“THEY’RE talking over old days,” Mrs. Lenny had said three or four times before the gentlemen appeared. What could be more natural? No doubt they had gone from recollection to recollection: “Do you remember” this and that, and “what happened to” so-and-so? It was very easy to imagine what they were talking about, and how they got led on from one subject to another. They were heard talking, when they at last appeared, all the way up the long drawing-room, pausing at the door.
“All died out, I believe,” Colonel Lenny was saying. “The last son lost his children one after another, and died himself at the last broken-hearted, poor man! The daughters were all scattered—but Katey knows more about them than I do.”
“I am really afraid to ask any more questions,” Sir William said. What more natural?
“Yes, my dear lady,” Colonel Lenny resumed, taking his old place beside Lady Markham; “we have been making the most of our time; for it is very likely we may have letters to-morrow, my wife and I, summoning us away. I don’t like it, and neither will she, and perhaps we may have another day, but I scarcely think it likely. I don’t know how we’re to drag ourselves away. You have been kinder than any one ever was; and the children have got a hold of my old heart, bless them!”
The colonel had genuine tears in his eyes.
“Lenny will tell you what I propose,” said Sir William on the other side. “It is not an easy position. I have always thought myself quite safe—quite free of responsibility; and now to be pulled up all at once; and when I think of my own boys——”
“Your own boys?” said Mrs. Lenny, raising herself very erect in her chair. “Oh, I feel for you—I feel for you, Will! but if you put the least bit of a slur on my sister or her child——
“Don’t make it worse,” he said, throwing up his hands. “I throw a slur! You know I never thought of anything so impossible—it is impossible; but how could I think of him as mine? Adoption has its rights—but Lenny will tell you what I propose.”
A short time after there were affectionate good-nights between the ladies. Lady Markham accompanied Mrs. Lenny to her room to see that she had everything she could desire.
“I am so sorry you must go to-morrow,” she said, half out of politeness, but with a little mixture of truth, for there was something in the genial warmth of the strange couple which touched her heart.
“My dear, it’s just possible we may have another day,” said the old campaigner.
The mother and daughter had a harmless little laugh together over Mrs. Lenny’s “evening body,” but they agreed that “papa’s old friends” were real friends, and adopted them with cordiality though amusement.
“She asked me a great deal about the family and about Paul,” Alice said as they separated.
“No letter again to-day,” said Lady Markham, with a sigh.
That name subdued their smiles. To think he should be the best beloved, yet so careless of their happiness!
“He is so forgetful,” they both said.
And with this so common family sigh, not any present or pressing trouble, only a fear, an anticipation, a doubt what to-morrow might bring forth, the doors of the peaceful chambers closed, and night and quiet settled down on the silent house.
No one knew, however, that the night was not so silent as it appeared. Sir William, of course, was left in his library when all the rest of the world went to bed. It was his habit. He wrote his letters, or he “got up” those questions which were always arising, and which every statesman has to know; or perhaps he only dozed in his great chair; but anyhow, it was his habit to sit up later than all the rest of the household, putting out his lamp himself when he went to bed. This night, however, after midnight when all was still, there was a mysterious conference held in the library. Mrs. Lenny came down the great staircase in her stockings not to make a noise. “I wouldn’t disturb that pretty creature, not for the world,” she said. “I wouldn’t let her know there was a mystery, not for anything you could give me.” And she spoke in a whisper during the course of the prolonged discussion, though Lady Markham was on the upper floor on the other side of the house, and safe in bed. It was Colonel Lenny who was the most stubborn of the conspirators. He spoke of right and justice with such eloquence that his wife was proud of him, even though it was she eventually who put him down, and stopped his argument. It was almost morning—a faint blueness of the new day striking in through all the windows and betraying them, when the Lennys with their shoes in their hands stole up stairs to bed. It would have been strange indeed if some conscientious domestic had not seen this very strange proceeding in the middle of the night; but if they did so, they kept the fact to themselves. Sir William took no such precautions. He shut the heavy door of the library almost ostentatiously, awaking all the silent echoes, and went up the great staircase with his candle in his hand. The rising dawn, however, cast a strange, almost ghastly look upon his face, doing away with the candle. He had told his wife that he had brought some papers from town that had to be attended to, and which had to be sent back to London by next morning’s post.
Next morning the Lennys appeared at the breakfast-table in travelling-garb, ready to go away. Mrs. Lenny had put on her pink bonnet not to lose time.
“Have you had your letters?” Lady Markham said, astonished.
“No, my dear, we have had no letters; that was to be the sign if we were wanted,” Mrs. Lenny explained. Sir William did not say a word. He did not join in the regret expressed by all the rest, or in the invitations proffered. “You must come back—promise us that you will come back,” the children cried; but their father maintained a steady silence which discouraged his wife.
