Frances Peard (continued 4)

But it was difficult for her to disconnect her thoughts as yet while they were vibrating and ringing with the blow. She walked mechanically towards home, but she saw Bessie and Mr and Mrs Featherly in the garden, and feeling it impossible at this moment to join them, she stood still irresolutely, and then turned and went along the field, where a little stream was running, and a path led up through a small wood.

The day was delicately bright and hot. Across a pale moon that looked herself no more than a stationary cloud, little wilful vapours which had broken away from larger masses were sailing. Red cattle, satisfied with their rich flowery pastures, had gathered under the hedges to chew the cud and sleepily whisk away the flies. The brown water hurried along, washing long grass, and shining up at meadow-sweet and purple clusters of loosestrife. There were cool flashing lights, and tender depths of colour, and a sweet content over everything, and poor Winifred growing sadder and sadder with the sense of contrast, yet walking more slowly and looking wistfully at the long grass, with a vague longing to lie down in it, and let everything go by and away forever. It might have been this which, as she went towards a little wooden bridge crossing the stream into the wood, deafened her ears to a step until Anthony Miles himself was close to her. The instant before she had believed herself safe with the patient cattle and the water and her own sad thoughts, and it cost her a struggle to master the tumult into which her feelings were suddenly stirred. But Anthony was too much absorbed in his own thoughts to notice any disturbance, and as matters had not yet come to such a pass that they could meet in a lonely meadow and go by without greeting, he put out his hand, and said,—

“Are you going into the wood? You will find it very hot even there. A thunder-storm would be a real comfort.”

“O, I like this sort of day!” said Winifred, with a hurrying desire to prove her own perfect contentment. “Everything is looking most beautiful I see Sniff is as fond as ever of the water—” She hesitated suddenly, there being a certain awkwardness quick to make itself felt in any allusion to the past, however slight; but Anthony said carelessly,—

“Sniff was due at Oakham, but as my mother seems to want him more than Marion, I shall not send him.”

“Is Marion quite well?”

“Quite well, thank you.”

It was all so commonplace, and the moment had given her so much strength, that Winifred made a desperate resolution.

“I have just been told something,” she said, looking straight in his face and smiling. “I hear that you are going to marry Miss Lovell. Please let me congratulate you, unless it is too soon.”

There was a flush on her cheek, and her words ended with an odd ring of hardness, but no one would have been likely to read these little signs. Anthony looked at her more kindly than he had yet done, and said “Thank you” gravely.

That was all. A few words, the river running through the waving grass, a woodpecker scraping the tree, flies darting here and there, Sniff dashing after a trout, Anthony, who once had been so near them all, standing by her, and answering from the other side of a great gulf. That was all. It did not seem as if Winifred could say any more except the good-by of which the air was full, and which all the little leaves in the wood rustled as she passed under them.

Anthony stood still for a moment and watched her going away. He had a very tender heart, poor fellow, though it was obstinate and proud in many things, and too angry now to be just. A remembrance of old times was sure to soften him, when once he realised that they were old and past; and he began to think that, after all, Winifred was not, perhaps, an enemy. He watched her, and then called Sniff out of the bright brown water and walked away.

As for Winifred—well, it was on her knees that she fought her battle, into which neither you nor I need look.

Almost to all people, I suppose, there comes a time in their lives when life, not death, is the phantom they dread. One fear may be as unworthy as the other, but it is there. Only for both there is a merciful Hand stretched out, and if into that Hand we put our own it will lead us gently until we are brought face to face with our fear, and see that the dread phantom has, indeed, as it were, the face of an angel.

Chapter Twenty.

“They who see more of our nature than the surface know that our interests are quite as frequently governed by our character as our character is by our interests.” Sir H. Lytton Bulwer.

Anthony walked towards Thorpe. He was going back to the cottage, and then intended to drive into Underham, and dine with the Bennetts. They evidently expected that he should spend part of each day at their house, and the arrangement was one which he did not dislike, and to which he therefore consented tacitly.

But it must be confessed that although when he thought of Ada Lovell, and the position in which he stood towards her, the remembrance was winged with a certain satisfaction, she did not occupy any large portion of his reflections. He was not thinking very much of anybody except himself, and the injustice of the world. What had he, of all men, done to be visited as he was? He was so sensitive, so conscious of his own uprightness, that the cold blight of suspicion withered him with its very first breath; and he had put on a bold front, and, as it were, exhausted his courage with an outward show of defiance, while to his inward spirit it seemed that all life and energy had died utterly away. The very foundations were shaken. For if people ceased to believe in him, with the reaction of a sanguine mind there was nothing left in which he could continue to believe. He had made himself the centre of his own theories, working them out from himself, confident in his own powers, and suddenly all had come to an end, such an end as seemed to him the end of all things, faith, hope, and charity with the rest. To his ardent nature there was no balm in conscious innocence; it mattered nothing that he knew the falseness of their suspicions, while the monstrous feet of suspicion itself remained.

Deep down in his heart, moreover, there was a touch of that insistance upon martyrdom which is more universal than we perhaps think. He thrust away compassion, feeling as if an earthquake had separated him from his former life, and as if no one were left to stand on the same side with him. This was an exaggeration of his position, for, although the world is more ready for condemnation than acquittal, there is a party for every side, and Anthony might have seen hands stretched out if he would. But there was not a word or look to which he did not give a warp in the wrong direction. He had persistently classed Winifred with the rest of the world, and it is possible that the very consciousness that to do so cost him a pang made the martyrdom the dearer; but her reticence had told against her cruelly, for she believed in him too fully to have thought of expressing her belief, little dreaming that a more open sympathy would have better suited his mood than her intense but hidden feeling. He nursed the soreness in the same way that he nursed all things which were painful at this time, until it really seemed as if Mr Bennett’s rather coarse expressions of friendliness, and Ada’s assurance that she had no patience with people who talked as the Thorpe people talked, had a value which he could not find elsewhere. And then she was pretty and good-natured, trying to please him just as ardently as in the days before the cloud,—which, indeed, she thought a matter of very small consequence,—and he felt a certain gratitude towards her. There may have been something of defiance, and a disposition to run counter to opinion, for whatever was his motive in turning suddenly one day upon Ada, who was fluttering and saying foolish amiable things, it was certainly not purely that of love; but perhaps we are all sufficiently liable to act from mixed motives, to abstain from judging him too harshly.

His engagement, although Winifred heard of it for the first time that day, had really lasted a week: some question of the time struck him as he drove to the door of the Bennetts’ house, and went slowly up the steps. There had been a little confusion of blue at one side of the windows, of which he had caught sight, and guessed who was waiting for him. In the short space between the door and the staircase there rose up before him her welcome, her look, the very words she would say, as if it had all been going on for a year instead of the few days which had surely offered no time for weariness. And yet a certain weariness touched him with a sting of self-reproach, and made him infuse a little more warmth into his greeting than was usual.

“You are very late, Anthony,” she said, putting her hand on his arm, and shaking her long curl reprovingly. “Do you know that Aunt Henrietta fancied you were not coming at all?”

“But you did not accuse me of anything so impossible?”

