IT would have been difficult to imagine a more embarrassed and embarrassing party than were the Markham family, when they assembled to dinner that evening. Sir Gus and the little girls had met Fairfax going down the avenue, and had tried every persuasion in their power to induce him to return with them; but he would not do so. “I am coming back to-morrow,” he said; but for this evening he was bound for the Markham Arms, where he had been before, and nothing would move him from his determination.
When Gus went into the drawing-room with his little companions, the tea was found there, all alone in solitary dignity; the table set out, the china and silver shining, the little kettle emitting cheerful puffs of steam, but no one visible. What can be more dismal than this ghost of the cheerfullest of refreshments—the tea made and waiting, but not a woman to be seen? It impressed this innocent group with a sense of misfortune.
“Where can they be?” Bell cried; and she ran upstairs, sending her summons before her: “Mamma—mamma—please come to tea.”
By and by, however, Bell came down looking extremely grave.
“Mamma has a headache,” she said. This was a calamity almost unknown at Markham. “And Alice has a headache too,” she added, after a moment’s pause.
Bell’s looks were very serious, and the occasion could scarcely be called less than tragical. The little girls themselves had to make Gus’s tea—they did it, as it were, in a whisper—one putting in the sugar, the other burning her fingers with the tea-pot. It was not like afternoon tea at all, but like some late meal in the schoolroom when Mademoiselle had a headache. It was only Mademoiselle who was given to headache at Markham. It was Brown who told Sir Augustus of Paul’s arrival. Lady Markham had been wounded by Brown’s behaviour from the first. He had not clung to the “family” to which he had expressed so much devotion. He had gone over at once to the side of the new master of the house. He had felt no indignation towards the interloper, nor any partisanship on behalf of Paul. He came up now with his most obsequious air, as Gus came out of the drawing-room.
“I beg your pardon, Sir Augustus, but Mr. Paul has come.”
“Oh, he has come, has he?” Gus said.
Brown stood respectfully ready, as if he would undertake at the next word to turn Mr. Paul out of the house; no wonder Lady Markham was indignant. Gus understood it all now—the headaches and the deserted tea-table. No doubt the mother and sister were with Paul, comforting and consoling him. He gave forth a little sigh when he thought of it. Whatever might happen, no one would ever console him in that way. Paul had always the better of him, even when disinherited. But when they went into the drawing-room before dinner, he was very anxious to be friendly to Paul. He went up to him holding out his hand.
“I am very glad that we meet like this,” he said. “Your mother has taken me in, for which I am grateful to her; and I am very glad that we have met. I hope you will not think any worse of me than you can help.”
“I do not think worse of you at all,” Paul said, briefly; but he would not enter into conversation. And the whole party were silent. Whether it was the influence of the son’s return, who was nothing now but a secondary person in the house where he had been the chief, or whether there was any other cause beside, Gus could not tell. Even the mother and daughter did not talk to each other. When dinner was over, and Mr. Brown, with his too observant eyes, was got rid of, the forlorn little stranger, who was the new baronet, the conqueror, the master of the situation, could almost have wept, so lonely and left out did he feel.
“Is anything going to happen?” he said. “I know I am no better than an outsider among you, but I would like to enter into everything that concerns you, if you would let me. Is anything going to happen?”