The whole family accompanied the travellers to the door to see them drive away.
“I hope we shall see you again,” Lady Markham said; then added, oppressed by her husband’s silence, “when you come this way.”
“My dear lady,” said the colonel, kissing her hand like a Frenchman, “I shall never forget your kindness, nor my wife either; but most likely we shall never pass this way again. There is nothing in the world I should like better; but I don’t know if it is to be desired.”
“God bless you!” said Mrs. Lenny, taking both Lady Markham’s hands, “it’s not at all to be desired. Once for old friendship’s sake is very well. But if I ever come here again it will not be as an old friend, but for love of you.”
“That is the best reason of all,” Lady Markham said, with her beautiful smile. And she stood there waving her pretty hand to the strange couple as they drove down the avenue. Mrs. Lenny’s pink bonnet made a dotted line of colour all the way as she bobbed it out of the carriage window in perpetual farewells. This made the young ones laugh, though they had been near crying. Sir William alone said nothing. He had gone in again at once when the carriage left the door.
It was that very evening, however, that the letters arrived which cast the family into so great a commotion and obliterated all recollection of the Lennys. It had pleased Lady Markham that her husband, of himself, had begun to speak of Paul the next time they met after the departure of their guests. There was a certain tenderness in his tone, a something which was quite unusual. “Have you heard from him lately?” he asked with some anxiety, “poor boy!” This was so unusual that Lady Markham would not spoil so excellent a disposition by any complaint of Paul’s irregularity in correspondence. She replied that she had heard—not very long ago; that he was still in Oxford; that she hoped he would return for Alice’s birthday, which was approaching. Sir William did not say any more then, but he spoke of Paul again at luncheon, saying—“Poor fellow!” this time. “He has very good abilities if he would only make the right use of them,” he said.
“Oh, William!” cried Lady Markham, “he is still so young; why should not he make very good use of them yet? We were not so very wise at his age.”
“That is true. I was not at all wise at his age: poor Paul!” his father said.
The ladies were quite cheered by this exhibition of interest in Paul, who had not been, they felt, so good or submissive to his father as it was right for a young man to be. “He is letting his heart speak at last,” Lady Markham said when she was alone with her daughter; “he is longing to see his boy; and oh, Alice! so am I.”
“May I write to him,” cried Alice, eagerly, “and tell him he is to come home?”
They talked this over all the afternoon. Paul had not listened to any of their previous entreaties, but perhaps now, if he were told how his father had melted, if he knew how everybody was longing for him! There were two letters written that afternoon, full of tenderness, full of entreaties. “If your reading is so important I will not say a word, you shall go back, you shall be left quite free; but oh, my dearest boy! surely you can spare us a week or two,” Lady Markham wrote. Their spirits rose after these letters had been despatched. It did not seem possible that Paul could turn a deaf ear to such entreaties; and by this time surely he, too, must be longing for home. The future had not seemed so bright to them since first these discords began. Now, surely, if Paul would but respond as became an affectionate son, everything would be right.
Markham Chase was situated in one of those districts where the post comes in at night—a very bad thing, as is well known for the digestion, and a great enemy to sleep and comfort. No one, however, had the philosophy to do without his or her letters on that account. The ladies naturally never took it in consideration at all, and Sir William’s official correspondence did not affect his nerves. Lady Markham and her daughter came early into the drawing-room that evening, while it was still daylight, though evening was advancing rapidly. The children, who felt severely the loss of Colonel Lenny and his stories, and were low spirited and out of temper in consequence, went soon to bed. Lady Markham retired into her favourite room—the large recess which made a sort of transept to the great drawing-room. It was filled at the further end by a large Elizabethan window, the upper part of which was composed of quarries of old painted glass in soft tints of greenish white and yellow; and which caught the very last rays of daylight—the lingering glories of the west. Soft mossy velvet curtains framed in, but did not shade the window, for Lady Markham was fond of light—and shrouded the entrance dividing this from the great drawing-room beyond. The fireplace all glimmering with tiles below and bits of mirror above, with shelves of delicate china and pet ornaments, filled the great part of one side, while the other was clothed with bookcases below and pictures above, closely set. One of Raphael’s early Madonnas (or a copy—there was no certainty on the subject, Lady Markham holding to its authenticity with more fervour than any other article of faith, but disinterested critics holding the latter opinion) presided over the whole; and there were some pretty landscapes, and a great many portraits—the true household gods of its mistress. There she had seated herself in the soft waning light of the evening. Alice just outside the velvet curtains was playing softly, now an old stately minuet, now an old-fashioned, quaint gavotte, now a snatch of a languid, dreamy valse—music which did not mean much, but which breathed echoes of soft pleasures past into the