He that will not when he may: Volume III by Mrs. Oliphant - HTML preview

CHAPTER XIV.

AT last the year of the mourning was over. The Lennys, the good colonel and his wife, had come to Markham a few days before, and he was a great godsend to the boys, who were vaguely impressed by the anniversary, but could not but feel the grief a little tedious which had lasted a whole year. They were very glad to go out quite early in the morning with the colonel, not at all, as it were, for their own pleasure, but because his visit was to be short, and the keeper was in despair about the birds which no one shot, and which Sir Augustus was so utterly indifferent about.

“He wouldn’t mind a bit if the place was given up to the poachers,” Harry said. “He says, ‘What’s the good of the game—can’t we buy all we want?’ I think he is cracked on that point.”

“I don’t mind Gus at all in some things,” said Roland. “He’s not half a bad fellow in some things; but he’s an awful muff—no one can deny that.”

“He has not been brought up as you have been,” the colonel said.

While they stole out in the early morning, the old man and the boys, all keen with anticipated pleasure, Gus felt already the first frisson of approaching winter in the sunny haze of September, and had coverings heaped upon him, and dressed by the fire when he got up two hours after. Poor Sir Gus was not at all cheerful. Dolly’s refusal had not indeed broken his heart, but it had disappointed him very much, and he did not know what he was to do to make life tolerable now that this expedient had failed. The anniversary oppressed him more or less, not with grief, but with a sense that, after all, the huge change and advancement that had come to him with his father’s death had not perhaps brought all he expected it to bring. To be Sir Augustus, and have a fine property and more money than he knew how to spend, and a grand position, had not increased his happiness. On the contrary, it seemed to him that the first day he had come to Markham, when the children had given him luncheon and showed so much curiosity about him as a relation, had been happier than any he had known since. He too had been full of lively curiosity and expectation, and had believed himself on the verge of a very happy change in his life. But he did not anticipate the death or the trouble to others which were the melancholy gates by which he had to enter upon his higher life. When he had dressed, he sat over the fire thinking of it on that bright September morning. He was half angry because he could not get rid of the feeling of the anniversary. After all, there was nothing more sad in the fifteenth of September than in any other day. But Lady Markham, no doubt, would shut herself up, and Alice look at him as if, somehow or other, he was the cause of it; and they would speak in subdued tones, and it would be a kind of sin to do or say anything amusing. Gus could not but feel a little irritation thinking of the long day before him, and then of the long winter that was coming. And all the prophets said it was to be a hard winter. The holly-trees in the park, where they grew very tall, were already crimson with berries. Already one or two nights’ frost had made the geraniums droop. A hard winter! The last had been said to be a mild one. If this was worse than that, Sir Gus did not know what he should do.

The day, however, passed over more easily than he thought. His aunt, Mrs. Lenny, was a godsend to him as the colonel was to the boys. She made him talk of nothing but “the island” all the day long. It was long since she had left it. She wanted to know about everybody, the old negroes, the governor’s parties, the regiments that had been there. On her side she had a hundred stories to tell of her own youth, which looked all the brighter for being so far in the distance. They took a drive together in the middle of the day, basking in the sunshine, and as the evening came on they had a roaring fire, and felt themselves in the tropics.

“Shouldn’t you like to go back?” Mrs. Lenny said. “If I were as rich as you, Gus, I’d have my estate there, like in the old days, and there I’d spend my winters. With all the money you’ve got, what would it matter whether it paid or not? You could afford to keep everything up as in the old days.”

“But there’s the sea. I would do it in a moment,” Gus said, his brown face lighting up, “but for the sea.”

“You would soon get used to the sea—it’s nothing. You would get over the sickness in a day, and then it’s beautiful. Take me with you one time, Gus, there’s a darling. I’d like to see it all again before I die.”

“I’ll think of it,” Gus said: and indeed for the next twenty-four hours he thought of nothing else.

Would it be possible? Some people went to Italy for the winter, why not to Barbadoes? No doubt it was a longer voyage; but then what a different life, what a smoothed and warmed existence, without all this English cold and exercise. He thought of it, neither more nor less, all the next night and all the next day.

