Wrecked in Port/Book II, Chapter VI
Chapter VI.The Rubicon.
Of course Walter Joyce was a hero of heroes for days after the ice-accident. Lady Hetherington for the time being threw off every semblance of insolence and patronage, complimented him in the highest terms on his bravery and presence of mind, and assured him that he had established a claim upon their gratitude which they could never repay. Lord Hetherington was visibly affected, and had great difficulty in thanking his sister's preserver in anything like a coherent manner, lapsing into wild outbursts of "Don't you know!" and explaining that it would be impossible for him to express the feelings and that kind of thing, under which he laboured. The gentlemen from the barracks, who had hitherto regarded "old Hetherington's secretary-fellow" as a person utterly unworthy of notice, began to think that they had been mistaken. Young Patey sent a short account of the incident to the sporting paper of which he was an esteemed correspondent, and made a mental note to ask Joyce to play in a football match which was about to come off, and of which he had the direction. Colonel Tapp not merely assisted in carrying Joyce's senseless body to the tent, whereby he became much damped with drippings, which he nobly ignored, but sent off one of the men for the surgeon of the depôt, and evinced an amount of interest and attention, very rare in the self-contained old warrior. Mr. Biscoe said very little indeed; he had been the only person close to the ridge of the broken ice, and he might have heard what Lady Caroline whispered in Joyce's ear, and he might have formed his own opinion of how matters stood from what he saw then. But he said nothing. His lips wreathed into a peculiar smile two or three times in the course of the evening, but nothing escaped them, and as he was smoking his after-dinner cigar in his study, he chuckled in a manner which was not to be accounted for by the perusal of anything in the Guardian which he was supposed to be reading, more especially as he dropped his eyeglass, laid down the paper, and rubbed his hands with intense enjoyment. Just before he dropped asleep, he said, "It's a thousand pities Joyce is not in orders! He'd have had Chudleigh Rectory when old Whiting goes, as safe as possible: old Whiting can't live long, and Chudleigh must be worth twelve hundred a year!"
"Mr. Joyce have Chudleigh? Why should he have had Chudleigh? What makes you think that, Robert?" asked the partner of his joys, from the neighbouring pillow.
"Ah! what indeed?" was all the answer Robert made, and was snoring in an instant.
What did Lady Caroline herself say? Very little. She had a slight access of fever for three days, and kept her room for a week. The first time Joyce saw her was in the library where he was at work. She came across the room with outstretched hand, and in a few very simple words told him she owed her life to him, and had come to tell him so, and to thank him for it. She was looking wonderfully beautiful; Joyce thought he had never seen her to such advantage. The usual pallor of her cheeks was relieved by a deep rose flush, her violet eyes were more than ever luminous, and she had departed from her usual style of coiffure, her chesnut hair being taken off her forehead, and gathered up in a huge plait at the back of her head.
"You recollect my first mention to you of the intention of having that dreadful ice-party, Mr. Joyce?" said Lady Caroline, after the first speeches of acknowledgment.
"Perfectly, it was in this room, almost where we are sitting now!"
"Don't you remember—I hope you don't, and if you don't, it's silly in me to remind you, though I can't help it—that I had been quizzing you about the way in which you remained devoted to your writing, and assured you that we should only attempt to tear you away from it, and to get you to join us on one other occasion before we went to town, and that was to this skating affair. It would have been but a poor look-out for one of the party, if you hadn't been there."
"You're giving me much greater credit than I deserve, Lady Caroline; and indeed during all the past week I've felt that I've been placed in a false position in the hero-worship I've received. It certainly happened that I got to the place before Mr. Biscoe, and I was in quicker than he, but that was because I was a little younger, and had longer limbs. But what I've done to be made so much of, I really don't know!"
"You've saved my life, Mr. Joyce—and won my eternal gratitude!" and again she stretched out her hand.
"The last is ample reward for the first, Lady Caroline! No other recognition is necessary!" And he took her hand, but he merely held it for an instant, and bowed over it and let it go. Did not even press it, never thought of attempting to raise it to his lips. Lady Caroline withdrew it quietly with a half-laugh. He was the coldest, most insensate, impassible man in the world, she thought; clever, and with a great amount of odd indescribable fascination, but a perfect stone.
