When Margaret had read the note, she twisted it in her fingers without
speaking. Mr. Baldwin's attention wandered a little, though Mr.
Carteret had opened one of the glass cases, and taken out a horrid
object like an old-fashioned brooch with an areole of long spikes, and
was expatiating upon it with great fervour.
He looked at Margaret; but her eyes were turned from him, straying
over the garden. At last he moved to where she was sitting.
"You will grant my sister's prayer," he said. "I know what is in the
note. She really has a cold, Mrs. Hungerford. It will be a charity if
you will go to her.--What do _you_ say, sir?"
Mr. Carteret said nothing, for the ample reason that he had not the
remotest idea of what Mr. Baldwin was talking about. When, however,
that gentleman explained the matter, he gave it as his decided opinion
that Margaret ought to go for Lady Davyntry's sake and her own. A
little change would do her good. She must not mope, the kind gentleman
said; and he and Sibylla were but dull company now. She must find it
dismal enough now that James was away. By the bye, did Margaret know
how Mr. Fordham was? Had James found him any better than he expected
when he arrived at Oxford? Yes, yes, Margery must go--she moped too
much; she did not even care for the specimens so much as she used to
do.
"Indeed I do, papa," said Margaret, rising suddenly from her seat and
laying her hand on her father's shoulder; "I care for them a great
deal more--for everything that interests you, and that _you_ care
for."
Her luminous eyes were softer and brighter than Mr. Baldwin had ever
seen them. She had evidently been thinking of something in the past
with which her father's words had chimed in. He was waiting her
decision with a strange feeling of suspense and anxiety, considering
that the matter involved was of no greater moment than the question
whether his sister's friend, who had seen her yesterday, and would in
all probability see her to-morrow, should make up her mind to refrain
from the luxury of seeing her to-day.
"Do you, my dear?" said Mr. Carteret. "That's right; you will go, of
course, then, and Foster shall fetch you this evening.--No, indeed,
Mr. Baldwin, I could not think of your taking the trouble."
But Mr. Baldwin insisted, subject to Mrs. Hungerford's permission,
that he would see her home. This permission she carelessly gave, and
then left the room to prepare for her walk. The two men stood silent
for a minute; then Mr. Carteret said, with a deep sigh,
"Poor Margery! she has had plenty of trouble in her time. I often
wonder whether she is going to have peace now. We can't give that to
our sons and daughters, Baldwin, or get it from them either."
There was a sad desponding tone in Mr. Carteret's voice. Now he was
beginning to understand something of the meaning and extent of the
sorrow that had befallen his daughter--now, when the indelible stamp
of its effect was set upon her changed face, upon her shrinking
figure, upon her slow and unelastic movements.
She had had time now to feel the repose, the comfort, the
respectability of the home to which she had come back, and yet there
was no change in her beyond the release from mere bodily fatigue. The
wan weariness which he had not seen at first, but had seen when James
Dugdale directed his attention to it, was there still, unaltered;
indeed, to the eye of a keen observer, it was deepened. In some cases,
mere respite from physical labour does not produce the effect of
mental repose. Margaret's case was one of those.
Mr. Baldwin did not reply to Mr. Carteret's observation; he walked
towards the window, and looked dreamily out, as Margaret had done.
Presently she came back, wearing her sombre mantle and the close
widow's bonnet of a period when _grand deuil_, in the Mary-Stuart
fashion, was unknown.
"You will tell Mrs. Carteret, if you please, papa, I could not find
her."
"I will be sure to tell her," said Mr. Carteret; "and, Margery, I want
you to observe Lady Davyntry's Angora cat very carefully, and bring me
word whether she has one ring or two round the top of her tail. Don't
forget this, my dear, for it is really an important point."
"I'll be sure to remember it, papa," said Margaret; and then she and
Mr. Fitzwilliam Meriton Baldwin went out through the French window of
Mr. Carteret's study, and took their way across the grassy terrace,
through the lawn, to the little iron gate which opened into the
meadow-lands, through which the "short cut" between Chayleigh and
Davyntry lay.
In the first field beyond this gate a noble clump of beeches stood.
"That is a favourite point of view of Dugdale's," said Mr. Baldwin. "I
have two sketches he made of those forest lords. Splendid trees they
are. I love them."
"And I hate them," said Margaret.