“No, indeed. I don’t think I should have spoken to you for a week if you had stayed away, and I suppose, though I am sure I don’t know, that you would have minded that. But now that you are here, you are to tell me every single thing you have been doing.”

His face darkened slightly. This small affectionate tyranny was new to him, and he was not quite in the mood for it.

“Suppose we turn the tables,” he said, with a little restraint. “What have you been about to-day?”

“I? O, I have not been beyond the garden. I sat there and read and thought—”

“Thought?”

“Ah, I am not going to tell you what I was thinking of; you men are conceited enough already. O Anthony, I hear Uncle Tom. Do go and look out of that window; do, please, go!”

There seemed no particular reason for this separation, but she was so eager that Anthony obeyed. He rather dreaded Mr Bennett’s ponderous jokes himself, and it was possible that Ada had not yet become used to them.

“Ah, Miles, here you are, here you are! just in time for the salmon, after all. My wife took it into her head you’d be late, but I said, ‘My dear, put a salmon at one end of the line, and a man at the other, and the two must come together somehow.’ Ha, ha! not bad, was it? And you’d something else to draw you besides, hadn’t you? Ada,—where are you, Ada? Come, come, you’d have me believe you’ve never met before; perhaps you’d like to be introduced. It’s never too late to mend, is it?”

“O Uncle Tom!” said Ada, smiling, and trying to blush. She looked very pretty in spite of the failure, and Anthony’s face relaxed from the lines which were becoming habitual. She was pretty and affectionate, adornments on which a man sets a high value, often taking a little silliness as a natural and not much to be minded accompaniment. The room was cheerful, not furnished altogether in the best taste, but laden with a certain air of ripe and drowsy comfort which went far to atone for a few sins of colour. It was not so easy to get over Mr Bennett’s prosy facetiousness, but his business kept him generally out of the way, and both he and his wife possessed a fund of that kind-heartedness which never fails to create a friendly atmosphere. If they were apt to err on the side of plenty, there was no doubt that they gave good dinners, dinners which Anthony, who was fastidious, liked, although not to the extent to which Mr Bennett credited him. Thus there were, on the whole, reasons which made the house pleasant to him, and with the morbid fret that had grown into his life—or out of his life, if you will—worrying him incessantly, it gave him a feeling of ease to find himself in the midst of a softly moving existence, where all sharp corners were rounded off, all hardness padded, and where he was made much of and gently flattered. Mrs Bennett had always sleepily thought—if thinking is not too strong an expression for the occasion—that it would be a good match for Ada, who had lived with them ever since she had been left an orphan, two years ago; and as for the absurd stories which had been spread about, it was far more agreeable to her good-natured stolidity to have no opinions on the matter. It was very likely a mistake from beginning to end, or, if not a mistake, no doubt Mr Miles had good reasons for all he had done. Her comfortable kindness, so unequivocally free from hidden doubts, was really soothing to poor Anthony, and paved the way for the step which Ada’s prettiness and enthusiasm and desperate admiration brought about at last. No one could have suspected indolent Mrs Bennett of match-making, but she liked to see people happy, and had not a tinge of malice or uncharitableness in her disposition.

“It is so hot,” she said, coming into the room with her soft heavy step, and sinking into an easy-chair. “One of those things they have in India—punkahs, don’t they call them?—would be very nice. Does your mother feel the heat, Mr Miles? I really think it is quite a labour to have to go down to dinner.”

“My dear, I can assure you it never answers to neglect the inner man,” said Mr Bennett, laughing weightily at his own jokes, on his way to the dining-room. “Come, Ada, it’s all very well to live upon air, but when you are as old as your aunt and I, you’ll find it’ll not pay. Not it, indeed. No, no; keep up the system, that has always been my maxim. By the way, Miles, I haven’t seen Mannering or his brother for the last ten days. Nothing wrong, I hope?”

“I don’t speak from personal knowledge,” said Anthony, with the shade again on his face, “but some one in the village said that Mr Mannering was laid up with an attack of rheumatism.”

“Poor fellow, poor fellow, he has wretched health, and no wonder. Any one must suffer in the end who lives upon mutton six days out of the seven. Tell him, when you see him, that he must come and dine with us as soon as he can, and try a little variety. Or you might drive out there one afternoon, my dear, and see what really is the matter. I’ve the greatest regard for Mannering.”

“Yes, indeed,” assented Mrs Bennett in the slow round voice that seemed hardly able to utter a contradiction.

“And I will go with you, Aunt Henrietta,” said Ada, cheerfully. “I want to see that darling Mr Robert, and to get him to show me his flowers. It will be very nice, and you will meet us there, Anthony, won’t you?”

“Mr Robert is a better showman when he is not interfered with,” said Anthony, with a sharp pang of remembrance. “I’ll meet you afterwards, and hear what you have seen.”

“Well, I think Adas plan is not a bad one,” persisted Mr Bennett, “and, dear me, you must be as free of that house as if it were your own! Say to-morrow.”

“To-morrow I am engaged.”

“Well then, Wednesday.”

“It will not be possible for me to go to the Red House,” said Anthony in an odd, unyielding tone.

Mr Bennett gave a long “Whew!”

Ada said with a pout, “O, but you must!” and Mrs Bennett came to the rescue with the unconsciousness which constituted a real charm in Anthony’s eyes.

“It will be too hot for us to drive there just yet. Ada and I must go some day when I am a little less overdone and the weather is cooler.”

Mr Bennett was sufficiently shrewd to be alive both to the jar and to a perception that the subject was one which had better be allowed to drop.

“It is hot, as you say, my dear, and perhaps it would be as well to wait until Mannering is about again. Try a little of that Sauterne, Miles; capital stuff for this weather. Well, Ada, what have you been doing with yourself? Warren told me he had seen you at the station.”

It was Ada’s turn to look discomposed.

“The station? O yes, I remember. I walked across to see whether the Mannerses came by the four-o’clock train. I forgot that I had been out of the garden when you asked me,” she said, with an elaboration of openness which was unnecessary, as Anthony had no suspicions to be allayed.

“O, he’s been asking you, has he?” said Mr Bennett jocosely. “It’s lucky you can explain yourself, or poor Warren would have put his foot in it.”

“Mr Warren!” said Ada with scorn.

“Come, come, what has the poor man done? Upon my word, I should have thought young ladies would consider him a good-looking, agreeable young fellow. I am sure you did when you first knew him, Ada, eh?”

“I don’t know what I thought once,” said Ada, looking down, and smiling prettily again; “all I know is that I don’t admire him now.”

If Anthony wanted mollifying,—which was perhaps not the case, although this family party had not seemed to go quite as smoothly as those which had preceded it,—this little speech effected its purpose. He liked the covert homage, and, congratulating himself upon the good-humour which Mr Bennett’s rather trying allusions could not ruffle, roused himself into the old brightness which only now came in occasional flashes. Ada was enchanted, shook back her long curl, and put out all her attractions; and Anthony, walking home through the quiet lanes sweet with the dewy freshness of a summer night, dreamed his new dream with a better success. Only, alas, even in dreams there are jangled notes, struggles, interruptions. People’s faces come and go, and look sadly at us, changing often, just as the joy of their presence makes itself felt. Every now and then out of Ada’s face other eyes looked at him; eyes that were grave and true and tender, and full of a trust that had never failed, although he had read it wrongly.