And no doubt it was a relief to the house in general when the anniversary was over. A vague lightening, no one could tell exactly what, was in the atmosphere. They had spared no honour to the dead, and now it was the turn of the living. To see Bell and Marie in white frocks was an exhilaration to the house. And it cannot be said that any one was surprised when quite quietly, without any warning, Fairfax walked into the hall where the children were all assembled next day. He had paid them various flying visits with Paul during the past year, coming for a day or two at Easter, for a little while in the summer. But there was something different, they all thought, about him now. From the moment when Lady Markham had been informed of that one little detail of his circumstances mentioned in a previous chapter, the young man had taken a different aspect in her eyes. He had no longer seemed the careless young fellow of no great account one way or another, very “nice,” very simple and humble-minded, the most good-humoured of companions and serviceable of friends, which was how he appeared to all the rest. Mr. Brown had judged justly from the first. The simplicity of the young millionaire had not taken in his experienced faculties. He had always been respectful, obsequious, devoted, long before any one else suspected the truth. How it was, however, that Lady Markham—who was very different from Brown, who considered herself above the vulgar argument of wealth, one to whom the mystic superiority of blood was always discernible, and a rich roturier rather less agreeable than a poor one—how it was that she looked upon this easy, careless, lighthearted young man, who was ready to make himself the servant of everybody, and who made his way through life like an obscure and trusted but careless spectator, rather than an agent of any personal importance—with altogether different eyes after the secret of his wealth had been communicated to her, is what we do not pretend to explain. She said to herself that it did not, could not; make any difference; but she knew all the same that it made an immense difference. Had he been poor as well as a nobody, she would have fought with all her powers against all and every persuasion which might have been brought to bear upon her. She would have accorded him her daughter only as it were at the sword’s point, if it had been a matter of life and death to Alice. But when she knew of Fairfax’s wealth, Lady Markham’s opposition gradually and instinctively died away. She said it was the same as ever; but while she said so, felt the antagonism and the dislike fading out of her mind, why, she did not know. His wealth was something external to himself, made no difference in him; but somehow it made all the difference. Lady Markham from that moment gave up the struggle. She made up her mind to him as her son. She never thought more about his grandfather. Was this worldly-mindedness, love of money on her part? It was impossible to think so, and yet what was it? She did not herself understand, and who else could do so?

But nobody else had been aware of this change in the standard by which Fairfax was judged, and everybody had treated him easily, carelessly, as before. Only when he appeared to-day the family generally were conscious of a difference. He was more serious, even anxious; he had not an ear for every piece of nonsense as before, but was grave and pre-occupied, not hearing what was said to him. Mrs. Lenny thought she knew exactly what was the matter. He attracted her special sympathies.

“Poor young fellow,” she said, “he’s come courting, and he might just as well court the fairies at the bottom of the sea. My Lady Markham’s not the woman I take her for if she’ll ever give her pretty daughter to the likes of him.”

“He wants to marry Alice, do you think?” said Gus. “I wonder if she’ll have nothing to say to him either?”

He was thinking of Dolly, but Mrs. Lenny understood that it was of Lady Markham’s opposition he thought.

“I would not answer for the girl herself,” Mrs. Lenny said; “but Gus, my dear, you have done harm enough in this house; here’s a case in which you might be of use. You have neither chick nor child. Why shouldn’t you settle something on your pretty young sister, and let her marry the man she likes?”

“No, I have neither chick nor child,” Gus said.

It was not a speech that pleased him, and yet it was very true. He pondered this question with a continually increasing depression in his mind all day. He could not get what he wanted himself, but he might help Fairfax to get it, and make up to him for the imperfections of fortune. Perhaps he might even be asked, for anything he could tell, to serve Paul in the same way. This made the little baronet sad, and even a little irritated. Was this all he had been made a great man for, an English landed proprietor, in order that he should use his money to get happiness for other people, none for himself?

In the meantime Fairfax had followed Alice to the west room, her mother’s favourite place, but Lady Markham was not there.

“I will tell mamma. I am sure she will be glad to see you,” Alice said.

“Just one moment—only wait one moment,” Fairfax said, detaining her with his hand raised in appeal.

But when she stopped at his entreaty he did not say anything. What answer could she make him? She was standing waiting with a little wonder and much embarrassment. And he said nothing; at last—

“Paul is very well,” he said.

“I am very glad. We heard from him yesterday.”

Then there was another pause.

“Miss Markham,” said Fairfax, “I told your mother myself of that, you know, and a great deal more. She was not so—angry as I feared.”

“Angry!” Alice laughed a little, but very nervously. “How could she be angry? It was not anything that could——”

What had she been going to say? Something cruel, something that she did not mean.

“Nothing that could—matter to you? I was afraid not,” said Fairfax; “that is what I have been fearing you would say.”

“Of course it does not matter to us,” said Alice, “how should it? Why should it matter to any one? We are not such poor creatures, Mr. Fairfax. You think you—like us; but you have a very low opinion of us after all.”

“No, I don’t think I like you. I think something very different. You know what I think,” he said. “It all depends upon what you will say. I have waited till yesterday was over and would not say a word; but now the world had begun again. How is it to begin for me? It has not been good for very much in the past; but there might be new heavens and a new earth if—— Alice!” he cried, coming close to her, his face full of emotion, his hands held out.