He glanced at her in surprise. Her tone was bitter, and her face wore
an angry scornful look. But it was scorn of herself that Margaret was
feeling. There, under the shade of those trees, she had come suddenly
upon her brother and Godfrey Hungerford; there the first incense of
her worship of the false god had been offered up. She felt his glance,
and instantly began to talk of Lady Davyntry's cold.
"The idea," she thought indignantly, "of saying such a thing as
that--of my betraying feelings to a stranger which it is impossible to
explain."
The first visit made by Margaret to Davyntry was the beginning of a
series which contributed not a little to bringing about the changed
aspect of things at Chayleigh, at the end of the first month of
Margaret's residence there. She was beginning to feel something like a
revival of her youth. The cheerful society, the sense of being loved
and valued; the action of time, so mighty, so resistless, when one is
young; the future dim, indeed, but still in a great measure within her
own control: these were all telling on the young widow.
At first she had suffered keenly from the remembrance of the past
episodes in her life, which seemed to set a barrier between her and
the well-regulated, spotlessly respectable social circle to which she
was restored; a social atmosphere in which shifts, contrivances, shady
expedients for the procuring of shabby ends, were as unknown, as
inconceivable, as the more violent roisterous vice with which she had
also, and only too frequently, been brought into contact. At first,
this sense of an existence, separate and apart from her present
associates, oppressed Margaret strangely, and caused her to shrink
away from the manifestations of Lady Davyntry's friendship with sudden
coldness, quite inexplicable to the impulsive Eleanor, whose life was
all so emphatically aboveboard.
There were times when, in the luxurious and picturesque drawing-room
at Davyntry, whose treasures of old china and ivory caused Mrs.
Carteret acute pangs of envy, Margaret felt the whole scene fade from
before her eyes like a stage transformation, and some squalid room
which she had once inhabited rise up in its place, with its mingled
wretchedness and recklessness; a horrid vision of dirty packs of
cards, of whisky-bottles, and the reek of coarse tobacco; and the
refined tones of Mr. Baldwin's voice would mingle strangely in her
ears with the echo of loud oaths and coarse laughter.
At such times her face would harden, and the light would fade out of
her eyes, and the grace would leave her form in some inexplicable way;
and, if the cloud settled heavily, and she knew it was going to last,
she would make some excuse to get away and return to her father's
house and the society of Mrs. Carteret, to whom her moods, or indeed
those of any human being in existence, except herself, were matters of
perfect indifference.
Mr. Baldwin thought he understood the origin of these sudden changes
in Margaret Hungerford; and, though he had no knowledge of the past,
he discerned the spirit of the young widow with the marvellous skill
which has its rise in very perfect sympathy. When his sister spoke to
him about her friend's strange manner at times, he entreated her not
to notice it in any way.
"She has had such troubles in her life, as, thank God, neither you nor
I can understand, Nelly; and when this cloud comes over her, depend
upon it, it is because the remembrance of them returns to her, made
all the more real by the contrast here. Take no notice of it, and it
will wear away in time."
"She seems to me, Fitzwilliam, as if she had some painful secret
pressing on her mind. I don't mean, of course, any secret concerning
herself, anything in her own life; but Margaret constantly gives me
the impression of being a person in possession of some knowledge
unshared by any one else, and which she sometimes forgets, and then
suddenly remembers."
"It may be so," said Mr. Baldwin slowly, and looking very
uncomfortable. "I hope not; I hope it is only the effect of the early
trouble she has gone through."
"I wonder how she will get on when she leaves Chayleigh," said Lady
Davyntry.
"When she leaves Chayleigh!" repeated her brother, surprised, for the
intentions of Margaret had never been discussed in his presence.
Then Lady Davyntry told him what Margaret had said to her, and how she
had asked her advice and her aid.
"I could not possibly advise her to remain all her life with that
dreadful stepmother of hers, could I, Fitz? You can understand what
Mrs. Carteret is in that relation, civil as she is to _you_. I really
think she imagines you entertain a profound sentiment for her;
perfectly proper and Platonic, you know, but still profound; and I
don't think Margaret's naturally active mind could endure the idleness
of the life at Chayleigh, even if Mrs. Carteret were out of the
question."
"Idleness!" said Mr. Baldwin, "what idleness? There is just the same
kind of life to be had at Chayleigh, I suppose, as women, as ladies,
lead everywhere else--the kind of life Margaret was born to. I can't
see the matter in _that_ light."