Chapter Twenty One.

“While friends we were, the hot debates That rose ’twixt you and me! Now we are mere associates And never disagree.” Fraser’s Magazine.

Anthony’s engagement, coming so soon after the other affair, made a little sensation in the neighbourhood. Things die out so quickly that, except in the more immediate Thorpe circle, his supposed act of injustice might have ceased to interest people; but the young man was so antagonistic, so sore, so fierce with all the world, that there was nothing for it but to take the position he insisted upon. The news of his engagement gave something pleasanter to talk about. There were a few injured mothers, but the gentlemen generally pronounced that he had shown his sense by making up his mind to marry Bennett’s niece. The Bennetts were favourites, and held a thoroughly respectable place in the county; and though Anthony might have done better as to family, every one felt that a sort of cloud had just touched him, and was on the whole glad that the Bennetts should be rewarded for their hospitality and liberality and conservatism by seeing their niece well married. As for the Squire, who had been more ruffled and made uneasy by the consequences of his own coolness than he himself knew, he came into the room where Winifred and Bessie were together, chuckling and rubbing his hands.

“So there’s to be a wedding to waken us all up,” he said briskly. “You know all about it, girls, of course. I’m always the last in the place to hear a bit of news—but there!”

“But there!—you always know it before we’ve time to tell you,” Bessie said saucily. “Is that what you mean, papa?”

“You’ll find out what I mean one day, when you won’t like it, Miss Pert,” said the Squire, pulling her hair. “I must say Anthony Miles has shown greater sense than I should have expected. He’s just the man to have made a fool of himself. If he’d not been so confounded touchy about that business of Pitt’s, I’d have walked down and wished him joy; but I suppose that won’t do,—not just at first, eh, Winifred?”

“No, indeed,” said Winifred, her face flushing.

“I suppose not,” said Mr Chester, regretfully. “Those young fellows fly off at such tangents, there’s no knowing where to take them. One would think I’d been the one to set that report going, and I’m sure, for his fathers sake, I’d have given a hundred pounds—well, it’s over and done now, and can’t be helped; people do say there was no real harm in it when old Tregennas left it in his hands, but I wouldn’t have believed it, I wouldn’t have believed it. And then he goes and fights shy of the friends who would have stuck by him if they could.”

“Papa, he never did it. How can he help being hurt with you all, when you will not trust him!”

Winifred’s face had grown pale after the flush, but her voice did not tremble, and she looked at her father with clear steadfast eyes which always affected him, though, oddly enough, they often gave him a twinge of discomfort, and a little irritated him into obstinacy.

“Nonsense, Winifred,” he said sharply, while he winced. “He has never so much as denied it. Women shouldn’t talk of what they don’t understand. And it hasn’t anything to do with his getting married, has it? I wish you to tell Mrs Miles that it’s given me a great deal of pleasure to hear of this match, and you and Bess had better drive into Underham and call on the Bennetts.”

He was really desirous by this time to mend the breach, and perhaps a little secretly relieved that Mr Pitt’s other idea about Anthony had been proved so erroneous. Before all this had happened, and while Anthony had been a poorer man, a marriage between him and Winifred, although it had never presented itself to his imagination, would have met with no opposition from him, except the fret which arose from a little personal dislike, natural enough between the two characters. But since a breath of dishonour had rested upon the young man, it would have been a bitter blow to the Squire to have been forced to give him his daughter. He could by this time make some excuses for him, for his father’s sake,—indeed, now that he was not constantly meeting him, and getting irritated by his schemes, he really liked him a good deal more heartily than he had ever done before. But that would not have availed in such a trial. Therefore he now felt a certain amount of gratitude to him for removing the vague uneasiness which every now and then cropped up when he looked at Winifred or remembered shrewd Mr Pitt. He even spoke sharply to Bessie, who yawned and declared it was too hot to go to Underham.

“You’ll go where your sister bids you. Winifred, don’t let that child give herself airs to you. If she does, speak to me. I’ll get a governess again, or pack her off to school, or something.”

“I wonder who would mind that most,” said Bessie, jumping up and hugging him.

“That’s very fine. I know somebody who’d cry her eyes out over backboards and French exercises, and all the rest of it. Not but what I believe your mother would have had you do it,” said the Squire, with a sudden wistful look at his favourite.

“She is not so bad as she seems, papa,” said Winifred, rousing herself. “We read every morning, and she really works hard. Mr Anderson is quite satisfied.”

“Well, mind she doesn’t get her headaches again,” her father said, veering round to another anxiety. “I’d rather she only knew her ABC than get headaches, and I’m not sure you’re careful enough, Winifred. Do you hear, Bess? Go out for a scamper on the pony when you’re tired of all this work. You’re not so strong as your sister.” Winifred did not answer. Something crossed her face so quickly that only the tenderest watcher could have seen it, a look which is very sad on those young faces. There is no storm or impatience in it, but a kind of weary protest. You hear it sometimes in a voice. The Squire went on with his injunctions about Underham and Miss Lovell.

“I’m ready enough to be on friendly terms,” were his parting words, “only one doesn’t know on which side to meet these touchy young fellows. But this marriage looks as if he were coming to his senses.”

“And we are to smooth over everything,” said Bessie, shutting her book and jumping up. “I don’t care to smooth it now that Anthony has been so stupid. That horrid Miss Lovell! Don’t you know how she walks, holding her hand out stiffly—so. You needn’t look shocked, Winnie dear, for she does, and I know she is horrid.”

“Don’t say anything more about it, please,” Winifred pleaded, with a look of pain. “I am going to order the carriage at four o’clock.”

“I hate them all, and I hate going,” said Bessie rebelliously. “Well?” as her sister made no answer to this downright statement.

“Well?”

“Don’t you mean to scold, or at least talk me into my proper behaviour?”

“You must learn to find what you call your proper behaviour for yourself,” said Winifred, trying to smile brightly, as she looked into the girl’s dancing eyes. But her own suddenly filled with tears, and just as quickly Bessie’s arms were round her.

“Something is the matter, I know, and you may as well tell me, Winnie, or I shall be obliged to find it out. Something is making you unhappy. Is it about Anthony?”

The hot colour flashed into Winifred’s cheeks, but she was too honest to give an evasive answer, and said, holding Bessie’s clasping hands, and pausing for a moment between her sentences,—

“I think it is, dear. Anthony has suffered cruelly from this wicked report. And it is so miserable between us all, when—we used to be so happy—”

She stopped. She had been speaking in a low, almost humble voice, as if her heart felt a pang of shame in its sorrow.

“Anthony doesn’t care for her,” said Bessie, shaking her head with a little experienced air. “He can’t, because she isn’t really nice. I believe he has been stupid enough to do it because he was cross.”

Was it true?—this dread, that even Bessie could put into words? And if it was—O poor, poor Anthony!