He was not. He was a simple, single-minded man, unaccustomed to the ways of flirtation, and utterly uncomprehending any of the mysteries of the craft. He had felt naturally proud of the notice which Lady Caroline had taken of him, had written of it to Marian, attributing it, as he honestly thought it was due, to Lady Caroline's superior education and love of books attracting her to him for companionship. He was by no means an observant man, as but few students are, but he had noticed, as he thought, a certain amount of freedom in manners generally at Westhope, which was very different from anything he had previously seen. He ascribed it to the different grade of society, and took but little notice of it. He must, however, have been more than blind not to have seen that in Lady Caroline's conduct towards him at the time of the accident, there was something more than this; that in that whispered word "Walter," and the tone in which it was whispered, there was an unmistakable admission of a sentiment which he had hitherto chosen to ignore, and which he determined to ignore still. Walter Joyce was but human, and it would be absurd to deny that his vanity was flattered. He had a sufficient feeling for Lady Caroline, based on gratitude, and nurtured by general liking, to experience a certain compunction for her, placed as she must inevitably find herself by his mode of treatment of her, but regarding that mode of treatment he had never an instant's doubt. He had been brought up in far too strict a school of honour ever to palter with himself for a moment, much less with any one else. His heart was in Marian Ashurst's keeping, his liege love, and in not one single pulsation should it be false to her. All this he had thought out before the interview with Lady Caroline, and his conduct then was exactly as he had prescribed to himself it should be. He took no credit to himself for his coldness and reserve, nor indeed did he deserve any, for he felt as calmly and coldly as he acted. There was but one person in the world with power to make his heart leap, his pulses fill, to rouse his energy with a look—to cloud his hopes with a word. Why was she silent then? She could not know how critical the time might have been, she should never know it, but he felt that he wanted her advice, advice on the general questions of his life, and he determined to write to her in a way that should elicit it.
Thus he wrote:
"Westhope, Friday.
"My dearest Marian, I am still without any news of you, although this is the third letter I have written since I received your last. I know that you must have been very much, and very specially, engaged. I know, as you will have gathered from my last hasty few lines, that poor Tom Creswell is dead, and I feel that you must have been called upon to your utmost to play the part of comforter, and to bring your keen sympathies and busy brains into active use to restore something like a semblance of ordinary comfort from that disordered and desolate household. That you are the mainstay of the family in their trouble, as of course few would be, I happen to know. Did I tell you how? Mr. Gould, who is Lord Hetherington's principal business agent, showed me a letter he had had from you, written in Mr. Creswell's behalf, about the impossibility of the poor old gentleman's carrying out some sale of land, about which he had been previously negotiating, under the existing melancholy circumstances. It seemed so strange to see the handwriting, so familiar and so dear to me, addressed to another; treating of business topics, and yet conveying information, which was surely interesting to me, but of which I was yet ignorant. However, you had your duty to do to the people who had been so kind to you, and who had done much more than their duty by you during the time of your trials, and I, who know you so well, have no doubt that you have done it, not merely in the letter but in the spirit. I suppose that by this time the first shock of grief will have passed away, and that the household at Woolgreaves will be assuming something like its normal state; and I presume, therefore, that you and Mrs. Ashurst will be soon thinking of bringing your visit to an end, even if by this time you have not already entered upon the lodgings which you told me you had in view. I have no doubt that if this be so now, or whenever it comes, both you and Mrs. Ashurst will much miss the material comfort which you have enjoyed during the last few months. It is impossible that it should be otherwise, but you, at all events, have long had a clear idea of your future, and so long as you are with her I do not fear Mrs. Ashurst's becoming a prey to despair. The woman who battled so bravely by your dear father's side, is not likely to give way now that the heat of the contest is over, and a retreat, humble indeed, but sufficient for existence, is provided for her. I should almost rather fear the effect of the change upon you. I should very much fear it, if I laid much stress upon the opinions with which the last letter I received from you was rife, opinions breathing the very essence of worldly philosophy, but scarcely such as one would expect to find in a young girl's letter to her lover. However, I do not lay much stress on these opinions; I know that it is the fashion just now to affect a cynicism which is not really felt, and to ascribe to oneself faults and follies which have no substantial basis. I am sure that you must have become infected with this idea, and that you wrote under its influence, for nothing could be more opposite than your new doctrine to the teachings of your youth, and the example of your parents.
