Chapter XXXIX · THE BROTHERS

It was late in the evening of the same day. Eleanor and Michael were alone together in her drawing-room. She had not been left alone all day. Unable to bear the solitude and suspense alone, she had sent for Mrs. Parker, who, of course, knew all the story from Michael. The good lady had come, and remained with her during all the hours of waiting and terror. When Michael was announced, Eleanor had said she would like to see him alone, and Mrs. Parker had gone into another room. He had come in, looking both tired and haggard; for what had happened had struck him, both through his friend, and through the woman he loved. Though Roger had now no connection with Ada, Michael knew him too well to suppose for a moment that he had, or could have, ceased to love her, in the space of five short months. The worst agony of separation might be over, but he could imagine what this news would be to the man who had loved this unhappy girl so tenderly and so faithfully. As for Eleanor, her sufferings were his sufferings now. And thirdly, there was himself and his own sensations in the matter. He had never admired Ada, and had always been sorry that she had been Roger’s choice; but it had never entered into his head 441to dream of such a dénouement to the broad farce he had seen played at the concert. It was not that he had credited Otho with being any better than he was, but it had not occurred to him to look at such a side as being possible to the affair. If any one had suggested it to him, he would have said first, that Otho would not dare to commit such a sin where a girl of Ada’s upbringing was concerned, and next, that Ada herself was beyond suspicion. The whole thing had burst upon him, and he was filled with disgust and horror, such as a man whose mind and life have been alike clean, must feel when he comes face to face with such a history, and finds it intruding itself into the most intimate relations of his own life.

Summoning up his courage, he had told her all that had happened. She had at first been standing. As he proceeded, her face went paler; her limbs trembled. At the picture of how he had found Ada lying by the roadside, the tears rained from her eyes. And when he ceased to speak she was seated at the table, her head buried in her arms, as if she would fain have hidden her face from him and from all the world. Indeed, a cloud of great darkness hung over her soul, and it seemed for the moment as if neither religion nor hope, nor any good thing could stand in the presence of overwhelming, triumphant villainy like this. Michael was watching her silently, while a conflict was going on in his own mind. She considered him the embodiment of strength and goodness, and believed implicitly in a most godlike mind which she attributed to him. And he knew she thought that of him. Women’s eyes have the habit of confiding such opinions, to the men concerning whom they hold them, when their tongues may not say the same things. 442Michael knew very well that he was nothing at all like what she imagined him to be; indeed, he perhaps would not have been what she thought him if he could. He was, as he knew, something a great deal more serviceable and useful in this working day world—a man, with a man’s wants and failings and weaknesses. And the desire which just then was stronger in him than anything else was, not to lecture this young woman, from the superior standpoint of a godlike intelligence, on the futility of her cries and tears, but to clasp her in his arms, and tell her that it was all very dreadful—even more dreadful than she in her innocence knew or could understand yet, and that he only asked her to let him take the half of all her trouble upon himself. That was his impulse, even as he stood here. And the conflicting agency, which beat back this desire was, the fear lest to do what he wished now might bear the semblance of entrapping her, of taking her unawares, and of making her need into his opportunity. Not very godlike this, nor very superior, but quite human.

‘All is of no use, then?’ she said at last, raising her face, tear-stained and disfigured, from her hands, and looking at him. Then, as if a sudden thought had struck her, she rose and came hastily near to where he stood.

‘How stupid of me to sit crying there, and thinking of nothing but myself, while you think of every one except yourself. You wish me to go to her, do you not? And I will go. I will be ready directly, if you will wait. I never thought of it. If he deserts her, I will not. If I can do nothing else, I can sit by her, and people can hear that I am there. That is always something.’

She made a step as if to go to the door. Michael caught her hand to detain her.

443‘No, no! I was thinking nothing of the kind,’ said he. ‘You must not go. Do you know—but of course you don’t—that she is perfectly insane at this present moment? She would not know you. She does not know me; and she would shriek with horror if any one showed her her child. She is in the right hands, and you must not go near her.’

‘Mad—but she will get better?’

‘I hope so—at least, perhaps she may.’

‘But she will recover her reason?’

‘Most likely, if she lives. But it may be a long time first.’

Stayed in her desire to go to Ada’s help, and as it were cast back upon herself, Eleanor stood drooping for a moment.

‘Have you had no telegram from London?’ he asked.

‘Oh, I had nearly forgotten. This is it,’ she said, taking it from the mantelpiece. Michael read—

‘Your message received and attended to.’ It was from Gilbert. He turned it over reflectively.

‘H’m! I wonder what that means.’

‘Can it mean that he is coming? I wish he had been more explicit.’

‘He would not wish to excite suspicion. Bradstane suspicion is easily aroused. If he did come, it would be by the south mail, which is due in a quarter of an hour. If you like, if you will allow me, I will wait with you till he comes; or rather, till we see whether he comes.’

‘You are very good. You are sure there is nothing more that I can do?’

‘Nothing, at present.’

‘Then shall we go to the other room, and stay with Mrs. Parker till we know what happens?’

444‘If you like,’ said Michael, slowly; and he felt as if some living, tangible thing were rushing on wings of swiftness towards them, so visibly, to him, did the moment approach when the veil between them should be rent aside. Yet he made a step towards the door, as if to open it for her; and she moved towards it too, and swerved unsteadily to one side, for excitement and suspense had told upon her and weakened her. Michael knew that she was proud, and that her pride impelled her to conceal what she felt as long as was practicable; but not the slightest sign or movement that she made could escape him. He was at her side in an instant.

‘No, stay here! Do not go into the other room,’ he said, taking her hand. ‘I will bring Mrs. Parker to you, if you like; but do you stay here.’

He had a firm hand, and a grasp at once strong and gentle; and as she felt her hand in it she paused again, steadying herself against the head of a sofa, and looking at him, half-affrighted, half-eager, at the look she encountered.

‘It was nothing—the weakness of a moment,’ she said. ‘I will conquer it. I must not give way now.’

‘I think you must,’ said he, as he released her hand, and stood before her for a moment. ‘You are faint; you are weak; you are broken. This battle is one for which you have never been trained. Give way; it is the best.’

‘And what is to become of me if I do?’ she asked, blankly.

Michael opened wide his arms. She looked at him for a little while, and then, with a low sobbing, as of one who is weary and broken-hearted, moved towards him as he towards her, and found her rest.

445* * * * *

They were still sitting together, when a ring sounded through the house.

‘That is just the time for the people from the south to come in,’ said Eleanor. And in another moment her maid had ushered Gilbert Langstroth into the room. Both of them noticed the expression upon Gilbert’s face as he came in. It was one of eager expectancy. Both saw the glance which fell from his eyes upon Eleanor. It chilled her; it was like the looks he had bestowed upon her when he had sent her the flowers, before he had preached to her a sermon on the necessity of evil to the development of good in the world. But from her, his eyes fell upon Michael, and his face changed. He was quite silent. She rose, looking at him tremulously.

‘You are very, very good. I did not quite know what to expect from your message,’ said she.

‘I knew you would not. I could not explain in a telegram. From yours, I gathered that some kind of storm had burst, and that you were in trouble.’