quiet. The soft summer twilight fading slowly out of the great window, the cool breathing of the dews and night air from the garden, the dreamy music—all lulled the mind to rest. Lady Markham made not even a pretence at occupation. What was she thinking of? When a woman has her boys out in the world—those strange, unknown, yet so familiar creatures whom she knows by heart yet knows nothing of, who have dipped into a thousand things incomprehensible to her, filling her with vague fears and aches of anxiety—of what but of them is she likely to be thinking? She was groping vaguely after her Paul in strange places which her imagination scarcely took in. When the other boys were away they too had their share in her thoughts; but they were still in the age of innocence at school, not young men abroad in the world. Where was he now? She tried to figure to herself a scene of youthful gaiety—one of the college parties she had read of in novels. She was the more bold to think of this, as she felt that her appeal to Paul just despatched would surely detach him, for a time at least, from all such noisy scenes. Lady Markham’s imagination was not her strong point. She was floating vaguely in a maze of fancies rather than forming for herself any definite picture, when Brown came into the room with the letters. The music stopped instantly, and Alice, rushing at them, uttered a tremulous cry which made the mother at once aware what had happened. Only Paul could have called forth that cry of trembling satisfaction, delight, and alarm. Lady Markham got up at once and held out her hands for the letters, while Alice ran to light the candles. “I can see, I can see,” Lady Markham said. The mere fact that the letter was Paul’s made it more or less luminous in itself and helped the fading light.
Sir William, seated in his library by himself, had been thinking, with a difference, much the same thoughts. With a compunction and compassion indescribable, he had been thinking of his son. Paul, with all his foolish democratical notions, was yet the most aristocratic, the most imperious of young men, knowing nothing of the evils he was so ready to take upon him, generous in giving, but to whom it would be bitterness itself to receive. Would Paul ever turn upon him, upbraid him, curse him? A shiver came over his father at the thought—and along with this a horrible sense of the position in which this haughty young heir would find himself, if—— How was it that such a possibility had altogether escaped his mind? He could not tell: he did not know how to answer himself. Forty years is a large slice out of a man’s life. Even had it been some one fully known and loved, it would be unlikely that you should think of him with any persistency of reference after a separation of forty years—and a child, an infant, a thing with no personality at all! But still, he asked himself, had he never thought when Paul was born of the former time, far away in the morning haze of youth, when a young mother and a child had called forth his interest? Yes, he had thought of it; he had thought with alarm of what had happened then; he had been more anxious about his young wife than young husbands usually are—but no more. It had never occurred to him that his child had anything to do with the other. Strange blindness in a man so accurate! He said to himself, “It will come to nothing; it will be arranged; all will be well:” but in the same breath he said, “Poor Paul! God help him! What would happen to Paul, if——”
He had not been able to do anything all day for thinking of this: he had kept his blue-book before him, but he had made nothing of it. Sir William, whose understood creed it was that public affairs went before everything, could pay no attention to these public affairs. When the letters came in, in the evening, he received them languidly, not feeling that there was anything there which could interest him so much as his own thoughts. When he saw Paul’s handwriting an unusual stir arose in his elderly bosom. But he put it down, and took up a letter from his chief, which would be no doubt of far more importance to the country, with a last attempt to conquer himself. But the words of his chiefs letter had no sense to him; he could not understand what there was to be so anxious about. Smith’s candidature for Bannockshire—what did it matter? He made a rapid and novel reflection to himself about the trifling character of the incidents which people made so much of; then laid down the solemn sheet with its coronet, and took up the letter of his boy.
A few minutes after he walked into his wife’s sitting-room, the letter open in his hand. Lady Markham was seated close to the great window against the dying light, with a candle flaring melancholy on a table beside her, reading her letter. Alice, behind her, read it too, over her mother’s shoulder: surprise and trouble were on their faces. Alice had begun to cry. Lady Markham in her wonder and distress, was repeating a few words here and there aloud. “I can no longer hope for anything in this country of prejudice.” “Going away to a new world.” They were both so absorbed that they did not hear Sir William’s entrance till he suddenly appeared, holding out his letter. “What is the meaning,” he asked, “of this, Isabel? What is the meaning of it?” The indignation of the head of the house, which seemed to be directed against themselves, brought the two ladies with a sudden shock out of their own private dismay, and gave them a new part to play. Their hearts still quivering with the sudden blow which Paul’s disclosure had given them, they still turned in a moment into apologists and defenders of Paul.
“What is it?—from Paul, William? he has written to you too,” said Lady Markham, with trembling lips.