"It is time, however, my dear Marian, that we should each shake ourselves free from any little affectations or delusions which have hitherto possessed us, and make up our minds to look our position resolutely in the face. I say both of us, because I am perfectly conscious of having permitted myself to start in life as the victim of a delusion of a very different kind to yours. I was as sanguine as you were depressed, and when, on the day we parted, you had a notion that there was an end to all happiness to be enjoyed mutually by us, I had a feeling that I was taking my first step towards the premiership or the governorship of the Bank of England. I pray God that your idea was as baseless as mine. I know that my position can never be a great or a wealthy one, that all I ever get I must earn by my handwork, and I am perfectly content, so long as I have your approval of my steps, and you yourself as my reward.
"But we must not dream any more, Marian, either of us, and you, especially, must not suffer yourself again, for whatever reason, to be tempted out of your regular sphere. All your attention henceforth must be given to the joint interests which must be paramount in your heart. Life progresses, dear. How the months have slipped away since we parted! We must not let youth and health and all that is best pass out of it, and leave us still pursuing a flying shadow, and waiting for better days till we shall come together. Not now, or ever, will I take any step as regards my future without your counsel and consent, considering as I do that that future is yours as much as mine. But I want to be assured of your hearty interest and desire for co-operation in my affairs, Marian! I feel sure I have it; I know it is almost absurd in me to doubt its existence, but I have been so long away from you, and you have been so long without writing to me, that I long to read the assurance in your own hand. What would I not give—if I had anything, poor wretch!—to hear it from your lips, but that is impossible just yet.
"Now, what we have to think of is definite and pressing. I must give a decisive answer within a week, and you will see the bearing and importance of that decisive answer on our future. I believe I could stay on here for any time I chose. The big history-book, though I work hard at it every day, is as yet only in its commencement, and I am told that when the family goes to town next week I am to accompany them, and to devote my time in London to purely secretarial work, correcting my lord in his speeches, writing his letters, &c., while the history of the Wests is to remain in abeyance until the autumn. Everybody is particularly kind to me, and had I never 'lifted my eyes to my master's daughter,' like the 'prentice of old, I might have been very happy here. But I have other hopes in view, and a married private secretary would be impossible. It's lucky, then, that there is another opening—yes, Marian, a new chance, which I think promises, splendidly promises, to realise all we have hoped—all I have hoped for, all you can have justly anticipated—speedy union for us both, under decent competence when united. Listen.
"My old friend Byrne, of whom you heard so much when I was in London, wrote to me some time since telling me that my name had been suggested, as the correspondent then required for a London newspaper in Berlin. I thought but little of it at the moment, for though, thanks to old Dr. Heitmann, in the dear old days at Hehningham, I knew myself to be a tolerable German scholar, I doubted whether I had sufficient 'nous' and experience of the world for the post. I wrote this to Byrne, and I think he was rather of my opinion, but the man with whom the recommendation rested, and who knew me from having met me constantly during those weeks I was living with Byrne, and knew also some of my qualifications, as it was through him I obtained those odd jobs on the press, declared that I would be the very man for their purpose, and has so pressed the matter that I have agreed to let them have my decision in a week's time. For that decision I come to you. They offer me a year's engagement to start with, with the certainty of renewal if I fulfil their expectations, and four hundred a year, with the prospect of a rise. Four hundred a year, Marian, and in a country where money goes much further than in England! Four hundred a year, and we united for ever, and dear Mrs. Ashurst—for, of course, she will be with us—with a son as well as a daughter to tend and care for her. Now, you see why I made the commencement of my letter rather sombre and gloomy, in order to heighten the brilliancy of the finish! Now you see why I talked about the lodgings and the privations—because there is no need to submit to any of them!
"Marian darling, you must answer this instantly! I have no doubt as to the tone of your reply, but I can do nothing until I get it, and time presses. Don't be afraid of any ill-feeling on the part of Lord Hetherington or any one here. I have been able to render them something of a service. I will tell you about it when we meet—and they will all be delighted at anything which brings good fortune to me. And now good-bye! Think how little time now before I shall hold you in my arms! Write at once! God bless you, now and ever.
"Your Walter."