‘I am in such trouble, that but for him,’ she said, slowly, and stopped a moment, laying her hand upon Michael’s arm, and looking very earnestly at Gilbert, who had gone very pale. Michael had not changed. But as Eleanor paused, Gilbert’s eager look all faded, and he shook slightly from head to foot. The two brothers were regarding one another; for the first time for six years they were actually confronted. They must, to carry this business through, have some kind of intercourse and communication.

‘But for him,’ she went on, ‘I could have done nothing. I—a woman, could have done nothing to any purpose.’

446She looked from one to the other of them earnestly, imploringly, and still there was silence; till at last she sat down at the table, rested her arms upon it, and leaning forward said, first to one and then to the other—

‘Michael, you have spent your strength and your time this day in helping those who have never done you any good, in trying to save them from the effects of their sins, at least. And you, Gilbert, have come promptly here on no selfish errand. At my call you have come quickly to help me, who have no claim at all upon you. So good, and so considerate and helpful to others, will you go on hating each other; will you not be brothers again?’

The two men were looking into each other’s eyes, and Michael at last knew what that strange, potent sensation had been, which had shaken him on encountering Gilbert’s look that night, when they had been almost side by side at the concert-room. Not hate, not resentment, as he had fancied; neither one nor the other; but his old love for his brother, the ancient, inborn love, which not all the anger, enmity, and bitterness had succeeded in quenching. And the voice which addressed them both, went on speaking still, earnestly, tremulously, with passionate conviction—

‘If but one good thing came out of all this blackness, would it not be better than nothing—nothing but sin and sorrow? And there is so much grief and so much wrong in the world, that if men had not forgiveness to fight them with, I do not see how there could be any chance for happiness at all.’

There was another little pause. At last Gilbert said, in a low voice—

‘I never hated him——’

447Without quite knowing how, they found their hands clasped, each in one of the other’s, and Michael said, ‘Shall it be all over, Gilbert?’

‘From the bottom of my heart.’

‘Then let us say no more about it.’

Eleanor rose.

‘I shall leave you,’ she said, gently. ‘Stay here if you choose. I shall go to Mrs. Parker.’

Gilbert and Michael both made a movement towards the door, but something in Gilbert’s look caused Michael to fall back and yield place to his brother. He turned away, went inside the room again, and looked into the fire, feeling that he could afford to be very magnanimous.

Gilbert opened the door, and as Eleanor was passing out, he said to her almost in a whisper—

‘Only one word. You and he—are you—has he—have you given him any promise?’

Eleanor looked at him steadily, though without any of the old distrust, and then answered him in the same voice, but with a proud smile—

‘I have promised him everything. I have given my life into his hands.’

‘I am too late?’

She hesitated, looking troubled. Gilbert smiled slightly.

‘I should always have been too late, Eleanor?’

She looked at him appealingly, and inclined her head. He bowed to her, and she went quickly away. Gilbert returned to the room, and to his brother.

‘I shall never want to say anything to her again, Michael, that you may not hear.’

Michael looked at him, but said nothing, and Gilbert went on—

448‘Shall we have to see her again to-night—on this matter, I mean?’

‘No. Let us go to my house, if you will come. There is a black business to be settled, sooner or later.’

449CHAPTER XL

‘AMIDST THE BLAZE OF NOON’

Michael took his brother home, and so true is it that time and life can and do, if not wipe out, yet blur and deface the recollection of the sternest and most terrible past scenes, that Michael never once thought, as he opened the door, and ushered Gilbert in, of how that door had last closed upon his companion. Gilbert, however, remembered it—remembered many other things too, as he entered the familiar square hall, and looked furtively round at the well-known things which still furnished it. When they got into the library, some recollection of it all seemed to come to Michael too. Perhaps something in his brother’s attitude, and in the slow, stiff way in which he moved and gazed about him, recalled past scenes to his mind. He turned to Gilbert, took his hand into one of his, and laid the other upon his shoulder.

‘Gilbert, we have little time for going into old troubles, in the midst of these new ones; but, I say, let bygones be bygones. I am more glad than I can tell you to see you here; and I would like you to feel it your home again, if you can.’

Gilbert’s only present reply—though he had more to say, at some future date—was to wring the hand that 450held his. They understood each other again, at last—or, perhaps, for the first time; and as Michael said, there was no time for further explanations. He rang the bell, and ordered refreshments for his brother; and while Gilbert ate and drank, Michael sat conning over a railway guide, and jotting down memoranda.

‘How long can you stay, Gilbert? Over to-morrow?’

‘I could manage till the day after, if I wire to my head man to-morrow morning.’

‘That is well. Then to-morrow, I will leave you in charge here, and go over to Leeds, and tell Roger of this. If I began to write it, I should make a mess of it, I know; besides, writing is cold-blooded work, in such a case.’

‘It was all off between them, was it not?’

‘Ay. But it never need have been, but for that d—d scoundrel philandering round the girl, and putting her out of conceit with Roger. It is his doing from beginning to end, and I must say I should glory in seeing him punished as he deserves. I think he wants tearing to pieces. But don’t talk to me about it, or I shall lose all my self-control, and I want it every bit.’

With which he returned to the study of Bradshaw, trying to make out how he could soonest get himself conveyed to Leeds, see Roger, and return to Bradstane. And as he searched in the railway guide, to see how the trains were connected on the different lines, there came into his mind a keen sense of the grimness of the contrast between his errand, and the means by which he was going to hurry to Roger with his budget of ill-news, and back again.

Our modern contrivances, indeed, for speedily moving 451about from place to place, and for darting news hither and thither, have a certain appearance of haste and want of dignity when tragedy comes in question. And yet, it is surely a proof of the intrinsic might, of the victorious power of great elementary human emotions, that when they are every now and then called into play, in this decorous age, it is they that triumph, and not the comfortable arrangements which only take into account ease of mind and plenty of purse. Love and hate and despair go striding grimly or gloriously on, and live their lives, and strike their strokes, and sway the minds and souls of those possessed by them, and override the obstacles in their course, as potently now as they did in more picturesque days. Bradshaw and the penny post come in in a parenthesis, and the system of electric telegraphy powerfully supports them, so that we can send the news of our own catastrophes, or of those of our neighbours, with a speed unheard of a century ago, though even before then there was a saying that ‘ill news travels fast.’ Nay, these things, if rightly considered, appear conducive to privacy rather than, as might appear from a superficial glance, to publicity. For any one who reads a startling announcement in letter or newspaper, has the habit, nowadays, of calling it a canard, and of saying that it is sure to be contradicted to-morrow. And so it often is. But even if it be not, this beautiful system of Bradshaw, penny post and Co., has no sooner certified the truth of one calamity, than it is ready and to the fore with another, and a worse than the former one; which second tragedy an intelligently interested public devours, even if incredulous, with never-satiated delight; and thus the immediate actors in the events chronicled are in reality left almost as much 452to themselves and their own devouring emotions, as they would have been before the steam-engine was invented. The world has heard of your domestic drama, that is true; and its details have been printed in every daily paper throughout the kingdom. But the day after, it is provided with something much more remarkable than your twopenny-halfpenny calamity, and has forgotten in a week that it ever heard your name.

Some such train of thought was in Michael’s mind, as he paused to consider the sequence in which he should arrange his different tasks on the morrow. Gilbert’s voice broke in upon his reverie. He had risen, and stood with his back against the mantelpiece.