The girls drove into Underham that afternoon, when the extreme heat of the day was supposed to be over. But there still remained a dry parching oppression in the air, the long weedy grasses hung listlessly one above the other, without a breeze to shake the dust from the motionless leaves, the pretty green hedges were all whitened and dead looking. Without any thought of avoiding it, it almost seemed to Winifred, as she drove along, as if the pain of the visit would be unendurable. But there was no such relief as hearing that Mrs Bennett and Miss Lovell were not at home, and the sisters were ushered into the comfortable drawing-room where Ada sat with a somewhat too apparent consciousness of being prepared to receive visitors, and quite disposed to make a little show off of the dignity she considered appropriate to the occasion.

“It was very kind of you to come in this heat. My aunt wished me to drive with her, but I really thought it too oppressive. Don’t you find it very trying?”

“I do not think we thought about it,” said Winifred, truly.

“Ah, then you are so strong. It must be very nice to be so strong, and not to be obliged to think so much of one’s self. Now, I am obliged to be so careful, for if I were to go out in the sun, very likely I should have quite a headache.”

It was so difficult to be sympathetic over this possibility, that Winifred found it hard to frame a suitable answer, and was grateful to Mrs Bennett for coming in at the moment, and presenting another outlet for conversation. Bessie was sitting upright, rigidly and girlishly contemptuous, and subjects seemed alarmingly few.

“My father begged me to leave his card for Mr Bennett,” Winifred said at last. “He would have come himself if some magistrate’s business had not been in the way, but he is such a dreadfully conscientious magistrate, that all our little persuasions are quite hopeless.”

“I hope he is not very severe,—the poor people are so much to be pitied,” said kindly Mrs Bennett. “Only think if one was starving! I am sure I should be very likely to take a joint or something.”

“No, he is not very severe,” Winifred said hesitating, with her thoughts wandering. “It is rather that he has such strict ideas of uprightness that he finds it hard to make excuses—”

She stopped suddenly, and the colour faded out of her face. Looking at Mrs Bennett, she had not heard the door open, nor seen Ada’s rippling smiles, nor known that Anthony had come behind her, until a general movement made her look round, and then her start and change of colour gave an unlucky point to the words. Fortunately, Ada, who had longed that Anthony should come in, was triumphant, and not quick enough to read any discomfiture, claiming him at once with a show of possession.

“O Anthony, have you seen Mr Mannering? He has been here and was so nice. He has asked us all to a garden party on Saturday, on purpose to show me his flowers. He asked me what time would be best, and I said four to seven, and we promised to be there punctually. I told him I would tell you all about it, but he says he shall write a formal invitation, so you are sure to have it, though of course I answered for you. I dare say you will be there,” Ada went on, with a gracious patronage of Winifred.

But Winifred was not likely to notice such small affronts, although at another, time she might not have been so meek. She was looking at Ada and wondering. Was this indeed his ideal? Could he be satisfied? There was a sort of bewilderment in recalling the fastidious Anthony of past days, which hardly allowed her to answer Ada, who, however, was too content with her position to require much. Nothing could be more delightful to her than to queen it before Winifred and Bessie, and to dwell on the party which was to be given in her honour; and, without any real ill-nature, she liked to feel that she was in possession of what she fancied was the ambition of all womankind, an acknowledged lover, and thus exalted above Miss Chester, who had always seemed to her a little unapproachable. In her turn she now felt herself placed on a serene altitude, and being there, it would have been impossible for her unimaginative nature to have conceived that adverse currents should be blowing. She went on cheerfully, when no one answered her,—

“The great thing is that it should be fine. I do so hope it will be fine, don’t you, Anthony?”

“Yes—if you have set your heart upon it,” he said, with a little shortness, for which he hated himself. But even to be called Anthony grated upon him at this moment, and he carefully avoided using her name.

“Of course I have, and so have you, too. Will you come here first?”

“I am sorry to say I cannot be there. I shall be in London on Thursday night.”

He said it not unkindly, for it struck him sharply that it was hard upon Ada, but he made no attempt to soften the words, and turned immediately to speak to Mrs Bennett, who was talking kind little placid talk to Winifred. Ada opened her eyes for a moment’s astonishment, and then laughed.

“O, London must wait, of course! Aunt Henrietta, do you hear? Anthony has the most absurd idea that we shall let him go to London before Mr Mannering’s party!”

Even silken fetters can cut, and something had nettled Anthony throughout the conversation; but he kept the irritation very fairly out of his reply, only saying earnestly,—

“I am particularly sorry to do what you dislike, but there can be no question of my going. The London business has already been neglected too long.”

Ada still believed in her own invincibility. “He will come,—I shall make him,” she said, smiling and nodding.

There was nothing more to be said, and Winifred, who had almost against her will been garnering impressions, felt that escape was possible. Anthony had rather pointedly abstained from addressing her. She was not quite sure how much of the strain and oppression was due to her own feelings, but her heart ached under some new, sad weight as they drove away.

Chapter Twenty Two.

“The fall thou darest to despise Maybe the slackened angel hand Hath suffered it, that he may rise And take a firmer, surer stand; Or, trusting less to earthly things, May henceforth learn to use his wings.” Adelaide Procter.

When Winifred and Bessie had stopped at the post-office and taken their letters, some little remarks passed between the postmaster and his wife, who had gone out to the door and watched the two pretty, girlish figures hurried away by their impatient little pony into the green tangle of trees and hedges which a golden sunlight was brightening. It looked as if it were a sort of enchanted land, into which no storms could follow them; but Mrs Miller, who had a face which might have been intended to protest against sunshine, shook her head solemnly and said, coming back to the counter,—

“There’s trouble enough in the world, to be sure, and it’s hard when the Thorpe letters, as have gone together these years, has got to part company. But there’s no saying where the love of money will lead a poor human heart.”

“I’m not so sure about that matter as you are, Maria,” said her husband, cheerfully sorting his letters. “Young Mr Miles is too pleasant-spoken a young gentleman to do all the things they charge him with, in my opinion; and it’s always the way with you women, when once a bit of mud’s thrown, each of you wants to try her hand.”

“It isn’t to be expected you should know better,” said Mrs Miller gravely. “When you’re converted, you’ll understand more of the depravity of the human heart. It’s a bottomless pit,” she concluded, shaking her head.

“Um, um, um,” said her husband irreverently. “Then I ain’t one that’s always wanting to be poking into such places, and if I were you I’d come out for a bit into the fresh air. But,” he added, lowering his voice and giving a quick sign towards an inner room, “since he’s been here, you’re more than ever set against the old ways.”

“No,” said Mrs Miller calmly, “I am not altogether satisfied that he preaches the pure gospel. It’s rare to find one who does. But I am thankful not to be blind to shortcomings, like some. And I’m sorry for Mr Miles, but what could be expected from one who was so given over to the world?”