“I don’t know of anything that is going to happen,” said Paul; and the ladies said nothing. There was no longer that intercourse of looks between them, of half-words and rapid allusions, which Gus admired. They sat, each wrapped as in a cloud of her own. And rarely had a night of such confused melancholy and depression been spent at Markham. Alice, who feared to encounter any examination by her mother, went upstairs again, scarcely entering the drawing-room at all. And Lady Markham sat alone amid all the soft, yet dazzling, lights, which again seemed to blaze as they had blazed when Sir William was dying, suggesting the tranquil household peace which seemed now over for ever. Was it over for ever? The very room in which she was seated was hers no longer. Her son was hers no longer, but about to be lost to her—separated by wide seas, and still more surely by other associations, and the severance of the heart. And even Alice—Lady Markham could not reconcile herself to the thought that while her husband was dying, and she watching by his side, Alice had allowed herself to be drawn into a new life and new thoughts. It seemed an impiety to him who was gone. Everything was impiety to him: the stranger in his place, though that stranger was his son; the shattering of his image, though it was his own hand that had done it; the dispersion of his children. Thank God! three were still the little ones. She thought, with a forlorn pang in her heart, that she would withdraw herself with them to the contracted life of the Dower-house, and there reconstruct her domestic temple. Bell and Marie, Harry and Roland, would retain the idea of their father unimpaired, as Paul and Alice could not do. But what does it matter that all is well with the others when one of your children is in trouble? it is always the lean kine that swallow up those that are fat and flourishing. Her heart was so sore with the present that she could not console herself with the future. How could it be that Job was comforted with other sons and daughters, instead of those he had lost? How many a poor creature has wondered over this! Can one make up for another? Lady Markham sat all alone, half suffocated with unshed tears. Paul was going away, and she had not the courage to go to Alice, to question her, to hear that in heart she also had gone away. Thus she sat disconsolate in the drawing-room, while Gus took possession of the library. The poor little gentleman was still sadder than Lady Markham; not so unhappy, but sadder, not knowing what to do with himself. The long evening alone appalled him. He took a book, but he was not very fond of reading. The children had gone to bed. He went to the window once, and, looking out, saw a red spark, moving about among the trees, of Paul’s cigar. Probably, if he joined him, it would only be to feel more the enormity of his own existence. Gus went back to his chair, and drawing himself close to the fire (which Mr. Brown had caused to be lighted, reflecting that Sir Augustus was a foreigner, and might feel chilly), fell asleep there, and so spent a forlorn evening all by himself. Was this what he had come to England for, to struggle for his rights, and make everybody unhappy? It was not a very lofty end after all.
And next day there was so much to be settled. Paul was astir early, excited and restless, he could not tell why. It seemed to him that one way or other his fate was to be settled that day. If Janet Spears clung to him, if she insisted on keeping her hold upon him, what was he to do? He went down very early to the village, wandering about all the places he had known. He had never been very genial in his manners with the poor people, but yet he had been known to them all his life, and received salutations on all sides. Some of them still called him Sir Paul. They knew he was not his father’s successor—that there was another and altogether new name in the Markham family—but the good rustics, many of them, could not make out how, once having been Sir Paul to their certain consciousness, he could ever cease to bear that title. The name brought back to the young man’s mind the flash of finer feeling, the subdued and sorrowful elation with which he had walked about these quiet roads on the morning of his father’s funeral. He had meant to lead a noble life among these ancestral woods. All that his father was and more, he had intended to be. He had meant to show his gratitude for having escaped from the snare of those follies of his youth which had nearly cast him away, by tolerance and help to those who were like himself. In politics, in the management of the people immediately within his influence, he had meant to give the world assurance of a man. But now that was all over. In his place was poor little Gus: and he himself had neither influence nor power. What a change it was! He strayed into the churchyard to his father’s grave, still covered with flowers, and then—why not?—he thought he would go up to the rectory and ask them to give him some breakfast. Though he did not care enough for Gus to avoid his presence, yet it was a restraint; there never, he thought, could be any true fellowship between them. He went and tapped at the window of the breakfast-room which he knew so well, and where Dolly was making the tea. She opened it to him with a little cry of pleasure. Dolly had not made any pretence of putting on mourning when Sir William died, but ever since she had worn her black frock; nobody could reproach her with encroaching upon the privileges of the family by this, for a black frock was what any one might wear; but Paul, who was ignorant, was touched by her dress. She had been looking pale when she stood over the table with the tea-caddy, but when she saw who it was Dolly bloomed like a winter-rose. It was October now, the leaves beginning to fall, and a little fire made the room bright, though the weather was not yet cold enough for fires. Paul had never once considered himself in love with Dolly in the old days. Perhaps it was only the contrast between her and Janet Spears that moved him now. He knew that one way or other the question about Janet Spears would have to be concluded before the day was done; and this consciousness made Dolly fairer and sweeter to him than ever she had been before.
And the rector was very glad to see Paul. He understood the young man’s early visit at once. Mr. Stainforth had never entertained any doubt on the subject. To talk over his affairs with a man of experience and good sense must be a very different thing from discussing them with ladies, however sensible; and he plunged into good advice to the young man almost before he began his tea.