‘Michael, it seems that you and Miss Askam “understand each other,” as the phrase goes.’

‘Yes, we do,’ said Michael.

‘I’ll make a clean breast of it. Last year, I came down here with some curiosity to see this girl who had come and planted herself down with Otho. Knowing what he was, I was undecided whether she was very fast, or very silly. So I came prepared for a good deal of amusement. You need not glare at me in that way. I would bet something you had your own private bit of astonishment in the matter, too. Well, the very first time I saw her, I understood one thing—that she was neither fast nor silly, and the more I saw of her the more lost in astonishment I was. Do you remember that knight in “The Faery Queene”—I forget which he was—who came across a woman of her sort, and was struck dumb by her goodness, till

‘“He himself, long gazing thereupon,

At last fell humbly down upon his knee,

And of his wonder made religion.”

453It was something like that with me; and in a very short time I had made up my mind that she was the woman I would marry, if I could only get her to take me. And I had the best hopes in the world, for Otho had begun to conduct himself like a maniac, even then, and she speedily found out that I was the only person who had any control over him. Well, then came that night of the concert; a good many things came about that night, it seems to me. And when I saw you and her in the same room together, and you speaking to her, and her to you, I was certain there was something of the kind going on. Michael, I gave her up from that moment.... And yet, when time went on—it is nearly a year ago—and I heard of nothing between you, I began to think that, perhaps, after all, you had decided to have nothing to do with one who belonged to us, and I began to have a little hope again. When I got her telegram this morning, I felt a good deal of hope, and I frankly confess I was not sorry to hear that she was in trouble. I hoped that I could so serve her that I should be able to ask for a reward; and the shape I proposed to give it was, that we should pension off Otho with her money,—some of it, you know,—and that she should come to me, and never be troubled any more—if she only would. But you had forestalled me; and since it is you, I submit; but if it had been anybody else——’

He paused expressively. Michael was looking earnestly at him, a crowd of new emotions in his heart. This, then, was the secret of Gilbert’s conduct which had so puzzled Eleanor.

‘I should have told her long ago that I loved her,’ observed Michael; ‘but there was her money, and her connections. They were too much for me.’

454‘As far as money goes, you will be her equal,’ said Gilbert. ‘I don’t suppose she will let Otho starve, and I can assure you there will not be a great superfluity of means when his affairs are wound up; and now that this girl and this child will have to be provided for——’

‘If they live,’ put in Michael.

‘If they live—yes. Well, that will make a hole in her income, I can assure you. While, on your part, there is that money—Michael——’ he hesitated, stammered—‘that money that——’

‘I know,’ said Michael, quietly. ‘What about it?’

‘Why, I have done well with it. I have always hoped that some day you would not reject it. It is six years ago, and I have made the most of it. It is a good large sum now—larger than if——’

Michael gave a short laugh.

‘I can well believe that.’

‘And if I am to believe that you have forgiven,’ he added earnestly, ‘you will not refuse any longer to take your share—ay, and as much more as you like—so that you can go to her and fear nothing, even if she loses every penny she has.’

There was a pause. Michael at last said—

‘You must let me think about it. I cannot decide such a thing all in a minute.’

Indeed, he felt that he could not. And he was beginning to feel that six years ago he had been hard—as hard as some pagan or puritan, whose creed relentlessly demands an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. Quite a new feeling came over him with regard to Gilbert, who, it seemed, had worked for him for many years, and patiently bided till circumstances should allow him to offer the fruits of his work. Sweeping condemnations, 455he reflected, would be comfortable, very comfortable, to the carnal heart of offended man; but reasonable man must confess that scarcely ever are they just.

* * * * *

The months dragged on. Autumn fled by; winter had passed from off the face of the earth, and disappeared from the skies, but not from the soul and the mind of Ada. Gradually, after a long and terrible illness, her bodily health began to be restored. The death for which she had prayed, and which she had wildly begged Michael to procure for her, had stayed his hand. She was uplifted from the bed of sickness, but arose a changed being, altered and transformed apparently in her very nature. A melancholy, deep, black, and profound as the grave itself, had settled upon her—a melancholy which nothing ever seemed to move or change. She was not mad now, if she could still hardly be called sane, just because of this black cloud which rolled between her and other persons. She had no craze, and no delusion, properly speaking; she was simply dead to hope and joy, to every amelioration of the present, to every hope in the future. Eleanor studied her with awe and wonder, realising the mysterious nature of the human creature in her. For if Ada had lost great things, if she had fallen from a high ideal, had been dashed from a great height of purity and loftiness of soul, and so had felt herself irreparably stained and polluted, her present condition of apathetic despair would have been comprehensible to Eleanor, and she would have sympathised as well as pitied. But the things she had lost, and the loss of which had reduced her to what she was, were so small; at least, they appeared so to the other. It was 456not for moral and spiritual degradation that she mourned and refused to be comforted, but for material trouble,—vanity crushed, great hopes of advancement and aggrandisement shattered; her social position, such as it was, gone for ever, and humbler women who had been clever enough to take care of themselves, exalted above her. When they showed her her child, who was a healthy and beautiful boy, though not robust, she turned away in horror, with hatred in her eyes—the nearest approach to an active emotion which she had shown since her calamity. It was what Michael had expected to see, and he noted it down in his mind.

‘I wish he was dead, and me too!’ she said, looking coldly at Michael. ‘I think you might have put us both out of the way, Dr. Langstroth, if you had had as much kind feeling as people talk about.’

Michael told Eleanor that the child must be removed from Ada’s vicinity. Therefore, while the latter remained at the farm, in Mrs. Nadin’s care, Eleanor charged herself with the baby, and took it and its nurse into her house. She could have devised no surer means of healing the wounds, sweetening the bitterness, soothing the angriness of her own thoughts. The utter helplessness of the child, the terrible circumstances of its birth, its clouded future, appealed irresistibly to her nature. She grew to love the little creature with an intensity which surprised herself. She hushed it to sleep in her arms, or interrogated its large mournful eyes as they stared upwards, with long, vacant gaze into her absorbed face. And in this occupation she had time to ponder over all that had happened, and to try to shape her course in accordance, not with the dictates of anger and passion, however just, but with the laws of mercy and forgiveness. The helpless 457figure in her arms, whose warm and clinging dependence seemed to make everything more human and more endurable, softened her, calmed her, so that sometimes she spoke to Michael of what had happened, and of what might happen, with an insight and a depth of thought and feeling which surprised him, ready as he was to credit her with all manner of goodness and nobleness.

Her great desire, during the period in which the boy was under her care, was to get a marriage performed between Otho and Ada. Thorsgarth was not an entailed property, though it had always been the practice in the Askam family to arrange it and the succession to it as if it had been. If Otho and Ada were married, and he could be forced to do justice to this child, though he could never give him the name he ought to have borne, yet much evil would be removed, and great sorrow and heart-burning averted.

Strange to say, the difficulties in the way of this scheme arose, not with Otho, but with Ada. When the latter was well enough to leave the farm, Eleanor brought her to her own house, since Ada utterly refused to go home, saying she would kill herself if they took her there.