“What does it mean?” cried Sir William. “He is going off, he says—away—to Australia or New Zealand, or somewhere. What does it mean? No doubt he takes you into his confidence. If you have known of this intention long you ought to have let me know.”
“I am as much overwhelmed as you can be, William. I have just got a letter.” Lady Markham stopped, her lips trembling. “Oh, Paul, my boy! He cannot mean it,” she said. “It must be some fancy of the moment. At his age everything is exaggerated. William, William, something must be done. We must go to him and save him.”
“Save him! from what are we to save him?” Sir William began to pace up and down with impatience and perplexity. He was not so angry (they thought) as they had feared. He was anxious, unhappy, as they were, though querulous too. “What is the meaning of it? Follies like this do not spring up all at once. You must have seen it coming on. You must know what it means. What has he been writing to you about lately? Is there—any woman——?”
“William!” cried his wife.
“Well!—Alice, run away; we can discuss this better without you.—Well! it need not be anything criminal or vicious, though of course that is what at once you imagine it to be. Has he spoken of any one? Has he ever—— No, he would not do that. He is a fool,” cried the anxious father; “he is capable of any nonsense. But it need not necessarily be anything that is vicious—from your point of view.”
Alice had not gone away. She shrank behind her mother into the dim corner, yet to her own consciousness stood confronting her brother’s accuser with a resolute countenance, from which the colour had all gone out. Her blue eyes were open wide with horror yet denial. Whatever Paul might have done she was ready to defend him; although the possibility of any such wrongdoing went through her like a sword of fire. The light of the candle flickered upon her faintly, showing scarcely anything but her attitude, partially relieved against the lightness of the window—a slim, straight, indignant figure drawn up and set in defence.
“He has not written often lately,” said Lady Markham, faltering; “but oh, William, it is not possible; he is not capable——”
“What do you know about it” cried Sir William, almost roughly. “How can you tell what he is capable of? A young man will go from a house like this, from his mother’s side, and will find pleasure—actual pleasure—in the society of creatures bred upon the streets; in their noisy talk, in their bad manners, in all that is most unlike you. God knows how it is; but so it is. Paul may be no better than the rest. Alice, I tell you, run away.”
Lady Markham grew red and then deadly pale. She rose trembling to her feet. “Can we go to-night? Can we go at once?” she cried. “Oh, William, let us not lose an hour!”
“You know as well as I do there is no train after eight o’clock. Compose yourself,” said Sir William. “Nothing more than what has already happened can happen to him to-night.”
“We might get the express at Bluntwood—the train papa generally goes by—if we were to start at once” cried Alice, with her hand on the bell, her eyes turning from her father to her mother. The eager women on each side of him made the greatest contrast to the head of the house. Had Paul been dying instead of simply in a problematical danger, Sir William Markham would not have consented to leave his home in this headlong way, or take any step upon which he had not reflected. He waved his hand impatiently.
“You had much better go to bed,” he said, “and don’t worry yourself about a matter in which for the present none of us can do anything. I will go to-morrow. Sit down, Alice! Do you think Paul would thank you if you arrived breathless in the middle of the night? Try to look at the matter coolly. Excitement never does any good. I will go and see if he will listen to reason—to-morrow.”
To-morrow! It seemed to both mother and sister as if a thousand calamities, too terrible to think of, might be happening, might have happened, before to-morrow; and on the other hand, how, they asked each other with a pitiful interchange of looks, were they themselves to live through the night? No feeling of this description moved Sir William. He was very much disturbed and annoyed, but certainly it would do no good to any one were he to render himself unfit for action by foolish anxiety. Nor did he feel any of that vague horror of apprehension which filled their minds. He was a great deal more angry and much less alarmed about his son’s well-being. On the other hand, he was less sanguine; for he did not hope that Paul would listen to reason, as they hoped that by their entreaties, by their tears, by the sight of the misery his resolution would bring them, Paul might relent and give way. After a while Sir William returned to his library and to his blue-books, and the official letter which he had only half-read, which he had suffered himself to be so much influenced by parental feeling as to leave in the middle; and though he paused now and then to frown and sigh, and give a thought aside to the troubles of paternity, yet he went on with his work, and gave all the attention that was necessary to the public business, until his usual hour for going to bed.
Lady Markham and Alice spent their evening in a very different way; they read their letter over twenty times at least; they found new meanings in every sentence of it. Hidden things seemed to be brought out, emotions, penitences, relentings, by every new perusal. Sometimes these discoveries plunged them into deeper trouble—sometimes raised them to sudden hope. How little Paul was conscious of the subtle shades of meaning they attributed to him! They were like commentators in all ages; they found a thousand ideas he had never dreamed of lurking in every line of their author; and with all these different readings in their heads spent a sleepless night.