“There is one thing I am certain you ought to do,” Mr. Stainforth said, “I told your mother so yesterday. I am an old man and I cannot stand long in any one’s way. Paul, you must take orders; that is what you must do: and succeed me in the living. It is a thing which has always been considered an excellent provision for a second son; among your own people—and you know that this is an excellent house. Dolly will show you all over it. For a man of moderate tastes it is as good as Markham, and not expensive to keep up. And as for the duty, depend upon it, my dear boy, you would find no difficulty about that. Why, Dolly does the most part of the parish work. Of course you could not have Dolly,” said the old man, at his ease, not thinking of how the young ones felt, “but somebody would turn up. It is a good position and it is not a hard life. As soon as I heard what had happened I said to myself at once, the living is the very thing for Paul.”
Paul could not help a furtive glance round him, a momentary review of the position, a rapid imperceptible flash of his eyes towards Dolly, who sat very demurely in front of the tea-urn. How glad she was of that tea-urn! But he shook his head.
“I am afraid I shall not be able to settle myself so easily as that,” he said.
“But why not, why not?” asked the old man; and he went on expatiating upon the advantages of this step, “I would retire as soon as you were ready. I have often thought of retiring. It is Dolly rather than I that has wanted to remain. Dolly seems to think that she cannot live away from Markham Royal.”
“Oh, no, papa,” Dolly cried, “it was only because there was no reason. I could live—anywhere.”
“I know what you will do,” said the old man, “when I am gone, you will come back and flutter like a little ghost about your schools and your poor people: you will think nobody can manage them but yourself; unless you marry, you know—unless you marry. That would make a difference. For the peace of the new rector I must get you married, Dolly, before I receive notice to quit, my dear.”
And he laughed with his old shrill laugh, not thinking what might be going on in those young bosoms. That Dolly should marry anybody was a joke to her father, and that Paul should have any feeling on the subject never occurred to him. He cackled and laughed at his own joke, and then he became serious, and once more impressed all the advantages of the living upon his visitor. The curious mingling of confusion, embarrassment, distress, and pleasure with which the two listened it would be difficult to describe. Even Dolly, though she was abashed and horrified by the two simple suggestions which the old man neither intended nor dreamt of, felt a certain vague shadowy pleasure in it, as of a thing that never could come true but yet was sweet enough as a dream; and because of the tea-urn which hid her from Paul, felt safe, and was almost happy in the thrill of consciousness which ran to her finger tips. They did not see each other, either of them: and this was a thing which was impossible, never to be. But yet it put them by each other’s side as if they were going to set out upon life together, and the sensation was sweet.
Paul turned it over and over in his head as he went home. It was not the life he would have chosen, but the old man’s materialistic view of it had for the moment a charm. The sheltered quiet life, the mild duty, the ease and leisure, with no struggle or trouble to attain to them—was it a temptation? He laughed out as he asked himself the question. No! Paul might perhaps have been a missionary after the apostolic model; but a clergyman with very little to do and a wife to do the great part of that little for him—no, he said to himself, no! And then he sighed—for the rectory, under those familiar skies, and little Dolly, whom he had known since she was a baby, were very sweet.
It was something very different for which he had to prepare himself now. As he walked towards home he suddenly came in sight, as he turned the village corner into the high road, of a pair who were walking on before him from the station. Paul’s heart gave a sudden leap in his breast, but not with joy. He stood still for a moment, then went on, making no effort to overtake them. A man and a woman plodding along the dusty road: he with the long strides and clumsy gait of one who was quite destitute of that physical training which gives to the upper classes so much of their superiority, his arms swinging loosely from his shoulders; she encumbered with the skirt of her dress, which trailed along the dusty road. The sun was high by this time, and very warm, and they felt it. Paul did not take his eyes from them as they went along, but he made no effort to make up to them. This was what he had played with in the time of his folly—what he thought he had chosen, without ever choosing it. What could he do, what could he do, he cried out in his heart with the vehemence of despair, to be clear of it now?