Through Gilbert, she and Michael had word that Otho was subdued, cowed, and changed; that it had become a sort of superstitious wish with him to have the marriage legalised. This gave hope to Eleanor. But Ada, when questioned, merely said, with profound melancholy, and profound indifference, ‘What does it matter? If he married me fifty times, he cannot give me back any of the things that made me happy. I do not care what any one thinks or says. Father says he will remove from 458here, and let me live with him. That will do as well as anything.’

So firmly was she planted in this mind, that after a time they ceased to press it upon her, trusting to time to work a change. At the end of March she was still at the Dower House, seeing only Eleanor, Michael, and her father, who sometimes came to visit her. Mr. Dixon was a broken man now. His wife’s anger took a different shape from his; she would have had him sell his business and retire altogether from a place where they could never hold up their heads again. But the poor old man was not thus to be torn away from his child, or from the place where she was. Mrs. Dixon indignantly refused to see the baby; but her husband frequently stole up to the Dower House of an afternoon or evening, creeping timidly into the room where his daughter sat, and taking a place beside her. And here he used to nurse his little grandchild upon his knee, trying to disguise from Ada the delight he could not help taking in its looks and ways, as, when he had once or twice called her attention to them, she had looked at him and at the child, too, in a strange way, of which Eleanor took more notice than he did; and, warned by Michael, she was ever on her guard. But it was not written that Ada was to fulfil her lot in any way such as they sometimes dimly dreaded. Her thoughts strayed within her darkened mind, and as she saw the spring outside breaking around her, and beheld also the looks and gestures by which Michael and Eleanor sometimes betrayed, amidst all the gloom, that they loved, and were happy, Ada might have cried also—

‘Oh, dark, dark, dark, amidst the blaze of noon!’

Most likely, the intelligence of a certain order which 459her woe seemed to have developed in her, read their fears, and smiled at them. They thought she planned nothing for the future, any more than she revived at any sign in the present; but in this they were mistaken.

460CHAPTER XLI

‘LET ME ALONE’

As soon as she had been able to brace herself up to it, about three weeks after Ada’s return, Eleanor had driven to Balder Hall to see Magdalen, who was, of course, acquainted with what had happened. While Miss Askam could not restrain her sobs and tears when she came to speak of these things, Miss Wynter maintained her usual impassive calm. What she felt about it, none could have told. She asked many questions which Eleanor, keenly feeling her right to be informed in the matter, answered freely; but she was very quiet and calm, and made scarce any comments upon it all, and let Eleanor go away, scarcely replying to the offers of friendship and sympathy on the part of the latter. Eleanor had mentioned Miss Strangforth, to which Magdalen replied very quietly—

‘Miss Strangforth is dying. I fear there is no doubt about that, though Michael would scarcely be likely to mention it to you in your other troubles. It is a question of time only, he tells me—and not a very long time.’

‘And then—you?’

‘I—oh, I shall get on somehow. I am not afraid.’

‘But promise me that if you are not decided, you will come to me till you know something.’

461‘I will see. I appreciate your kindness, but I can promise nothing,’ said Magdalen; but to the great surprise of Eleanor, she stooped her proud head, and lightly kissed her visitor’s cheek.

With this unaccustomed salute still tingling there—now hot, now cold—Eleanor drove home, with what cheer she might.

A short time after this, just about Christmas, Miss Strangforth died. Her place was empty at last, and there was to be one made for the heir to step into. Eleanor wondered what would happen to Magdalen, and at last received news through Michael. She was going to remain at Balder Hall. Mr. Strangforth, the new owner, was a middle-aged man, with an invalid wife. He was, of course, distantly related to Magdalen herself. He had a family of boys and girls, who wanted much looking after, and he had asked Miss Wynter to remain, and manage the household as she had always done. It seemed a strange post for the haughty young woman, who had been almost too proud to set foot outside her aunt’s park. She had accepted Mr. Strangforth’s offer, and said she would call to see Eleanor as soon as she had time. At present she was so busy preparing for the new-comers that she could not leave the house.

‘Oh,’ exclaimed Eleanor, ‘is he a nice man, Michael? Will he be kind to her?’

‘He is a very sedate, grave kind of man—almost austere. But he is a gentleman, and he will behave becomingly towards her, I am certain. He quite appreciates her devotion to his aunt, and told me he should always provide for her in a way suitable to her condition and his family, whatever that may mean.’

Eleanor was very thoughtful about this. She seemed 462to see Magdalen—and yet she could not believe that it would ever be so—growing into one of those women whose lives are all behind them; gradually becoming old and more stately, more monumental, as the years went by; so that at last no one would imagine, to look at her, that she had been the centre of such passions as she had caused, or moved in; so that no one but herself and a few others, grown old with her, would know how hotly her heart had beaten, at the same time that other old hearts had throbbed, which with time had grown chill.

And at this time, at the end of March, a change took place in the circumstances of all, and the marriage which Eleanor had grown so anxious for, took place—but not until a little later, in April.

Gilbert wrote to Michael, and said that he and Otho were coming to Thorsgarth; that Otho’s affairs were now in such a state that something must be done about them. He had, it would seem, run his course, and it was necessary to see what could be retrieved in his estate. They were, of course, coming very quietly, and would stay as short a time as possible, bringing the solicitor of the Askam family with them, as there were certain papers at Thorsgarth which it was necessary to overhaul. He wished Eleanor to know this, as Otho was still in his cowed and subdued state, and ready to go through the marriage with Ada, if she could be persuaded to it.

Eleanor waited till she had heard that they had actually arrived at Thorsgarth, and then shut herself up with Ada, and combated her objections in such wise, and placed the matter in such a light, that Ada at last exclaimed—

463‘Very well! Give me peace! Since you say it will do so much good, let us try it.’

The words haunted her hearer for some time, but she felt that her purpose was genuine. Some of the reproach would be wiped away, and the future of the child would at any rate be rendered somewhat more hopeful. She at once communicated with Gilbert and Mr. Johnson, and a special license having been procured, Otho Askam and Ada Dixon were made man and wife, in the drawing-room of the Dower House, one showery April morning. Eleanor noticed how, during the service there was a violent shower of rain, which beat against the pane, while the sunlight fell on the trees in the square outside, and how, at the sound of the falling water, Ada lifted her face to the window, and looked with a strange look towards the sky.

Eleanor found her eyes dragged towards Otho, by a power stronger than her own will. She was struck with the change in him. He had grown old-looking: his shoulders were bowed; his head drooped. He glanced from one to the other of them, with a shifty, cowed expression; and his eyes every now and then wandered towards Ada, who was perhaps the only person in the room who neither saw nor looked at him. When it was over, and Gilbert, who had been at his side through it all, took his arm to lead him away, he wiped the sweat from his brow, and looked all about him, and at Gilbert, and at Ada, with a white, scared face, and moved uncertainly, as if he could not see.

When every one had gone, except Mr. Dixon, Eleanor went to Ada, stooped over her chair, and said—

‘Now, Ada, the worst is over. You may have something to live for yet.’

464Ada looked at her with one of those prolonged, vacant gazes, which seemed to Eleanor to come from somewhere far on the other side of the tomb, and shaking her head, merely replied—

‘Let me alone now. I’ve done what you wanted. I am satisfied. Next time, I will do what I want.’