"I daresay not, Fitz," said Lady Davyntry, rather proud of the chance
of offering a suggestion to this infallible and incomparable younger
brother of hers. "But I can. Margaret certainly was, as you say, born
to lead the kind of life which all women of her position get through
somehow; but then she was taken out of it very young, and, whatever it
was she did or suffered, you may be sure that it gave her mind a turn
not to be undone. Of course, I don't mean to say she wants to go back
to that again, whatever it was; but I am sure she must have some
settled occupation to be happy. I do not think, when one's heart has
been once crammed quite full of anything, be it joyful or sorrowful,
one can stand a vacuum." From which speech it will be made plain that
Lady Davyntry did not cultivate her emotions at the expense of her
good sense.
"You are right, Nelly; I see you are quite right. But what does her
father say?"
"That I really cannot tell you; but I suppose what Mr. Carteret
usually says, in any matter unconnected with birds, beasts, fishes, or
insects--nothing. He and Margaret have a tacit understanding that Mrs.
Carteret and she are not exactly sympathetic, and he has a feeble
desire that his daughter should be happy. Beyond that he really thinks
nothing, and would have as much notion of the new life she wants to
enter upon, as of the old life she has escaped from."
"What does Dugdale think?"
"That I cannot tell you. Margaret never said a word about his opinion
in connection with the matter. I don't think she likes him."
"No," said Mr. Baldwin, "I don't think she does."
"I asked her to come to me," Lady Davyntry continued, "and tried very
hard to persuade her that I required the services of a _dame de
compagnie_. But she laughed at me, and would not listen to me for a
moment, though she told me she had once suggested to Mr. Dugdale that
she should ask me to take her, for the commendable purpose of spiting
Mrs. Carteret. 'Do you think I want to _play_ at independence?' she
said. 'If you do, you are much mistaken. I won't have any more
_shams_, please God, in my life. No, I am going to work in earnest.'
So I could not say any more. She may change her mind in six months,
though I do not think she will."
Mr. Fitzwilliam Meriton Baldwin left his sister to entertain a
selection of the Croftons and the Crokers and the Willises, and betook
himself to a solitary ramble. The question which he had asked himself
when he had seen Margaret Hungerford but once had recurred to him very
often since then. Now he asked himself if he might dare to hope that
he had found the answer.
He did not deny to himself now that he loved Margaret Hungerford. He
was quite clear on that point; and he knew, too, that it was with an
immortal and a worthy love. What did she mean? Was she to mean to him
happiness--the realisation of a man's best and wisest dreams? Was she
to mean this to him in time, or did that sombre past in her life, of
which he knew nothing, interpose an impassable barrier between her and
him? He thought of Margaret's frank unembarrassed manner towards him
without discouragement; he never fancied she could feel anything for
him yet; he perfectly comprehended that nothing was so utterly dead
for her as love.
But he would have patience, he would wait; a resurrection morning
might come; he would try to _win_ such a prize as she would be, not by
a _coup de main_, but by slow degrees, if so it might be. In the true
humility of his mind, in the perfect nobility of his soul, it never
occurred to Mr. Baldwin to think of himself as a prize also worth the
winning.
He had often laughed with his sister about the "man-traps" set for
him; but it was always Lady Davyntry, and not he, who had detected the
devices prepared for the captivation and capture of Mr. Baldwin of the
Deane.
It rarely happened that Fitzwilliam Baldwin thought about his wealth;
his habits and tastes were simple, and his large property was well
administered. He had been a rich man ever since he had come to years
of manhood, and the fact had not the same significance for him which
it assumes for those who come late to a long-looked-for inheritance,
whose attractions are exaggerated by the aid of fancy.
But he began to think complacently of his wealth now; he began to see
visions, and to dream dreams; to think of the power he had to reverse
all the former conditions of Margaret's life, let them have been what
they might. At least he knew she had been unhappy; he could give her
happiness, if unbounded love and respect, if the guarding her from
every ill and care, if the holding her a sacred being, apart, to be
seated in a shrine and worshipped, could give her happiness. This he
could do, if she would but let him.
He knew that she had been poor, that she had now no means of her own.
There was his wealth, which had never been very important to him
before, and could never be important again if she would not in time
take it from him. How he would lavish it upon her; how he would try,
without annoying her in any way, to find out some of the features of
her past experience, and efface them by the luxury and honour in which
he would envelop her! Fitzwilliam Baldwin had advanced very far in a
dream of this kind before the end of the month. He had no longer any
doubt of what this woman meant to him.
Shortly after, and sooner than his return was looked for, James
Dugdale came back to Chayleigh, and found a letter awaiting him. It
was from Hayes Meredith.