Her voice had been carefully lowered in tone, but David Stephens heard the first part of the conversation with vivid distinctness. Every word sank into his consciousness, not as something new,—for the subject was rarely absent from his thoughts,—but because they seemed to offer him a new opportunity for arguing the case, and for proving to himself yet again and again that he had done well in keeping silence about the letter. A strange complication existed in his mind. The self-deception which ensnared him was not that self-deception which conceals itself under false colours, for when he formed his resolution it was with the feeling that he was forever bidding farewell to his own peace of mind,—the voluntary acceptance of a crushing burden. It is difficult to conceive such a state, but there is no doubt that it existed in him,—whether the result of a too self-reliant creed, or owing to a stronger impulse of resistance than obedience, or to other of those secret springs which move men’s actions. In his struggle with Anthony Miles, his opponent had become a very embodiment of all the powers that league themselves against good, especially the good of other men’s souls. He had first heard him spoken of slightingly, without remembering the answer to the reproach which he might have afforded; but directly it flashed upon him he opened a pocket-book, in which were placed the few and tiny atoms of paper which he had preserved with the intention of examining, and had since forgotten. And then began the contest. Here in his hands he held, as he acknowledged, the means of clearing Anthony so as to re-establish him completely in the eyes of other men. But Anthony, triumphant and successful, represented a great antagonistic force to what David held to be his mission, and to forward which he would have thankfully endured even to the point of martyrdom. Anthony, on the contrary, with the suspicion of a dishonourable deed clinging to him, lost half his power, would cease to influence, and might no longer succeed in impressing his opinions upon Maddox, whose newly stirred fears inclined him to turn to Stephens, while an old feeling of respect yet bound him strongly to the Church, personified by the Vicar’s family. He was conscious of weighing a sin in himself against what seemed the advantage of feeble, starving souls, and he shrank from the burden with a cry of anguish, which—blame him as you will—had in it no creeping taint of hypocrisy. Only at rare times could he accept the excuses offered to his conscience,—that it was no crime of which Anthony was accused, that his interference would prove useless,—the truth generally stood out in keen cold outlines, and he would acknowledge to himself that he had done an accursed thing. Yet he would have held it a worse sin to have cast it from him. It was to save others. He might suffer; he might have lost his own soul,—he acknowledged it,—but it was that others might go in at the gate which he closed against himself. What could Anthony’s burden seem beside his own? The system in which his religious thought had been moulded had developed in Davids character both an extraordinary greatness and an extraordinary littleness; for while he longed with an ardent and intense love to save the souls about him, longed so that he would sacrifice his dearest hopes, his peace, his very integrity,—he yet appeared to himself to be fighting single-handed, to be alone in the tremendous struggle, sometimes as if our God himself were regarding it passively without stretching forth his hand to save. And this blank and awful solitude opened out before him, as the path in which he must walk, with bleeding feet, and now with the hateful companionship of a sin bound to him by a voluntary acceptance forever.

Chapter Twenty Three.

Thorpe was a little excited over Mr Mannering’s garden party. To be sure it could boast of much the same amount of hospitality annually offered as the other little country-places in the neighbourhood, but, on the other hand, these hospitalities generally took the form of dinner-parties, and people came in closed carriages or flies, instead of driving in gayly with their pretty bright colours flashing out for the benefit of the women who stood on the door-steps, or the children who were all agape. Besides, owing to the Vicars death, there had been fewer gayeties than usual, and another sort of gloom had gathered about the village after the rumour of Anthony’s deed made a break in the old cordial intercourse. Robert Mannering was sorely perplexed and grieved. Faithfulness to his old love made him quick to resent for Margaret Hare any injustice done to her daughter, and yet the estrangement from Anthony was very painful to him. He had tried to prevent it, but he could not show that there was perfect trust in his mind, and Anthony was keenly offended. Throughout his boyhood and bright youth the young fellow had been full of sanguine ardour, flushed with dreams and visions of great things to be done, where he was always the champion and deliverer, and would go forth, single-handed if need were, to fight against wrong. Suddenly, in a shape of which he had never dreamed, wrong had leaped upon him, and smitten all his weapons out of his hand, so that where nothing had seemed impossible was there now anything possible except weariness and bitterness to the end? Such a mood, if he had belonged to another creed, might have driven him to become a Trappist, not from any deepening of religion, but rather from repulsion of the life he had hitherto lived, which had so instantaneously changed colour. One would speak reverently of the workings of a man’s soul in a crisis of his life, knowing that there is at times a strangeness, a madness, a wilfulness, at war with what is highest and noblest, making strife terrible, and asking from us prayer rather than judgment. Anthony chafed so hotly against the injustice of society, that he was conscious of a longing to outrage it, but the strong, tender force of associations, the purity of a father’s memory, are safeguards for which many a one is in after years thankful; only his pride revenged itself by holding aloof from his former friends. He would have gone to extremes with the Mannerings if Mr Robert had permitted it; but he was blind to all avoidance, took no notice of cold treatment, went to see Mrs Miles as usual, and though the announcement of the engagement gave his kind heart a pang for Winifred, he believed it to be for the best,—considering the Squires vehemence,—and was glad to make it a kind of opportunity for reconciliation. Personally, too, he liked Ada, who was a favourite with most of the gentlemen round, and he saw no reason why she should not enjoy her little innocent triumph. Therefore Anthony’s refusal to come to his house vexed him not a little.

“If that foolish fellow is going to walk about on stilts all his days, there will be no living in the place with him,” he said, pacing up and down the study with the short, heavy steps which always produced an air of endurance in his brother. “What do you say to it, Charles? O, I see, you don’t like my moving about! Why didn’t you stop me?”

“My dear Robert, I might as well stop a watch that is wound up.”

“That’s nonsense. Of course, I recollect it if you’ll only speak. It’s merely that sitting down in this heat gives me the fidgets, and you can’t stand another open window. What were we talking about?—O, Anthony! Here’s his note. Did you ever in your life read such a shut-me-up epistle?”

Mr Mannering read the letter, and shrugged his shoulders.

“It must be one thing or the other with him.”

“It’s a pity it should always be the wrong thing,” said Mr Robert, mechanically resuming his march. “The matter has blown over, and there’s an end of it. A pretty girl, and a fresh start, and not one of us but is ready to shake hands. What on earth can he expect more?”

“You must have patience,” said Mr Mannering. “The lad is sore and unhappy, he may be looking at the matter from an entirely different point of view to yours, and at any rate he is not one to shake off either accusation or act readily.”

“Well,” said his brother, with a little wonder, “you have been his best friend throughout, even to disbelieving plain facts.”

“You should read more classic poetry, Robert.”

“Pooh! Why?”

“You would get rid of that terribly prosaic estimation of facts. They may be as deceptive as other many-sided things.”

“Well, as Anthony insists upon drawing his sword and holding us all at arm’s length, I wish the fact that half a hundred women are coming to trample down my turf were deceptive. What a difference there would have been a year ago!” added Mr Robert, with a sigh of regret. “That boy would hare been up here twenty times a day, planning and contriving, and worrying us out of our senses. It is not right of him, Charles, whatever you may say; it’s not right for the poor girl.”

“Will you be so good as to close that window, Robert?” said his brother, shivering. “When your guests come I shall be doubled up with rheumatism. To drag me into society is really an act of cruelty, for I am quite unfit for it, and as useless as a log.”

Mr Robert stopped his march, and looked at his brother with a comically grave expression of sympathy. The same little comedy was acted again and again, Mr Mannering protesting against the society in which he delighted, and a victim to aches and pains until the guests arrived, when he became the perfect host, only occasionally indulging himself with an allusion to his sufferings, and full of the social presence of mind invaluable under the circumstances.