465CHAPTER XLII

HOW ADA SOLVED HER PROBLEM

It was a week after the marriage, and during that week much business had been accomplished, and many plans laid. Ever since that day, a change had been perceptible in Ada—a change which, by contrast with her late gloom, might almost have been called brightness. She noticed persons and things, and once or twice voluntarily addressed herself to others.

Gilbert had been in communication with Eleanor, on business affairs, and it was decided that Thorsgarth need not be sold, if Eleanor chose to make an allowance to her brother and to Ada, which she was very willing to do, so long as Otho agreed to absent himself from her neighbourhood and that of Ada, wherever they might be. He was ready enough to promise this. His fear and dread seemed to have turned into an indifference in which considerable irritability displayed itself. But for the strong head and hand of Gilbert keeping him in check, it seemed as if Otho, once secure of a subsistence, would have taken his departure from the scene, and left those behind him to settle his affairs as they could, or would. This, however, he was not permitted to do, but was kept on the spot until everything was arranged, the agreements drawn up and signed,—a ceremony which took 466place at the Dower House, in the presence of Otho, Eleanor, Gilbert, Mr. Coningsby of Bradstane, Mr. Palfreyman of London, and the requisite witnesses.

By the new arrangement Eleanor would be practically left with only two or three hundred a year at her disposal, instead of the ample income of twelve or thirteen hundred a year which she had hitherto enjoyed. In another state of things this might have troubled her, but now it failed to do so in the least. Discussing the circumstance one day with Michael, she smilingly said something about his being tied to a pauper, to which Michael replied in a very matter-of-course tone, that as soon as everything was settled, and Otho gone away, and Ada retired to her father’s house, he intended Eleanor and himself to be married.

‘The sooner you enter upon your life of pauperism, the better,’ he remarked.

Eleanor made no opposition; her feeling was one of thankfulness that instead of coming in the style of the orthodox lover, and asking her what she would like to do, he simply told her what was going to be done. Her trust in him was entire and without flaw or reservation, and from this course on his part she perceived that his trust in her was of the same nature as hers in him. She might have echoed the words of the heroine in Wuthering Heights,’ who cried, ‘Do I love Heathcliff? Why, I am Heathcliff!’ So Eleanor felt with regard to Michael. That which they had passed through together, the fate which after so short an acquaintance, had thrown them, across every obstacle, into the closest intimacy, had developed perfection of sympathy, and a oneness of heart and mind, which sometimes only comes with years of married life, sometimes never comes at all.

467On the evening of that day when the final settlements had taken place, Gilbert came to the Dower House, and related how all was decided, and how, the day after to-morrow, they were returning to town, Otho having consented to remain a day longer, as Gilbert had business to settle at the mills. These arrangements, and Ada’s prospective departure, were discussed openly and purposely in Ada’s presence on this particular evening, and though she did not speak, she seemed to listen attentively to what was said. By and by Gilbert went away, saying that he would see Eleanor once again before he left Bradstane altogether, as he had something that he particularly wished to say to her.

During the forenoon of the following day Michael called at the Dower House. Ada presently left him and Eleanor alone, but in a few minutes returned, dressed, to the surprise of both, in bonnet and shawl, as if she intended going out. Both looked up in astonishment. Ada’s face wore an expression of something like hopefulness. It was still so different from her former face, that scarcely any one would have recognised it who had been unacquainted with the history of what had happened during the last year. That is to say, it was now no longer the face of a girl, but the set, formed countenance of a woman who has suffered, and whose sufferings have hardened, not softened her. But to-day it wore a look of expectancy, almost of animation.

‘Dr. Langstroth,’ said she, ‘I’m going to ask a great favour of you.’

‘Are you, Ada? I am glad to hear it.’

‘It is, that if you’ve a little time to spare, you’d walk with me through the town. You see, you have that character that whatever you choose to do, you may do; 468you won’t lose any reputation by being seen with me. I—I’ve been thinking that when you and Miss Askam are married, and I go back to father and mother, I cannot bear the long days in the house there, as I have done here. It would drive me mad. But if I’m left to myself, I shall never have the courage to walk out alone. I thought, if you’d go out with me this once, just down the town, then perhaps I might not be afraid to find my way back alone, over the old bridge and up here again, if you do not mind.’

This was by far the longest speech Ada had made since she had been under Eleanor’s roof, and Michael watched her attentively as she spoke, and noticed that she did not meet his eye.

‘Mind!’ he echoed, rising; ‘no, I do not mind, Ada. I am very glad to find you disposed to make this beginning. Let us go. Miss Askam will spare me.’

‘Surely, Michael!’ said Eleanor; but she looked at him anxiously, for her keen sympathy told her that he was not altogether easy about this decision of Ada’s. She looked at him earnestly, and her fears were not lulled when she found that he avoided looking at her, though he waved his hand a little, and smiled, saying they should not be long.

‘Oh, Michael, take care of yourself,’ she whispered in his ear; to which he nodded, and followed Ada out of the room. Eleanor watched them from the window, and saw that they walked slowly.

Two minutes after they had gone, Gilbert came in.

‘You are alone,’ he said; ‘I am not sorry, Eleanor, for I want to say something to you.’

‘Yes, Gilbert,’ said she, and he was surprised when she took the hand he extended into both her own, and 469pressing it almost convulsively, said, rapidly, and with a kind of passion in her tones—‘Another time I will see you alone—whenever you like; and if you have any favour to ask of me, I swear I will grant it; but oh, Gilbert, listen to me, now. Ada has asked Michael to take her for a walk through the town, because she dare not go alone. I know he thinks she is going to try to do something dreadful, because she is not sane, though she seems so; he told me so. Perhaps to kill herself, or him. Who can answer for the fancies of a madwoman? I hate her sometimes.’

‘Well?’ he echoed, looking down into her upturned face, which seemed to blaze with emotion, and feeling a spasm contract his own heart.

‘Will you not follow them, Gilbert, dear Gilbert? For my sake, if it is not too selfish of me to ask it. If you will not go, I must. I cannot tell why I feel this agony of fear, but I do, and it masters me. To please me, Gilbert; and I will do what I can to please you, afterwards.’

She had pressed more closely to him, her eyes strainingly fixed upon his face, her whole frame trembling. Her agitation communicated itself to Gilbert, like some subtle electric thrill. Over his blue-gray eyes there was a kind of film, and a tremor in his voice, as he said—

‘For your sake, my sister ... but ... if anything hinders me from seeing you again to-day, Eleanor, good-bye.’

He stooped his head, and his lips rested for a second, no more, upon her brow. And then she was alone again.

* * * * *

Michael and Ada walked slowly down the sloping square, where they saw scarcely any one. Then, turning 470a corner, they emerged in the main street of the old town, which also sloped steeply downhill. The sunlight was streaming gaily upon this street; the shops were open, and many people were moving to and fro. In it were situated the house of Ada’s father, her former home; the schoolroom in which the concert had taken place, and several other public buildings—all clustering together, in homely vicinity, as they do in towns of this size. As they proceeded down this street they, of course, attracted notice. It was not a usual thing to see Michael walking in a leisurely manner down the town at that hour of the day. And it was more than a year since his companion had been seen in the places where her figure had once been familiar. People looked at them—came to their doors in curiosity, and gazed at and after them, and Michael knew that his companion was trembling from head to foot. Her face was deadly pale; her eyes were fixed upon the ground. But she neither hurried, nor faltered in her step, walking straight onwards, down the hill, and towards the mills. When they were nearly there, and the number of people who were about had sensibly diminished, he spoke to her, for the first time, quietly and tranquilly—

‘Now, Ada, shall we return? I think you have walked far enough.’