Sunday morning at Woolgreaves. Bright, splendid sunshine, the frost all gone, and nature renovated by her six months' sleep asserting herself in green bud and lovely almond blossom, and fresh sprouting herbage on every side. Far away on the horizon lay Brocksopp, the week-day smoke cloud, which no wind dispelled, yet hovering like a heavy pall over its sabbath stillness; but the intervening landscape was fresh, and fine, and calculated to inspire peaceful thoughts and hopeful aspirations in all who looked on it. Such thoughts and such aspirations the contemplation of the scene inspired in old Mrs. Ashurst, who sat propped up by pillows in a large easy-chair in her sitting-room, gazing out of the window, looking at nothing, but enjoying everything with the tranquil serenity of old age. For several years past there had not been much life in the old lady, and there was very little now; her vital powers, never very strong, had been decaying slowly but surely, and Dr. Osborne knew that the time was not far distant, when the widow of his old friend would be called away to rejoin the husband she had so dearly loved, in the Silent Land.
"A case of gradual decay, my dear sir," said the little doctor, who had been up all night, bringing the heir of a neighbouring squire into the world, and who had stopped at Woolgreaves on his way home, and asked for breakfast—a meal which he was then taking in company with his host. "What we call the vis vitæ quietly giving way."
"And by what I gather from you, doctor, I fear our old friend will not be much longer with us?"
"It is impossible to say, but I should think not! Sad thing for the daughter; she's very much attached to her mother, and will feel the loss very much. Wonderful girl that, sir!"
"Miss Ashurst? She is, indeed!" said Mr. Creswell, abstractedly.
"Such a clever head, such individuality, such dominant will! Let her make up her mind to a thing and you may consider it done! Charming girl, too; simple, unaffected, affectionate—dear me! I think I can see her now, in frilled trousers, bowling a hoop round the schoolhouse garden, and poor Ashurst pointing her out to me through the window! Poor Ashurst! dear me!"
Dr. Osborne pulled out a green silk pocket-handkerchief ornamented with orange spots, buried his face in it, and blew a loud and long note of defiance to the feelings which were very nearly making themselves manifest. When he reappeared to public gaze, Maud and Gertrude had entered the room, and the conversation took a different turn. The young ladies thought it a lovely morning, so fresh and nice, and they hoped they would have no more of that horrid winter, which they detested. Yes, they had seen dear Mrs. Ashurst, and she seemed much the same, if anything a little brighter than last night, but then she always was brighter in the mornings. Miss Ashurst had gone for a turn round the garden, her mother had said. And did uncle remember that they must go to Helmingham church that morning? Oh, Dr. Osborne didn't know that Hooton church was going to be repaired, and that there would not be service there for three or four Sundays. The snow had come through on to the organ, and when they went to repair the place they found that the roof was all rotten, and so they would have to have a new roof. And it was a pity, one of the young ladies thought, that while they were about it they didn't have a new clergyman instead of that deaf old Mr. Coulson, who mumbled so you couldn't hear him. And then Dr. Osborne told them they would be pleased at Helmingham church, for they had a new organist, Mr. Hall, and he had organised a new choir, in which Miss Gill's soprano and Mr. Drake's bass were heard to the greatest effect. Time to start was it not? Uncle must not forget the distance they had to walk. Yes, Maud would drive with Dr. Osborne with pleasure. She liked that dear old pony so much. She would be ready in an instant.
Marian went with the rest of the party to church, and sat with them immediately opposite the head-master's seat, where she had sat for so many years, and which was directly in front of the big school pew. What memories came over her as she looked across the aisle! Her eyes rested on the manly figure and the M.B. waistcoat of Mr. Benthall, who sat in the place of honour, but after an instant he seemed to disappear as in a dissolving view, and there came in his place a bowed and shrunken elderly man, with small white hands nestling under his ample cuffs, all his clothes seemingly too large for him, big lustrous eyes, pale complexion, and iron-grey hair. No other change in the whole church, save in that pew. The lame man who acted as a kind of verger still stumped up the pulpit-stairs and arranged the cushion, greatly to the horror of the preacher of the day, Mr. Trollope, who, being a little man, could hardly be seen in the deep pulpit, and whose soft, little voice could scarcely be heard out of the mass of wood and cotton velvet in which he was steeped to the ears. The butcher, who was also churchwarden and a leading member of the congregation, still applied to himself all the self-accusatory passages in the responses in the Psalms, and gave them out looking round at his fellow-parishioners in a tone of voice which seemed to say, "See what an infernal scoundrel I am, and how I delight in letting you know it!" The boys in the school were in the same places, many of them were the same boys, and the bigger ones, who had been in love with Marian when she lived among them, nudged each other as she came in, and then became scarlet from their clean collars to the roots of their freshly-pomatumed hair. Fresh faces nowhere but there. Change in no life but hers. Yes, as her eye rested on Mr. Creswell's solemn suit of black she remembered that life had changed also for him. And somehow, she could scarcely tell how, she felt comforted by the thought.