Ada had been as much offended at Anthony’s desertion as it was possible for one of her nature to be, but it could not seriously ruffle her temper. All her life had been spent in a kindly appreciative atmosphere, and a certain placid self-satisfaction seems irrepressibly to radiate from such lives. No doubts were likely to trouble her. She was too serenely comfortable to be conscious of the little stings and darts which torment some people every day. She was haunted by no sense of short-coming. There looked out at her from the glass a pretty smiling face, her uncle and aunt petted her, the days were full of easy enjoyment,—all of us have been sometimes puzzled with these lives, which irritate us at the very moment of our half-envy of a placidity which seems so far beyond our reach. And now, although Anthony’s absence caused her a prick of mortification, she had no intention of resigning, in consequence, any of the honours which the occasion might bring to her feet, nor even the attendance of an admirer, for she had persuaded good-natured Mrs Bennett—always readily moved to anything in the shape of a kindness, and especially of one which affected the bodily comfort of her acquaintances—to offer a seat in the carriage to Mr Warren, a young would-be lawyer who was working under Mr Bennett, and who would otherwise have had to tramp out along the dusty road, instead of, as now, appearing in the freshest of attire, ready to be Ada’s very obedient servant, and not at all ill-pleased to stand, if only for a day, in what should have been Anthony’s place.

It gave Winifred a start to come upon the two walking towards the green-houses; Ada with much the same little air of prettiness and self-consciousness which she had displayed towards Anthony on the day of the sisters’ visit, Mr Warren certainly more attentive and lover-like than the real lover had been. And Ada was not in the least discomposed by the look of astonishment in Winifred’s clear eyes. There was, on the contrary, a triumphant tone in her voice.

“We are going to see Mr Mannering’s ferns. It is such a delightful day. I do think it was so charming of Mr Mannering to give this party, but then he is charming, and I was just telling Mr Warren that I had lost my heart to him.”

It is strange how from some lips praise of those we like becomes much more unbearable than its reverse. Winifred had never felt so uncharitably towards Mr Robert.

They went on through the flickering sunshine—which the bordering espalier trees were not tall enough to shadow—talking and laughing, while Winifred looked after them with a perplexed sadness for Anthony. What was he about?—why was he not here?—did he think he could escape pain like this? She was right in concluding that his absence would not improve his position, for people who came with the intention of being gracious were thrown back upon themselves. It looked odd, they said, to see Miss Lovell there and Mr Miles absent. It left the party incomplete. The day was exquisite: a little breeze rustled through the great elms, the lights were laden with colour, there were grave sharply cut shadows on the grass, a soft fresh warmth, full of exhilaration, Mr Robert’s brightest flowers sunning themselves, but—somehow or other there was a jar. Even Mrs Bennett began to look a little troubled at the speeches which reached her ears, especially when Mrs Featherly drew her chair close to her, and began what she intended for consolation.

“You and Mr Bennett should have made a point of it, you should indeed, if only in consideration of what is past,” she said, shaking her head impressively. “There can be no doubt but that it was his duty to come. And it always grieves me deeply when you see people endeavouring to evade a duty.”

“He has gone to London,” said poor Mrs Bennett, with a feeble show of indignation. “And my husband says that ladies have no idea of what business requires.”

“I flatter myself that there is nothing of Mr Featherly’s business which I do not know as well as he does himself,” said Mrs Featherly loftily, “and I should make it a point of principle to be acquainted with that of any one likely to become connected with our family, especially if there were a past to be considered. But of course, if Mr Bennett is satisfied—and he is, I believe, remarkable for his caution?”

It was one of Mrs Featherly’s peculiarities to credit people with virtues which could not be considered strong marks in their character. Caution was so far from being Mr Bennett’s prerogative, that one or two little difficulties in his profession had arisen from his lack of that lawyer-like quality. Mrs Bennett thought of moving to another part of the garden, but she was in a comfortable chair and could see no other vacant seat, so she murmured an assent and let her tormentor run on.

“One is bound at all times to hope for the best, and, of course, we feel an interest in this young man, the son of a neighbouring clergyman and all, as my husband very properly remarked. But it is most unfortunate. Poor Ada, I am really quite sorry for her, and so is Augusta. Were you thinking of moving? I know you are so active that I dare say you hardly share my relief in sitting still. With a parish like ours I assure you the responsibilities become a very heavy burden, but, as you say, there are family responsibilities which are scarcely less trying, and poor Ada not being your daughter—”

It was like a nightmare. Poor Mrs Bennett, who had not thought much of Anthony’s going to London, and was conscious of all the capabilities of comfort around her, began to feel as if everything were wrong, and had no weapons with which to defend herself. Luckily for her Mr Mannering came by, and she almost caught at him as he passed.

“It is rather hot here,” she said, searching about for some physical means of accounting for her discomfort. “I think I should like to move to a shadier part.”

“We will both go,” said Mrs Featherly, spreading out her dress. “Now that you are here, Mr Mannering, I may as well remind you of your promise of subscription to our organ. Was it you or Mr Robert?—but of course it is the same thing.”

“I wish it were,” said Mr Mannering, in his courteous, easy manner. “Robert is the philanthropic half of the house, and I have every desire to benefit by his good deeds. I always aid and abet them at any rate, so that, if you will allow me, I will make him over to you where he shall not escape.”

“Ah, but you must assist us, too,” said Mrs Featherly. “It is a most dangerous doctrine to suppose that you can avoid responsibilities. That is just what I was pointing out to our friend. Naturally she and Mr Bennett feel much anxiety with regard to their niece, and it is so unfortunate that Mr Miles did not make a point of being here to-day at all events.”

There are some people in the world for whom it seems the sun never shines, the flowers never blow, the earth might be sad-coloured, for anything that it matters. Even Mrs Bennett, whom all these things affected in a material sort of way, was more influenced by them than Mrs Featherly, who shut them out of her groove with contempt.

“Here is Miss Chester,” said Mr Mannering with some relief, for he did not quite know how to separate the two ladies. “Miss Winifred, I want you to be kind enough to help Mrs Featherly to find my brother. He is avoiding his debts, and must be brought to book. Mrs Bennett is tired, and I am going to take her to a shady seat.”

Mr Mannerings voice was too courteous for Mrs Featherly to be able to persuade herself that she was affronted, but she certainly felt that she had not said so much as she intended to Mrs Bennett upon the subject of Anthony’s delinquencies. She was not really a malicious woman, but she considered that her position gave her a right of censorship over the morals of the neighbourhood, and that it was both incumbent upon her to see that people acted up to their duties, and to speak her mind when she was of opinion that they in any degree came short of them. And as she never had any doubt as to the exact line of duty which belonged to each person, she was not likely to distrust her own power of judgment. She prepared herself to deliver a little homily to Winifred.

“My dear, I was so surprised to see Bessie here. Does your father really think it wise for so young a girl? Why, she will not come out for another year and a half.”

“Bessie will be seventeen in October,” said Winifred, “and she has coaxed papa into promising that she shall go to the December ball at Aunecester.”

All Mrs Featherly’s ribbons shook with disapproval.