‘Not that way,’ she replied, in a fluttering voice. ‘I can’t face it again. We’ll cross the footbridge, and go round the other side, where it’s quieter.’

He humoured her, and they went through the dark passage, and emerged on the bridge.

‘Now,’ said she, ‘won’t you turn back, sir? I don’t want to keep you, and I can go well enough by myself this way. It is very quiet.’

471‘Yes, very quiet,’ replied he composedly. ‘I will walk round with you. My time is quite at your disposal.’

She hesitated for a moment, and he saw that she looked at him in a stealthy, side-long manner, of which he took no notice, openly. Happening to turn his head, he saw Gilbert just behind them. He wondered how he had got there, but felt a sense of relief in knowing that he was present, and obeying a sign of his brother’s hand, took no notice of him.

Midway over the bridge, Ada walked more slowly, raised her head, and began to look about her.

‘Why,’ she observed, ‘the river is in spate; that’s the rains up by Cauldron, I suppose?’

‘Yes,’ said Michael; and, indeed, there was a wild, if a joyous prospect around them. April green on the woods and grass, and April sunshine in the sky, and the river, which was, as she said, in spate, tearing along, many feet higher than usual, with brown, turbid waters, looking resistless in their swiftness and their strength.

‘Well,’ she next observed, in a muffled voice, ‘it’s far worse than I thought, and not better, as Miss Askam said it would be. It makes me sure that I’m right.’

‘Right in what, Ada?’

‘In what I thought about facing the people again.’

‘It is the first step that costs. In time you will mind it less. It is well that you tried it.’

‘Perhaps it is. It is well to make sure of things,’ said Ada, in a stronger voice. ‘But I’ll never do it again. I’ll never be stared at and whispered about in that way, any more. They would like to throw stones at me, if they dared. If I’d been alone, I daresay they would have done.’

472‘You wrong them——’

‘What does it matter?’ she said, coldly, as she stooped to pick a tuft of small flowers from the grassy bank of the river. Then she paused a moment, picking them to pieces, and seemed absorbed in reflection upon what she had felt in passing through the town. Suddenly she looked up at Michael, and said—

‘There’s one thing I should like to say, Dr. Langstroth. You are a man, whatever the rest may be; and I always knew you were; and it was because I always felt you were so high above me that I used to say such ill-natured things of you to Roger. I knew that you saw through me, if he didn’t; but you never betrayed me. However, it will be all the same to you. I can’t hurt you or help you, one way or another—so good-bye.’

With that she slipped past him, with a darting movement which eluded his grasp, ran down the bank of the river, stood for one moment poised for the spring she took, and the next instant he saw her swept like a reed, many yards away, down the giant current of the stream.

‘Fool that I was!’ he muttered, turning instinctively to rush down the stream, and if possible, go beyond her, before he plunged in, so that he could meet and intercept her. But Gilbert met him at the corner of the bridge. There was a curious look in his eyes, and his hand held back Michael by the arm, with a grip in which the latter felt powerless.

‘Your way is over the bridge,’ he said. ‘Go and meet us. Eleanor sent me.’

It had scarce taken two seconds to say and do; and Gilbert had plunged into the stream also. The current instantly washed both figures across to the other bank. 473Michael rushed across the bridge, and down the other side, pale; a surging in his ears; his heart thumping, so that his laboured breath could scarce come. Dimly he saw that other forms met him at the bridge end, and followed him; vaguely he heard a hum of voices behind him. He pursued his way, panting, blind with fear. Ever and anon the noise of the river seemed to swell into a roar like thunder, which quenched all other sounds. Here and there a growth of bushes and willows hid the waters from him; but at last, as he stumbled onwards, and rounded one of the curves in that much curved stream, his straining eyes caught sight of something—human forms, surely—arrested by a rock which projected midway into the current.

‘He has got to shore, and brought her with him,’ a thought seemed to say. ‘He is too exhausted to drag himself out. I shall soon be with him now.’

But, without knowing it, he began to sob and sob and sob as he approached; and when he drew near, instead of going swiftly to the place, he strayed around and about it, and could not, dared not go close.

It seemed long, very long before he could understand. Other persons, who had seen what had happened, or part of it, and who had seen Michael rush after the other two, had come up, and they told him again and again. A score of times he heard the words repeated: ‘Dead; both dead. No one could swim in such a flood!’ And yet he did not grasp it. But at last, after what seemed a long time, it did come home to him, and he understood that Ada had avenged herself.

474CHAPTER XLIII

MAGDALEN. IN VALEDICTION

It was July of the same year, and the time drew towards evening. The bright, westering sun was shining into the library at the Red Gables. In one of the deep window-seats, Eleanor and Michael sat side by side, and hand in hand. It seemed as if he had just returned from some journey, for there were signs about the room of a traveller’s recent arrival; and she, it would appear, had not even yet done bidding him welcome, her eyes dwelling still, with undiminished light of affection upon a face beloved. They had been man and wife for three weeks, and after a short ten days of honeymoon, he had brought her home, and left her there, while he went to London, to attend to the innumerable affairs connected with his brother’s business, will, and death. Ten minutes ago he had come in, and she was asking him for his news, which he seemed almost unwilling to enter upon.

‘There are letters for me, I perceive,’ he said at last. ‘That is from Roger. When did it come?’

‘This morning only.’

‘Let me have it.’

‘No. I have read it. It will keep, because it contains good news. I want to know first all you have not told me. The good news for the last.’

475‘I have told you almost everything, my child. It has been a sad business; sad from beginning to end. I have settled it all up—all poor Gilbert’s affairs. He was different from me; no doubt of that. I learnt a lesson or two.’

‘In what way?’

‘Why, Eleanor, it is simply the old story, that a man often seems much worse than he is. I never for a moment realised that I could have been in fault. I always saw his sin so large; it blotted out everything else. We will talk it all over another time. There was no difficulty in settling his affairs; disorder was abhorrent to his very soul. When I think of that, and of his painstaking, methodical, perfect system of doing things, and then remember my own scatterbrained practices, and remember how young he was, too, I feel as if now, by the light of all these other troubles and experiences, I can understand the temptation that beset him then, to keep things safe—the returning prosperity which he had built up with so much trouble—to keep me from squandering it, as he felt sure I should. Yes; I can see it. By George! What an opinion I must have had in those days of my own perfection and freedom from flaw of any kind. It is incredible.’

‘But, Michael, it was wrong of him.’

‘Yes, it was wrong of him, and as wrong of me. Roger knew that. Roger was very unhappy because of what I did. We were both about as wrong as we could be, I suppose.’

Eleanor was silent. She would not gainsay him, but she did not agree; and it was hardly to be expected that she should at that stage of the proceedings.

