MR. BABINGTON remained in the house, or at least returned to it constantly, passing most of his time there till the funeral was over; after which he read the will to the little company, consisting only of Winifred, Edward, and Miss Farrell, who remained in the house. It was a will which excited much agitation and distress, and awoke very different sentiments in the minds of the two who were chiefly concerned. Winifred received its stipulations like so many blows, while in the mind of her lover they raised a sort of involuntary elation, an ambition and eagerness of which he had not been hitherto sensible. The condition under which Winifred inherited her father’s fortune was, that she was not to divide or share it with her brothers; that Mr. Chester had meant to add many other bonds and directions which would have left her without any freedom of individual action at all, mattered little; but this one stipulation had been appended at once to the will, and was not to be avoided or ignored. In case she attempted to divide or share her inheritance, or alienate any part of it, she was to forfeit the whole. No latitude was allowed to her, no power of compromise. This information crushed Winifred’s courage and spirits altogether. It made the gloom of the moment tenfold darker, and subdued in her the rising tide of life. That tide had begun to rise involuntarily even in the first week, while the windows were still shrouded and the house full of crape and darkness. She had shed those few natural tears, which are all that in many cases the best parents have to look for, and, though moved by times with a compunction equally natural, was yet prepared to dry them and go on to the sunshine that awaited her, and the setting of all things right which had seemed to her the chief object in life. But when she saw this great barrier standing up before her, and knew that her brothers were both on their way, hoping great things, to be met on their arrival only by this impossibility, her heart failed her altogether. She had no courage to meet the situation. She felt ill, worn out by the agitations of the previous period and the blank despair of this, and for a time turned away from the light, and would not be comforted.
Upon Edward Langton a very different effect was produced; while Winifred’s heart sank in her bosom, his rose with a boundless exhilaration and hope. What he saw before him was something so entirely unhoped for, so unthought of, that it was no wonder if it turned his head, as the vulgar say. Mr. Chester, who had acquired the property of his ancestors in their moment of need, unrighteously as he believed, trading upon their necessities, seemed to him now, with all the force of a dead hand, to thrust compensation upon him. It was not to Winifred but to him that the fortune seemed to be given. That this was the reverse of the testator’s intention, that he had meant something totally different, did not affect Langton’s mind. It gave him even an additional grim satisfaction, as the jewels of gold and of silver borrowed from his Egyptian master might have satisfied the mind of a fierce Hebrew, defrauded for a lifetime of the recompense of his toil. The millionaire’s plunder, his gain which had been extracted from the sweat of other men, was to return into the hands of one of the families at least of which he had taken advantage. For once the revenges of time were fully just and satisfactory. He went about his parish work and visited his poor patients with this elation in his mind, instinctively making notes as to things which he would have done and improvements made. Mr. Chester, who had the practical instincts of a man whose first thought has always been to make money, had, indeed, done a great deal for the estate; but he had spent nothing, neither thought nor money, upon the condition of the poor, for whom he cared much less than for their cattle. Langton’s interests were strong in the other way. He thought of sanitary miracles to be performed, of disease to be extirpated, of wholesome houses and wholesome faces in the little clusters of human habitation that were dotted here and there round the enclosure of the park. Different minds take their pleasures in different ways. He was not dull to the delights of a well-preserved cover; but with a more lively impulse he anticipated a grand battue of smells and miasmas, draining of stagnant ponds, and destruction to the agues and fevers which haunted the surrounding country. This idea blended with the intense subdued pleasure of anticipation with which he thought of the estate returning to the old name, and himself to the house of his fathers: there was nothing ignoble in the elation that filled his mind. Perhaps, according to the sentiment of romance, it would have been a more lofty position had he endured tortures from the idea of owing this elevation to his marriage; or even had he refused, at the cost of her happiness and his own, to accept so much from his wife; but Langton was of a robust kind, and not easily affected by those prejudices, which after all are not very respectful to women. He would have married Winifred with nothing. Why should he withdraw from her when she had much? So far as this went, he accepted the good fortune which she seemed about to bring him without a question, with a satisfaction which filled his whole being. Bedloe had not been the better of the Chesters hitherto, but it should be the better for him.
And if there came over him a little chill occasionally when he thought of the two helpless prodigals whom he despised, coming over the sea, each from his different quarter, full of hopes which were never to be realised, Langton found it possible to push them aside out of his mind, as it is always possible to put aside an unpleasant subject. Sometimes there would come over him a chill less momentary when the thought that Winifred might hold by her decision on this subject crossed his mind. But she was very gentle, very easily influenced, not the sort of woman to assert herself. She had yielded to him in respect to her father, even when the course of conduct he recommended had been odious to her. That she should have felt so strongly on the subject had seemed somewhat ridiculous to him at the time, but, notwithstanding, she had yielded to his better judgment and had followed the directions he had given her. And there did not seem any reason to believe that she would not do the same again. She was of a very tender nature, poor Winnie! She could not bear to hurt any one. It was not to be expected, probably it was not even to be desired, that the real advantages of this arrangement should strike her as they did himself. She had a natural clinging to her brothers. She declined to see them in their true light. It was terrible to her to profit by their ruin. But Langton, though acknowledging all this, could not conceive the possibility that Winnie would actually resist his guidance, and follow her own conclusions. She could not do it. She would do as he indicated, though it might cost her some tears, and perhaps a struggle with herself, tears which Langton was fully in the mind to repay by such love and care when she was his wife as would banish henceforward all other tears from her eyes. Like so many other clever persons, he shut his own in the meantime. He was aware that the position in which she was placed, the thought of the future, lay at the bottom of her illness, and even that until the constant irritation thus caused was withdrawn or neutralised, her mind would not recover its tone. At least he would have been fully aware of this had his patient been any other than Winifred. She was suffering, no doubt, he allowed, but by and by she would get over it, the disturbing influence would work itself out, and all would be well.