“Mr. Fairfax!” she said, drawing back a step. “There is mamma to think of. I cannot go against her. I must do what she says.”

“Just one word, whatever comes of it, to myself—from you to me—from you to me! And after,” he said, breathless, “she shall decide.”

Alice did not say any word. Perhaps she had not time for it—perhaps it was not needed. But just then the curtains that half veiled the west room were drawn aside with a fretful motion.

“If it is you who are there, Alice and Fairfax,” said Sir Gus—and in his voice, too, there was a fretful tone, “I just want to say one word. I’ll make it all right for you. You need not be afraid of mamma. I’ll make it all right with her. There! that was all I wanted to say.”

When Sir Gus had delivered himself of this little speech he went off again very hastily to the hall, not meaning to disturb any tender scene. The idea had struck him all at once, and he carried it out without giving himself time to think. It did him a little good; but yet he was cross, not like himself, Bell and Marie thought. There was a fire in the hall, too, which the children, coming in hot and flushed from their games, had found great fault with.

“You will roast us all up; you will make us thin and brown like yourself,” said Bell, who was always saucy.

“Am I so thin and so brown?” the poor little gentleman had said. “Yes, I suppose so, not like you, white and red.”

“Oh, Bell, how could you talk so, to hurt his feelings?” said little Marie, as they stood by the open door and watched him, standing sunning himself in the warmth.

His brown face looked very discontented, sad, yet soft, with some feeling that was not anger. The little girls began to draw near. For one thing the autumn air was cool in the afternoon, and their white frocks were not so thick as their black ones. They began to see a little reason in the fire. Then Bell, always the foremost, sprang suddenly forward, and clasped his arm in both hers.

“He is quite right to have a fire,” she said. “And I hate you for being cross about it, Marie. He is the kindest old brother that ever was. I don’t mind being roasted, or any thing else Gus pleases.”

“Oh, Gus, you know it wasn’t me!” cried Marie, clinging to the other arm.

His face softened as he looked from one to another.

“It wasn’t either of you,” he said. “I was cross, too. It is the cold—it is the winter that is coming. One can’t help it.”

It was not winter that was coming, but still there was a chill little breeze playing about, and the afternoon was beginning to cloud over. Lady Markham coming down stairs was struck by the group in the full light of the fire, which threw a ruddy gleam into the clouded daylight. Something touched her in it. She paused and stood beside them, looking at him kindly.

“You must not let them bother you. You are too kind to them,” she said.

Just then the post-bag came in; and Mrs. Lenny along with it, eager, as people who never have any letters to speak of always are, about the post. They all gathered about while the bag was opened and the letters distributed. All that Mrs. Lenny got was a newspaper—a queer little tropical broadsheet, which was of more importance, as it turned out, than all the letters which the others were reading. She put herself by the side of the fire to look over it, while Lady Markham in the window opened her correspondence, and Gus took the stamps off a foreign letter he had received to give them to Bell and Marie. The little girls were in all the fervour of stamp-collecting. They had a book full of the choicest specimens, and this was just the kind of taste in which Sir Gus could sympathise. He was dividing the stamps between them equally, bending his little brown head to the level of Marie, for Bell was now quite as tall as her brother. Their little chatter was restrained, for the sake of mamma and Colonel Lenny, who were both reading letters, into a soft hum of accompaniment, which somehow harmonised with the ruddy glow of the fire behind them, warming the dull air of the afternoon.

“That will make the German ones complete,” Bell was saying. And, “Oh, if I had only a Greek, like Bell, I should be happy!” cried Marie. The little rustle of the newspaper in Mrs. Lenny’s hand was almost as loud as their subdued voices. All at once, into the midst of this quiet, there came a cry, a laughing, a weeping, and Mrs. Lenny, jumping up, throwing down the chair she had been sitting on, rushed at Sir Gus, thrusting the paper before him, and grasping his arm with all her force.

“Oh, Gus, Gus, Gus!” she cried, “Oh, Colonel, look here! Gavestonville estate’s in the market. The old house is going to be sold again. Oh, Colonel, why haven’t we got any money to buy it, you and me!”

“Give it here,” said Sir Gus.

He held it over Marie’s head, who stood shadowed by it as under a tent, gazing up at him and holding her stamp in her hand. The little gentleman did not say another word. He paid no attention either to Mrs. Lenny’s half hysterics or the calls of little Marie, who had a great deal to say to him about her stamp. His face grew pale with excitement under the brown. He walked straight away from them, up the staircase and to his own room; while even Lady Markham, roused from her letters, stood looking after him and listening to the footstep ringing very clear and steady, but with a sound of agitation in it, step by step up the stairs and along the corridor above. It seemed to them all, young and old, as if something had happened, but what they could not tell.