‘His will, Eleanor, will surprise you. It was made since that Christmas when you and he were together 476at Thorsgarth; when Magdalen and Otho became engaged. And he has left his money rather curiously,—half to Magdalen, in case she marries Otho, to be settled upon her and her children if she should have any, as strictly as it can possibly be done; and half to you, in case you marry—whom, do you suppose?’

‘Not himself?’ she asked, pale and breathless.

Michael laughed.

‘No, madam, but your present husband.’

‘Michael! And what if——’

‘If neither of those marriages really took place, it all came to me, except an annuity to Magdalen of five hundred a year.’

‘To Magdalen!’

‘Yes. I, too, was surprised at first. And then I seemed to comprehend that too. It was for the sake of old times, when we were young together. He and Magdalen in a cool, curious sort of way, always understood one another; and when he was over here, he several times spoke to me about her, and seemed distressed at the idea of the great change and reverse that had come over her. “She is not a high-minded woman,” he said to me once, “but she has had every hope crushed, and has lived in a kind of tomb with that old woman all the best of her life.” So that was the way he took, I suppose, of expressing his sympathy.’

‘It is wonderful,’ said Eleanor, in a low voice, feeling humbled, puzzled, and ashamed. This view of Magdalen’s life had never intruded itself into her mind. And it was as if she heard a voice echoing in the air about her, ‘Judge not!’

‘Yes, it is wonderful, and very humbling to me. And to you also, he left this ring.’

477He took a case from his breast-pocket, and gave it to her. It contained a ring set with a large pearl of unusual size and beauty, surrounded by brilliants, in a fine and delicate small pattern.

‘He wished you to wear it always,’ said Michael in a low voice. ‘This was in a private letter to me, half finished, which he must have left amongst his other papers when he came down here with Otho, just before that wedding. He said it was more like his idea of you than anything he had ever seen.’

Eleanor was weeping silently as Michael placed this ring upon her hand.

‘Why did he think of me in that way?’ she whispered, between her tears. ‘It was so wrong, so unlike the truth. It makes me afraid. I shall always feel that I am a renegade when I look at it.’

‘It made him a great deal happier, at any rate,’ said Michael, gently. ‘And now, Eleanor, something else. I saw Otho while I was in town.’

‘Yes?’ she said, in a slow, reluctant whisper.

‘Well, he is indeed a broken man. His sins have come home to him, and Ada avenged herself fearfully; but how, do you suppose?’

She shook her head.

‘Not by her own death; he hardly alluded to it. That whole connection with Ada was the merest freak. It is, as it were, by chance alone—that awful chance which we call Destiny—that that caprice has had such effects for us all. It is, through Gilbert’s death, and his alone. It sounds odd to say such a thing of the regard of one man for another, but one might almost say that his affection for Gilbert has been the one love of his life——’

478‘I know what you mean; and it is so, in a way. Gilbert had more of his heart and soul than any one else—even Magdalen.’

‘Yes, even Magdalen; for he trifled and played with her, and in fact, mastered her even in coming round to her wishes; but Gilbert, never. It was like the love of a dog for its master. It has knocked him down completely; he has no spirit left. He said there was nothing to live for when a fellow’s friend was gone, and he gave some dark hint as to being Gilbert’s murderer. I did not stay long with him. I don’t know what will become of him. It was absolutely necessary that I should see him on business; so I saw him, and had done with him.’

‘Did he say nothing about Ada’s little child, and its death?’

‘Not a word; and I did not, either. It seemed to me a desecration to mention such things to him.’

‘Yes. Let us not speak of him. We cannot do anything for him. He would not let us; and for years to come I do not think I could bear to look upon his face. That is all I want to know. Let us read Roger’s letter now. He has got a great post, and is going to take a long holiday with us in the autumn; and then he is going to South America to manage a business there for the people he is now with.’

‘Ah! His career, that I have prophesied for him, is beginning then,’ said Michael, as he read Roger’s letter with her, seated beside her, each of them holding a leaf. And as they sat thus, with that softened look upon their faces which comes with thoughts of a much-loved absent one, the door opened, and the servant announced Miss Wynter.

They both looked up in surprise as she entered. She 479walked up to the table and stood looking at them with a keen, searching gaze, and her lips quivered a little as she saw the attitude of entire trust, and the look of peace and of rest upon both faces. Magdalen, like the others, was in black; she was still clad in the deep mourning she had been wearing for Miss Strangforth; perhaps in her soul she was not sorry that circumstances allowed her to wear a garb so well according with her own feelings. But it struck Eleanor that she was equipped for a longer journey than that from Balder Hall to the Red Gables. Her face was very pale, but there was no abatement—there never had been any abatement—in the pride of its expression. Whatever Magdalen’s fate, she would always carry it, to all outward seeming, with the stateliness of a queen who wears her crown.

‘You were so absorbed, you scarcely heard my name,’ she said, in her clear, rather sarcastic tones, and with a slight cool smile. ‘I am glad to find you in. I heard that Michael was coming home to-day, and I did not wish to go away without saying good-bye.’

‘You are going away?’ said Eleanor. ‘Are you going for long?’

‘Most likely I shall never see you again,’ Magdalen pursued. ‘It is not probable that our paths will ever cross. Indeed, I shall make it my object to prevent them from doing so.’

‘Magdalen——’

But Michael, a little better acquainted with human nature, and especially with Magdalen’s nature, than was his wife, had already guessed, and his eyes were fixed upon Miss Wynter’s face, scrutinisingly, but with little surprise.

‘I am going to London,’ said Magdalen. ‘I intend travelling there by the south mail this evening. I have 480sent my things on, and called to see you on my way to the station.’

‘To London——’ began Eleanor.

Magdalen’s eyebrows contracted. She gave a short, impatient laugh.

‘How long you are in comprehending! I see Michael understood at once. Ah, Michael, if you had understood me as well seven years ago!... Well, Eleanor, I am going to Otho.’

‘To Otho!’

‘Yes, to Otho. When I promised to marry him, I swore that when the time came, I would follow him faithfully, no matter how or where. He said we should both know when it had come. It has come now. Since he saw you in town, Michael, I have heard from him. He has taken some rooms for me, and I shall go and stay there; and as soon as I have been there long enough, we shall be married.’

Eleanor was silent at first. Then she began tremulously—

‘Have you thought seriously about it? After what has happened, he can have no claim upon you; and you surely do not dare to go to him.’

‘Dare—I dare, most certainly, go to him, and stay with him. I am not afraid of him. I never was. If some other people had been as little afraid of him as I was, perhaps he might not have made such a hideous bungle as he has done, of his life. But if I were afraid of him, I should go to him all the more, after what I swore to him, lest he should do me some hurt if I disobeyed him.’

‘But, Magdalen——’

‘But, Eleanor!’ said the other, in a deep, stern voice. ‘Let me explain myself, and then, if you fail to understand, 481it will not be my fault. I am going to him now, first because of my promise, which meant, that when there should be nothing to prevent me from marrying him, I would be his wife. And what is there to prevent me now?’

‘There is himself!’ cried Eleanor, passionately. ‘Michael, tell her—explain to her that she must not tie——’

‘Wait! She has not finished yet,’ said Michael.