And in the meantime there were moments of sweetness for both in the interval that followed. As Winifred recovered slowly, the subduing influence of bodily weakness hushed her cares. For the moment she could do nothing, and, anxious as she was, it was so soothing to have the company, and sympathy, and care of her lover, that she too pushed aside all disturbing influences, and almost succeeded while he was with her in forgetting. Instinctively she was aware that on this point his mind and hers would not be in accord—on every other point they were one, and she listened to the suggestions he made as to improvements and alterations with that sensation of pleasure ineffable which arises in a woman’s mind when the man whom she loves shows himself at his best. He had too much discretion and good feeling to do more than suggest these beneficial changes, and above all he never betrayed the elation in his own views and intention in his own mind to carry them out himself. But from her sofa, or from the terrace, where presently she was able to walk with the support of his arm, Winifred listened to his description of all that could be done, and looked at the little sketches he would make of improved houses, and new ways of effectual succour to the poor, with a pleasure which was more near what we may suppose to be angelic satisfaction than any other on earth. When he went away, a cloud would come over the landscape. She would say to herself that George would be little likely to carry out these plans, and again with a keener pang would be conscious that Edward was as yet unconvinced of her determination on the subject. But when he came back to her, all that could possibly come between them was by common instinctive accord put away, and there was a happiness in those days of waiting almost like the pathetic happiness which softens the ebbing out of life. Miss Farrell, who was more than ever like a mother to the poor girl who had so much need of her, looked forward, as a mother so often does, with almost as much happiness as the chief actors in that lovers’ meeting to Edward’s coming. Every evening, when his work was over, the two ladies would listen for his quick step, or the sound of his horse’s hoofs over the fallen leaves in the avenue. He came in, bringing the fresh air with him, and the movement and stir of life, with such news as was to be had in that rural quiet, with stories of his humble patients, and all the humours of the countryside. It was something to expect all day long and make the slow hours go by as on noiseless wings. There is perhaps nothing which makes life so sweet. This is half the charm of marriage to women; and before marriage there is a delicacy, a possibility of interruption, a voluntary and spontaneous character in the intercourse which makes it even more delightful. In the moonlight evenings, when the yellow harvest moon was resplendent over all the country, and Winifred was well enough for the exertion, the two would stray out together, leaving the gentle old spectator of their happiness almost more happy than they, in the tranquillity of her age, to prepare the tea for them, or with Hopkins’s assistance (given with a little contemptuous toleration of her interference) the “cup” which Langton had the bad taste to prefer to tea.
This lasted for several weeks, even months, and it was not till October, when the woods were all russet and yellow, and a little chill had come into the air, that the tranquillity was disturbed by a telegram which announced the arrival of Tom. It was dated from Plymouth, and even in the concise style demanded by the telegraph there was a ring of satisfaction and triumph to Winifred’s sensitive ear. She trembled as she read—“Shall lose no time expect me by earliest train to-morrow.” This intimation came tingling like a shot into the calm atmosphere, sending vibrations everywhere. In the first moment it fell like a death-blow on Winifred, severing her life in two, cutting her off from all the past, even, it was possible, from Edward and his love. When he came in the evening she said nothing until they were alone upon the terrace in the moonlight, taking the little stroll which had become so delightful to her. It was the last time, perhaps, that, free from all interruption, they would spend the tranquil evening so. She walked about for some time leaning upon him, letting him talk to her, answering little or nothing. Then suddenly, in the midst of something he was saying, without sequence or reason, she said suddenly, “Edward, I have had a telegram from Tom.”
He started and stopped short with a quick exclamation—“From Tom!”
“He is coming to-morrow,” Winifred said; and then there fell a silence over them, over the air, in which the very light seemed to be affected by the shock. She felt it in the arm which supported her, in the voice which responded with a sudden emotion in it, and in the silence which ensued, which neither of them seemed able to break.
“I fear,” said Edward at last, “that it will be very agitating and distressing for you, my darling. I wish I could do it for you. I wish I could put it off till you were stronger.”
She shook her head. “I must do it myself,” she said, “not even you. We have been very quiet for a long time—and happy.”
“We shall be happy still, I hope,” he said,—“happier, since the time is coming when we are always to be together, Winnie.”
She did not make any reply at first, but then said drearily, “I don’t feel as if I could see anything beyond to-night. Life will go on again, I suppose, but between this and that there seems to me, as in the parable, a gulf fixed.”
“Not one that cannot be passed over,” he said.
But he did not ask her what she meant to say to her brother, nor had she ever told him. Perhaps he took it for granted that only one thing could be said, and that to be told what their father’s will was, would be enough for the young men; or perhaps, for that was scarcely credible, he supposed that Mr. Babington would be called upon to explain everything, and the burden thus taken off her shoulders. Only when she was bidding him good-night he ventured upon a word.
“You must husband your strength,” he said, “and not wear yourself out more than you can help. Remember there is George to come.”
“I will have to say what there is to say at once, Edward. Oh, how could I keep them in suspense?”
“But you must think a little, for my sake, of yourself, dear.”
She shook her head, and looked at him wistfully. “It is not I that have to be thought of, it is the boys that I have to think of. Oh, poor boys! how am I to tell them?” she cried.
And he went away with no further explanation. He could not ask in so many words, What do you intend to say to them? And yet he had made up his mind so completely what ought to be said. He said to himself as he went down the avenue that he had been a fool, that it was false delicacy on his part not to have had a full explanation of her intentions. But, on the other hand, how could he suggest a mode of action to her? There was but one way—they must understand that she could not sacrifice herself for their sakes.