Sir Gus was very grave at dinner: he did not talk much—and though he was more than usually kind, yet he had not much to say, even to the children, after. But by this time the interest had shifted in those changeable young heads to Fairfax, who was the last novelty, “engaged to” Alice, a piece of news which made Bell and Marie tremulous with excitement, and excited an instinctive opposition in Roland and Harry. But when the evening was over Gus requested an interview with Lady Markham, and conducted her with great solemnity to the library, though it was a room he did not love. There he placed himself in front of the fire, contemplating her with a countenance quite unlike his usual calm.

“I have something very important to tell you,” he said. “I have taken a resolution, Lady Markham.” And in every line of the little baronet’s figure it might be seen how determined this resolution was.

“Tell me what it is,” Lady Markham said, as he seemed to want her to say something. And then Sir Gus cleared his throat as if he were about to deliver a speech.

“It is—but first let me tell you that I promised to make it all right for those young people, Alice and Fairfax. I hope you’ll let them be happy. It seems to me that to be happy when you are young, when you can have it is the best thing. I promise to make it all right with you. I’ll settle upon her whatever you think necessary.”

“You have a heart of gold,” said Lady Markham, much moved, “and they will be as grateful to you as if they wanted it. Mr. Fairfax,” she said (and Lady Markham, though she was not mercenary, could not help saying it with a little pride), “Mr. Fairfax is very rich. He has a great fortune; he can give Alice everything that could be desired—though all the same, dear Gus, they will be grateful to you.”

“Ah!” said Sir Gus, with a blank air of surprise like a man suddenly stopped by a blank wall. He made a dead stop and looked at her, then resumed. “I have taken a resolution, Lady Markham. I think I never ought to have come here; at all events it has not done me very much good, has it, nor any one else? And I daren’t face another winter. I think I should die. Perhaps if I had married and that sort of thing it might have been better. It is too late to think of that now.”

“Why too late?” said Lady Markham. Her heart had begun to beat loudly; but she would not be outdone in generosity, and indeed nothing had been more kind than poor Gus. She determined to fight his battle against himself. “Why too late? You must not think so. You will not find the second winter so hard as the first—and as for marrying——”

“Yes, that’s out of the question, Lady Markham; and at first I never meant to, because of Paul. So here is what I am going to do. You heard what old Aunt Katie said. The old house is for sale again; the old place where she was born and I was born, my uncle’s old place that he had to sell, where I am as well known as Paul is at Markham. I am going back there; don’t say a word. It’s better for me, and better for you, and all of us, I’ll take the old woman with me, and I’ll be as happy as the day is long.”

Here Gus gave a little gulp. Lady Markham got up and went towards him with her hand extended in anxious deprecation, though who can tell what a storm was going on in her bosom, of mingled reluctance and expectation—an agitation beyond words. He too raised his hand to keep her silent. T “Don’t say anything,” he said; “I’ve made up my mind; it will be a great deal better. Paul can come back, and I dare say he’ll marry little Dolly. You can say I hope he will, and make her a good husband. And since Fairfax is rich, why that is all right without me. Send for Paul, my lady, and we’ll settle about the money; for I must have money you know. I must have my share. And I’d like to give a sort of legacy to the little girls. They’re fond of me, really, those two children, they are now, though you might not think it.”

“We are all fond of you,” said Lady Markham, with tears.

“Well, perhaps that is too much to expect; but you have all been very kind. Send for Paul, and make him bring the lawyer, and we’ll get it all settled. I shall go out by the next steamer,” said Sir Gus, after a little pause, recovering his usual tone. “No more of this cold for me. I shall be king at Gavestonville, as Paul will be here. I don’t think, Lady Markham, I have anything more to say.”

“But,” she cried clinging to her duty. “But—I don’t know what to say to you. Gus—Gus!”

“I have made up my mind,” said the little gentleman with great dignity, and after that there was not another word to say.

But there was a great convulsion in Markham when Sir Gus went away. The children were inconsolable. And Dolly stood by the Rectory gate when his carriage went past to the railway with the tears running down her cheeks. He had the carriage stopped at that last moment, and stepped out to speak to her, letting his fur cloak fall on the road.

“Marry Paul, my dear,” he said, “that will be a great deal better than if you had married me. But you may give me a kiss before I go away.”

There was a vague notion in Sir Gus’s mind that little Dolly had wanted to marry him, but that he had discouraged the idea. He spoke in something of the same voice to the children as they saw him go away, watched him driving off. “I can’t take you with me,” he said, “but you shall come and see me.” And so, with great dignity and satisfaction, Sir Gus went away.

Thus Paul Markham had his property again when he had given up all thought of it; but the little gentleman who is the greatest man in Barbadoes has not the slightest intention of dying to oblige him, and in all likelihood the master of Markham will never be Sir Paul.

THE END.