‘No, I have not,’ Magdalen assented. ‘First, because of my promise to him. You think that because himself, as you call it, frightened and repelled you, it must, of course, be the same with every one else. Well, while I am about it, I will tell you the whole truth. He has not a friend in the world, I suppose, now that Gilbert is gone, except me. I am in the same case. While my poor old aunt still lived, there was always some one who believed in me, and thought I was an angel. There is no one now. Himself—such as he is—loves me, with such love as he has to give; clings to me, and wants me. And I—such as I am—infinitely beneath you, I confess’ (with a mocking smile and bow), ‘love him, with what heart has not been crushed out of me. Yes, and such as he is,’ she added, raising herself before them, and looking at them with a kind of defiance on her scornful face—‘such as he is, I think it worth while to go to him, and try to save him from destruction. Perhaps I shall not succeed. That doesn’t matter. I want something to do, and there it is, ready to my hand.... And also, I shall then have kept a promise to one man, at any rate.’

Eleanor stared at her, half-fascinated, half-repelled.

‘One word to you, Michael,’ added Magdalen. ‘You look happy now, as I have never seen you look before; and I firmly believe you will be happy. You must have 482forgiven me long ago for not having married you; and now I should think you join thankfulness to forgiveness. But I wish to tell you that I know I behaved vilely to you—not in breaking off our engagement, but in ever making it; and you treated me better than most men would treat a woman who has cheated them, and then made a mess of her affairs. I wronged you, and I deserve what I have got for it. That is more than I would own to any one else in the world. It will serve as my wedding present to you, Eleanor; there is no testimony to goodness so strong as that which is offered by what is—not goodness. And now,’ she added, looking at the clock, ‘it is time for me to go. I should like to shake hands with you both, and wish you good-bye.’

In her attitude, as she turned towards them, there was something imposing. There was neither softness, nor benignity, nor true nobility—the nobility of soul, that is—in any of her looks or gestures; but there was a certain still, unbending pride, and a dauntless, unquailing gaze into the iron eyes of misfortune which thrilled them both. Eleanor took her hand between both her own, and looked long, earnestly, speechlessly into her face, saying at last—

‘Magdalen, why do you delight to make yourself out a worse woman than you are? Is it nothing that you have done, to live with Miss Strangforth as you did, and treat her so that she thought you an angel? nothing in what you are going to do? For it is a martyrdom to which you doom yourself, say what you please.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ said Magdalen, with a harsh laugh, looking with a curious expression into Eleanor’s eyes. ‘That’s why I am not a good woman, Eleanor. It is no 483martyrdom at all. I am glad, I am glad I am going—going to get away from this hateful place, and be married to Otho. And if I had got married to Michael, long before he ever saw you, child, I should have been a miserable woman, and should most likely have done something outrageous, sooner or later. That’s where the badness comes in. Good-bye, Michael.’

‘Let me come to the train and see you off,’ he said.

‘No, certainly not. You mean to be kind, I know; but I am going alone. If I fancied you were looking after me, I might look back, and not be so delighted with my future as I ought.’

‘Then, Magdalen, give it up, and stay with——’ began Eleanor eagerly, as she stepped forward with outstretched hands. But the other had gone swiftly out of the room, without looking back, and had closed the door after her.

Eleanor turned to her husband, who was looking at her. They confronted each other for a moment or two, till she asked—

‘Is she a heroine, or is she—Michael, what is she?’

‘She is Magdalen Wynter,’ he answered. ‘I don’t know what she is; but there is certainly some heroine in her.’

‘To marry Otho!’ murmured Eleanor.

‘I think she is just doing what she said herself, going to work with the thing nearest her hand—anything to get away from here. And it takes the shape of heroism, because, you know, she will never let him sink; at least, she will be always struggling to keep him straight—what they call straight,’ said Michael, and his voice was not quite steady. ‘Magdalen always laughed at heroism,’ he added.

484‘God help her!’ said Eleanor, in a low voice.

* * * * *

The factories by the river have now been long disused. Most likely Michael will some time follow the once despised advice of honest Sir Thomas Winthrop, and pull them down. As they stand now, silent and quiet, footsteps echo through the passage which leads to the bridge, and Tees goes murmuring past the spot, telling, as it seems to our imperfect ears, the same story exactly that it has been telling for so many hundred years. Whether what we call inanimate nature stands blindly by, without taking any impress from the scenes which humanity acts in the arena she prepares for them, is one of the mysteries which we cannot solve. To us, the trees appear the same each year, and the voice of the river changes only with the seasons, and with periods of drought or flood. A shriek, once uttered, is lost, and death is the end of all things.

Long letters come from Roger to the friends at the Red Gables, telling of prosperity and advancement, speaking of love unchanged to them and theirs, but never hinting at any thoughts of returning to his native land.

Ada’s child, which pined and died not long after she did, is buried in her grave; and Gilbert also sleeps in Bradstane churchyard.

As for the two who were left alone of all this company who had been young at the same time, the years brought changes in their life, and ofttimes in their habitations. But since this chronicle professes only to deal with that part of their lives which was played out in the Borderland where they dwelt, it is not necessary to follow those changes, but only to say that they still 485speak of Bradstane and the Red Gables as ‘home.’ For humane and kindly hearts always find loves and interests; hopes and occupations spring thickly around them, on every side and in every soil; and so it was with these two. Human interests and hopes, keen and deep, bind them to the old spot. There are those there, both old and young, whom they love, and who love them, and from whose vicinity they would not, if they could, tear themselves altogether. These things, and a certain righteousness of thought and deed in their own lives, have mercifully dimmed and blurred the memories of one or two tragic years, and have restored most of its loveliness and much of its freshness to life; have done for their bitterer remembrances exactly what the abundant ivy and the gracious growth of flowers and ferns have done for the naked grimness of the castle ruins which stand on the cliff above the river.

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Transcriber’s Note

Certain compound words appear both with and without hyphens: dogcart, hearthrug, bulldog, scatterbrained. Where the hyphen appears on a line break, it is retained or removed based on other occurences of the word.

Errors deemed most likely to be the printer’s have been corrected, and are noted here. The references are to the page and line in the original.

21.11 a decide[d]ly horsey, slangy young fellow Inserted.

26.24 you know,[’] Added.

43.9 we used to go in to tea?[’] Inserted.

54.21 remarkably observant,[’] Added.

78.21 [‘]After that Added.

86.24 he is exactly sly,[’] Added.

94.19 though[t] he does not know it. Removed.

116.1 his own ple[a]santry Inserted.

165.33 ‘Oh, with pleasure[,]’ Added.

233.7 of the right stuff.[’] Added.

239.1 at any of the balls?[’] Added.

253.2 [‘/“]Fancy their faces ... Replaced.

253.5 ... just to look at them.[’/”] Replaced.

261.25 ‘Do you![’] exclaimed Ada, Added.

261.26 [‘]Well, I never![’] Added.

264.19 higher and better.[’] Added.

271.14 [‘]I am sorry Added.

271.29 [‘]Treat you in this way! Removed.

311.14 are always accidents,[’] Added.

313.12 every one and everything.[’] Added.

313.29 the tune of it.[’] Added.

323.6 before you go,[’] Added.

326.12 [‘]I should have done Added.

368.8 about life and other[s] things Removed.