Spears had come to settle his accounts with Paul. In the course of the negotiation which had gone so far, which had gone indeed as far as anything could go not to be settled and concluded, he had received money from the young man for his share of the emigration capital. That Paul, when he separated himself from the party meant to leave this with them as a help to them, there was no doubt; and this was one reason why he had avoided meeting with his old associates, or ending formally the connection between them. And when Spears demanded that a place of meeting should be appointed, Paul had with reluctance decided upon Markham as a half-way house, where he would have the help of his mother to smooth down and mollify the demagogue. Spears had been deeply compunctious for the part he had taken against Paul in London, but was also deeply wounded by Paul’s refusal to accept his self-humiliation; and his object in seeking him now was not, as Paul thought, to reproach him for his desertion, nor was it to call him to account on the subject of Janet. Paul himself was not sufficiently generous, not noble enough to understand the proud and upright character of the humble agitator, who carried the heart of a prince under his working man’s clothes, and to whom it was always more easy to give than to take. Spears was coming with a very different purpose. With the greatest trouble and struggle he had managed to reclaim, and separate from the other money collected, the sum paid by Paul. It had been not only a wonderful blow to his personal pride and his affections, but it diminished greatly his importance among his fellows when it was discovered that the young aristocrat, of whose adhesion they were inconsistently proud, was no longer under the influence or at the command of Spears; and it had cost him not only a great deal of trouble to collect Paul’s money, but a sacrifice of something of his own; and he had so little! Nevertheless, he had it all in his pocket-book when he prepared that morning to keep the rendezvous which Paul had unwillingly given him.
Spears did not know till the last moment that his daughter meant to accompany him. She walked to the station with him, and took his ticket for him, and he suspected nothing. It was not until she joined him in the railway carriage that he understood what she meant, and then it was too late to remonstrate. Besides, his daughter told him it was Lady Markham she was going to see. Lady Markham had been very kind to her. It was right that she should go to say good-bye; “and besides, you know, father—” Janet said. Yes, he knew, but he did not know much; and Janet was aware, as Paul was not, that her father was far too delicate, far too proud, to speak on her behalf. He would scorn to recall his daughter to any one who had forgotten her; if there was anything to be done for Janet; it was herself who must do it. And Spears was so uncertain about the whole business, so unaware of what she was going to do, that he did not even try to prevent her. He accepted her society accordingly, and did not attempt to resist her will. She had a right, no doubt, to look after her own affairs; and he who did not even know what these affairs were, what could he say? They had a very silent journey, finding little to say to each other. His mind was full of saddened and embittered affection, and of a proud determination not to be indebted to a friend who had deserted him. “Rich gifts grow poor when givers prove unkind,” he was saying to himself. Undoubtedly it had given him importance, the fact that the richest of all the colonists was under his influence, and ready to do whatever he might suggest. Not for a moment, however, would Spears let this weigh with him. Yet it made his heart all the sorer in spite of himself. As for Janet, she had a still more distinct personal arrangement on her hands. They scarcely exchanged a word as they walked all that way along the high road, and up the avenue, Paul following, though they did not see him. In the hall, Janet separated herself from her father.
“It is Lady Markham I want to see,” she said, with a familiarity and decision which amazed her father, who knew nothing about her previous visit. Janet recognised the footman Charles who had admitted her before. “You know that Lady Markham will see me,” she said; “show me to Lady Markham’s room, please.”
Spears did not understand it, but he looked on with a vague smile. He himself was quite content to wait in the hall until Paul should appear. He was standing there vaguely remarking the things about him when Paul made his appearance. He gave his former friend his hand, but there was little said between them. Paul took him into the library which for the moment was vacant. It seemed to him that it would be easier to answer questions there where already he had often suffered interrogation and censure. And he did not know—he could not divine what Spears was about to say.
“When do you go?” the young man said.
“We have everything settled to sail on the 21st. That is five days from now.”
“I fear,” said Paul, “it must have been very inconvenient for you coming here. I am sorry, very sorry, you have taken so much trouble. I should have gone to you, but my mind has been in a whirl; the whole thing looks to me like a dream.”
“It is a dream that has given some of your friends a great deal of trouble. Take care, my good fellow, another time how you fall into dreams like this. It is best to take a little more trouble at the beginning to know your own mind,” he said slowly, tugging at his pocket. “But after all you came to yourself before there was any harm done, Markham. If it had happened in the middle of the ocean, or when we had got to our destination, it would have been still more awkward. As it was, it has been possible to recover your property,” said Spears, at last producing a packet out of its receptacle with a certain glow of suppressed disdain in his countenance. He got out a little bag of money as he spoke, and laid it on the table, then produced his pocket-book, which he opened, and took something out.
“What does this mean, Spears?”
“It means what is very simple, Paul—mere A B C work, as you should know. It is the amount of your subscriptions—what you have contributed in one way or another. I won’t trouble you with the items,” he said; “they are all on a piece of paper with the bank notes. And now here is the whole affair over,” said Spears with the motion of snapping his fingers, “and no harm done. Few young men are able to say as much of their vagaries. Perhaps if you had involved yourself with a higher class, with people more like yourself, it might not have been equally easy to get away.”