“The Aunecester ball! Impossible! It would be most injudicious. Eighteen is the earliest age at which a girl should come out. Augusta was eighteen, I remember, on the twentieth of December, and the ball was on the twenty-seventh. If her birthday had not fallen until after the ball, Augusta has so much proper feeling that no consideration would have induced her to persuade me to allow her to go. She would have known it was against my principles. Eighteen. Eighteen is the earliest, and Bessie will not be eighteen for a year. I must speak to Mr Chester myself, and point out the impropriety. I must, indeed.”

“My father has promised,” said Winifred, smiling. “He never will call back a promise.”

“He must be made to see that it is a matter of principle. The young people of the present day have the most extraordinary ideas. Now, there is Anthony Miles. Why is he not in his proper place to-day, when, in consideration of his position, and out of regard for our excellent friends, we were willing to meet him, and to let bygones be bygones?”

“Anthony need fear no bygones,” said Winifred, with an indignant flush burning on her cheek.

“You must allow other people to be the best judge of that,” said Mrs Featherly, drawing herself up stiffly. “Both Mr Featherly and I are of opinion that appearances are very much against him; and appearances, let me assure you, are exceedingly momentous things. At the same time, it may be the duty of society to make a point of not proceeding to extremities, and, taking into consideration the young man’s position in the county as a gentleman of independent means, as the son also of your late Vicar, society in my opinion acted as it should in extending its congratulations on the approaching event, while the young man has, to say the least, been injudicious. Most injudicious.”

“It is certain that he would not meet society on such terms,” said Winifred, with difficulty commanding her voice.

“My dear, a young lady should not undertake a gentlemans defence so warmly.”

Poor Winifred was helpless, angry, and provoked almost to tears. For though her heart was not too sore to be generous, every now and then so sharp a pang struck through it, that her only refuge seemed to lie in such hard thoughts of Anthony as should convince herself that she was indifferent. She did not want to be his defender. And yet it was unendurable to hear him suspected. Perhaps she did the best that she could when she stopped and said gravely,—

“If we talk about him any more, I might say things which you might call rude, and you are too old a friend for me to like to affront you. But I want you to understand that Anthony Miles was brought up like our brother, and I know it is as impossible for him to have done such an act as you suppose, as for my father to have done it. There is some unfortunate mistake. Please, whether you believe me or not, do not say any more about it. Did you not wish to see Mr Robert? There he is. I must go to Bessie.”

So poor Winifred carried her swelling heart across the sunshine which lay warm on the soft grass, and past the blossoming roses, leaving Mrs Featherly more keenly mortified than she knew. No possibility of a last word was left to her, and she was so utterly discomfited that she even forgot the organ and Mr Robert. But as she drove home she said to her husband,—

“James, we shall pass that man Smiths, and I must beg that you will get out and tell him that I cannot allow Mary Anne to come to the Sunday school with flowers in her bonnet.”

“If you wish it, my dear, of course,” Mr Featherly said reluctantly. “But it might be as well not to irritate that man just as he is beginning to show signs of a better—”

“Principle is principle.” Mrs Featherly had never felt so uncompromising. It was one of those odd links of life which baffle us. Here were Anthony and Winifred and Mr Mannering’s garden party unconsciously playing upon big Tom Smith and poor little blue-eyed Mary Anne, who had somewhere picked up a bit of finery, and decked herself out. Mrs Featherly had received a check that day, and wanted to feel the reins again. “Principle is principle,” she said unrelentingly.

Chapter Twenty Four.

“The days have vanished, tone and tint, And yet perhaps the hoarding sense Gives out at times (he knows not whence) A little flash, a mystic hint.” In Memoriam.

When September came, things had changed but little since the summer, except that talk had drifted into other channels, and there was less curiosity in noticing Anthony Miles’s behaviour. He still kept aloof from his friends, and looked worn and haggard, while the charm which used to take the people by storm was rarely visible. The men, who had never liked him so well as the women, grumbled at his manners, and the women confessed that he had lost his pleasantness. Winifred, who now scarcely saw him, used to wonder how true it was, and what she would have found out if the old intercourse had not ceased. One day, when she and Bessie were in the High Street of Aunecester, they met the Bennetts, and Anthony with them; and as they were coming out of a shop it was impossible to avoid walking with them, though he was so cold and constrained that Winifred longed to escape. It was a keen autumnal day, the old town had put on its gayest, in honour of a visit from some learned Association or other; there were bright flags hung across the narrow street, setting off the picturesque gables and archways, and here and there decking some building black with age.

“Are you going to the concert?” asked Mrs Bennett. “Ada would be sadly disappointed if I did not take her; but, really, I have been sitting in the hall and listening to all those lecturers until I have a headache. I think it would be much nicer if they stopped now and then, and let one think about it, for I became quite confused once or twice when the heat made me doze a little, and I heard their voices going on and on about sandstones, and slate, and things that never seemed to come to an end.”

“I was so glad to get out,” Ada said. “I believe Anthony wanted to stay, but I really could not, it was much too learned for me. I suppose you liked it, Miss Chester?”

It seemed as if she could not resist a little impertinent ring in her voice when she spoke to Winifred, and Bessie was going to rush in with a headlong attack, when Mrs Bennett made one of her useful unconscious diversions.

“There are the Needhams,” she said.

“They are going to the concert, I dare say,” said Ada. “Anthony, I hope you took good seats for us?”

“I took what I was given,” he said, a little shortly, and at that moment Ada spied Mr Warren, and invited him graciously to accompany them. It turned out that he had no ticket, and Anthony immediately offered his own.

“Then I shall go back to the hall,” he said, “for Pelham is going to speak, and one does not often get such an opportunity.”

“That will be a capital plan,” said Ada. Winifred could not tell whether she were vexed or not. To her own relief they had reached the end of the street, and there was a little separation; the concert people went one way, the Chesters another, Anthony went back to his lecturing. Just as they parted Winifred asked for Marion.

“She is better, thank you,” he said gravely. “She has been very ill, but we hope it will all go well now.”

“I did not know she had been ill,” said Winifred. She could not avoid a reproachful jar in her voice, and the feeling that her lot was harder than Anthony’s, since she met distrust from him, and he only from an indifferent world. “Does he think we are made of stone?” she said, walking away with a sad heart. Perhaps she was not far wrong. For Anthony’s was a nature which such a blow as he had received, anything indeed which shook his faith in himself or in others, would have a disposition to harden, and all that was about him would certainly take its colouring from himself. He was letting his sympathies dry up, almost forcing them back out of their channels, and was ceasing to believe in any broader or more genial flow in others. People are not so much to us what they are as what we see them, so that there are some for whom the world must be full of terrible companions.