They left the church when the service was ended, but it was some time before they were able to start on their way home. Mr. Creswell came so seldom into Helmingham, that many of his old acquaintances saw him there for the first time since his wife's death, and came to offer their long-deferred condolence, and to chat over matters of local gossip. Marian, too, was always a welcome sight to the Helmingham people, and the women gathered round her and asked her about her mother's health, and of their prospects, and when they were going to leave Woolgreaves; to all of which questions Marian replied with perfect self-possession and without giving her querists any real information.
At last they set out homeward. Maud and Gertrude started off at a rapid rate, and were soon out of sight. Mr. Creswell and Marian walked quickly on together, talking on various subjects. Mr. Creswell was the principal speaker, Marian merely answering or commenting on what he said, and, contrary to her usual custom, never originating a subject. Her companion looked at her curiously two or three times during their walk; her eyes were downcast, her forehead knit, and there was a generally troubled expression in her face. At length, when they had nearly reached their destination, and had turned from the high road into the Woolgreaves' grounds through a private gate, he said:
"You are strangely silent to-day, missy. Has anything happened to vex you?"
"To vex me? Nothing in the world. And it had not even struck me that I was particularly silent. It seems to me as though we had been talking ever since we left Helmingham."
"We? I, you mean. You have been almost monosyllabic in your replies."
"Have I? That was scarcely polite when you take the trouble to talk to me, my kind friend. The fact is that I have been in a kind of day-dream, I believe."
"About the future, Marian?" Mr. Creswell said this so earnestly that the girl looked up into his face. His eyes fell before hers as she said, steadily:
"No; about the past. The sight of the school pew, and of another person there in papa's place, called up all sorts of recollections, which I was revolving instead of listening to you. Oh, no!" she added, after a pause; "I love dreaming of the past, because, though it has here and there its dim hues and its one great and ineffaceable shadow of papa's loss, it was, on the whole, a happy time. But the future" and she stopped suddenly, and shuddered.
"You have no pleasant anticipations of the future, Marian?" asked Mr. Creswell, in a lower tone than that in which he had hitherto spoken.
"Can you ask me—you who know me and know how we are circumstanced? I declare IThere! I'm always apt to forget myself when this subject is broached, and I speak out without thinking how uncalled for and ridiculous it is. Shall we walk on?"
"Not for an instant. I wanted to say a few words to you. I was talking to Dr. Osborne this morning about Mrs. Ashurst."
"About mamma?"
"The doctor said—what cannot fail to have struck you, Marian, who are so devotedly attached to your mother and so constantly in attendance on her—that a great change has recently come over her, and that she is much more feeble and more helpless than she used to be. You have noticed this?"
"I have indeed. Dr. Osborne is perfectly right. Mamma is very much changed."
"It is obviously necessary that she should not feel the loss of any little comfort to which she may have been accustomed. It is most essential that her mind should not be disturbed by any harassing fears as to what might become of you, after she was gone."
Marian was silent. Her face was deadly pale, and her eyes were downcast.
"There is only one way of securing our first object," continued Mr. Creswell, "and that is by your continuing in this house."
"That is impossible, Mr. Creswell. I have already explained to you the reason."
"Not impossible in one way, Marian—a way, too, that will secure the other object we have in view—your mother's peace of mind about you. Marian, will you remain in this house as its mistress—as my wife?"
It had come at last, the golden chance! She knew that he understood she had accepted him, and that was all. Mr. Creswell went on rapturously, telling her how his love had grown as he had watched her beauty, her charming intelligence, her discretion, and her worth; how he had been afraid she might think he was too old for her; how she should prove the warmth of his affection and the depth of his gratitude. All this he said, but she heard none of it. Her brain was running on her having at last achieved the position and the wealth, so long a source of bitter misery and despair to her. The end was gained; now life would indeed be something to her.
When they reached the house, Mr. Creswell wanted to go with her at once to Mrs. Ashurst's room; but Marian begged to be alone for a few moments, and parted with him at the door. As she passed through the hall she saw a letter lying on the table addressed to her. It was the letter from Walter Joyce.