“But this is impossible! this cannot be!” cried Paul. “I intended nothing of the kind. Spears, you humble me to the dust. You must not—it is not possible that I can accept this. I intended—I made sure——”
“You meant to leave us yourself, but to let your money go as alms to the revolutionaries?” cried Spears, with a thrill of agitation in his voice which seemed to make the room ring. “Yes, I suppose you might have fallen among people who would have permitted it. (The strange thing was that most of the members of the society had been of this opinion, and that it was all that Spears could do to rescue the money which the others thought lawfully forfeited.) But we are not of that kind. We don’t want filthy money with the man away, or even with his heart away.”
The orator held his head high; there was a certain scorn about his gestures, about his mouth. He tried to show by a careless smile and air that what he was doing was of no importance, an easy and certain step of which there could be no doubt; but the thrill of excited feeling in him could not be got out of his voice. And Paul, perhaps, had even more excuse for excitement.
“I will not take a farthing of the money,” he said.
“Then you will carry it back yourself, my lad. I have washed my hands of it. If you think I will permit a penny of yours to go into our treasury apart from yourself and your sympathy and your help! I would have taken all that and welcome. I have told you already—to little use—what you were to me, Paul Markham. The Bible is right after all about idols, though many is the word I’ve spoken against it. I made an idol of you, and lo! my image is broken into a thousand pieces. It is like giving the thing a kick the more,” he said, with a sudden burst of harsh laughter, “to think when it was all over and ended that I would take the money! It shows how much you knew me.”
“Then it is a mere matter of personal offence and disappointment, Spears?”
“Offence!” he cried. “Yes, offence if you like the word—as it is offence when your friend puts a knife into you. The first thing you feel is surprise. Who could believe it? He! to stab you, when you were leaning upon him. It takes all a man’s credulity to believe that. But when it is done—” he added with one of the sudden smiles which used to illuminate his rugged countenance, but now lighted it up with a gleam of angry melancholy, just touched with humour, “you don’t take money from him, Paul.”
“Nor does he take it from you,” said Paul, quickly. “Spears, this is all folly. It is not a matter of passion, as you make it. Say I am as much in the wrong as you like. I did not know my own mind. I have had enough to go through in the last six weeks to teach me many things more important than my own mind. I can’t go with you; I have found out that—but what then? I don’t lose my interest in you; we don’t cease to be friends. As for stabbing you, putting a knife into you—that is ludicrous,” he cried, with an angry laugh. “It is like a couple of lovers in a French novel; not two Englishmen and friends.”
“I’ll tell you what, Paul,” said the other, taking no notice; “if all had been going well with you, why I could have put up with it. A place like this makes a man think. I’ve told you so before. It’s like being a prince on a small scale. Had I been born a prince I might have been a tyrant, but I shouldn’t have abandoned my throne; and no more would you, I always thought, if you once felt the charm of it. But when all that was over, Paul, when you had lost everything, come down from your high estate, and felt,” cried Spears, with an outburst of vehement feeling, “the burning and the bitterness of disappointment, that you should have abandoned us, and the cause, and me—your friend and father, then!”
He turned away, and walked from end to end of the long room. As for Paul, he did not say a word. What could he say? how could he explain that it was precisely then, when he had lost everything, that those strange companions had become most intolerable to him. They were bearable when his choice of them was a folly, and his own position utterly different from theirs; but as the distance lessened, the breach grew more apparent. This however he could not say. Nor had he a word to answer when Spears called himself his father. What did it mean? and where was Janet, whom he had seen entering the house, but who had disappeared? Paul’s thoughts veered away from the chief subject of the interview, while Spears, walking up and down the room, talked on. The money lay on the table, neither taking any further notice of it. It was found there by Gus when he came in an hour after, lying upon the table in the same spot. Gus thought it a temptation to the servants, and threw it into a drawer. He was not used to careless dealing with money, and he looked out very curiously at the strange man who was walking up and down the avenue with Paul, talking much and gesticulating largely. This was a kind of man altogether apart from all Sir Gus’s experiences, and his curiosity was much exercised. Was it perhaps an electioneering agent come here to talk of the representation of Farborough, and Sir William’s vacant seat? Gus stood at the window and watched, for he had a great deal of curiosity, with very keen eyes.