And with poor Anthony the colouring he laid on at this time was cold and grey enough. Every gleam of brightness lay behind him in the old days which had suddenly grown a lifetime apart,—school, college, home, where on all sides he was the most popular, the most brilliant, the most full of life. And now—old friends had failed him, old hopes had been killed, old aims seemed unreal, old dreams foolishness. The saddest part of it all was that he was making even his dreariest fancies truth. There are few friendships that will stand the test of one dropping away from the bond: as to hopes and dreams and aims, they too become what a man makes them,—no less and no more. He was beginning to feel with impatient weariness that his engagement was not fulfilling even the moderate amount of contentment which he had expected. He had never professed to himself any overwhelming passion of love for Ada, but he had turned to her when he was sore and wroth with all the world, and it had seemed to him as if here were a little haven of moderate calm. If he had loved her better he would have felt as if she had a right to demand more, but I doubt whether this ever troubled him. With an older man also the experiment might have succeeded better, but his life was too young, and as yet too full of mute yearnings, for a reaction not to follow. It was not that clear-sightedness was awakened in him: the girl’s character was just one which the dullest woman would have fathomed, and scarcely a man have read rightly,—it was rather a cloudy dissatisfaction, a weariness, a consciousness that neither touched the other nor ever would, a sense of failure. No thought of escape was haunting him, he had a vague impression that his destiny might for a time be delayed, but meanwhile his destiny stood before him, and he knew that he was moving towards it, whether with willing or reluctant steps.

Of Winifred he thought very little. He did not choose to think of her. If ever there had been a day when it had seemed as if she might have become a part of his life, that day was gone like many another day. She and the world were against him, and if his own heart had been on that side, poor Anthony in his desperation would have fought against them,—heart and all. It would all come to an end some time, and meanwhile—Well, meanwhile he could go on towards the end.

As he walked down the old street under the flags, a sudden brightening of sunshine lit up the gay fluttering colours, a fresh breeze was blowing, the houses had irregular lines, rich bits of carving, black woodwork,—an odd sort of mediaeval life quietly kept, as it were, above the buying and selling and coming and going: now and then a narrow opening would disclose some little crooked passage, narrow, and ill-paved with stones which many a generation had worn down; while between the gables you might catch a glimpse of the soft darkness of the old Cathedral rising out of the green turf, trees from which a yellow leaf or two was sweeping softly down, a misty, tender autumnal sky, figures passing with a kind of grave busy idleness. There was a band marching up the street, and at the corner Anthony met Mr Wood, of the Grange, and at the same moment Mr Robert Mannering.

“Glad to see you,” said the latter, ignoring the younger man’s evident desire to hurry on. “You’re the very couple I should have chosen to run my head against, for Charles never rested until he had made Pelham and Smith, and half a dozen of their like, engage to dine with us to-morrow, and they’ll certainly not be content with me for a listener, so take pity, both of you, will you? Half past seven, unless they give us a terribly long-winded afternoon, and then Mrs Jones will be in a rage, and woe betide us!”

“No, no,” said Mr Wood, shaking his head, and going on. “Don’t expect me. I’ve just had a dose of Smith, and his long words frighten me. They don’t seem quite tame.”

“I’m sorry that I can’t join you,” said Anthony, putting on his impracticable look.

“Come, come. You’ve treated us very scurvily of late. Miss Lovell must spare you for once, Anthony.”

“Thank you. It is not possible.”

He said it so curtly, that Mr Robert’s face grew a shade redder; but as he watched the young man walking away down the street with short, quick steps, the anger changed in a moment into a sort of kind trouble.

“He’ll have none of it, and if it’s shame I don’t know but what I like him the better, poor boy! I know I’d give pretty nearly anything to be able to put out my hand and tell him I believe that confounded story to be a lie. But I can’t, and he knows it. The mischief I’ve seen in my day that had money at the bottom of it! Well, I hope that pretty little girl will make him a good wife, and I shall make it up to Margaret’s child by and by. There goes Sir Peter, on his way to patronise the Association, I’ll be bound. He’ll walk up to the front and believe they know all about him, how many pheasants he has in his covers, and what a big man he is in his own little particular valley. Why shouldn’t he?—we’re all alike. I caught myself thinking that Parker would be astonished if he could only see my Farleyense; and there’s Charles as proud as a peacock over his Homer that he’s going to display, and Mrs Jones thinking all the world will be struck with the frilling in which she’ll dress up her ham, and so we go on,—one fool very much like another fool. And as the least we can do is to humour one another, and as, to judge from the shops, the Association has in it a largely devouring element, I’ll go and look after Mrs Jones’s lobster.”

He turned down a narrow street. The Cathedral chimes were ringing, dropping down one after the other with a slow stately gravity. People were making their way across the Close to the different doors. The streets had their gay flags, and carriages, and groups in the shops, and mothers bringing little convoys from the dancing academy, and stopping to look at materials for winter frocks,—but hardly a touch of these excitements had reached the Close. It seemed as if nothing could ruffle its quiet air; as if, under the shadow of the old Cathedral, life and death itself would make no stir. The chimes ceased, the figures had gone softly in; presently there floated out dim harmonies from the organ. As Mr Mannering passed along under one of the old houses he met the Squire.

“Winifred and Bess are there,” he said, nodding towards the Cathedral. “The children like to go in for the service. They’re good children—mine—God bless them!” he went on, with a sudden abruptness which made Mr Robert glance in his face.

“Good? They’re as good as gold.”

“So I think, so I think. Bess, now. She’s a spirit of her own, up in a moment, like a horse that has got a mouth worth humouring, but all over with the flash, and not a bit of sulkiness to turn sour afterwards. And Winifred, she’s been a mother to her sister. She has, hasn’t she, Mannering?”

“Don’t harrow a poor old bachelor’s feelings. You know I have lost my heart to Miss Winifred ever since she was ten years old, and she refused to marry me, even then,—point-blank.”

But the Squire did not seem to be listening to his answer, or if he heard it, it blended itself with other thoughts. He said with something that seemed like a painful effort, “Pitt had a notion that Anthony Miles liked Winifred. There never was anything of the kind, but he took it into his head. I’m glad with all my heart that Pitt was mistaken, for I would not have one of my girls suffer in that way for a thousand pounds. But I’ve been thinking to-day,—I don’t know what sets all these things running in my head, unless it is that it is my wedding-day.—My wedding-day, seven-and-twenty years ago, and little Harry was born the year after. I wasn’t as good a husband as I should have been, I know, Mannering, but I used to think, if little Harry had lived—”

He stopped. He had been speaking throughout in a slow disjointed way, so unlike himself that Mr Robert felt uncomfortable while hardly knowing why.

“Come,” he said cheerily. “Look at your two girls, and remember what you have just been saying about them.”

The Squire shook his head.

“They’re well enough,” he said, “but they’re not Harry. Who was I talking of—Anthony Miles, wasn’t it? I’ve been thinking that perhaps I’ve been too hard on the boy. It would have broken his father’s heart if he had known it, for there wasn’t a more honourable man breathing; but if my Harry had grown up, though he never could have done such a thing as that, he might have got into scrapes, and then if I had been dead and gone it would have been hard for never a one to stick by the lad. I don’t know how it is. I believe I’ve such a hasty tongue I never could keep back what comes uppermost. Many a box in the ear my poor mother has given me for it, though she always said all the same, ‘Have it out, and have done with it, Frank.’ It was a low thing for him to do, sir,” went on the Squire, firing up, and striking the ground with his stick by way of emphasis, “but—I don’t know—I should be glad to shake hands with him again. Somehow I feel as if it couldn’t be right as it is, with his father gone, and my little lad who might have grown up.”

And so, across long years there came the clasp of baby fingers, and the echo of a message which was given to us for a Child’s sake,—peace and good-will.

“I wish you would,” Mr Mannering said heartily. “He is somewhere about in the town at this very minute; perhaps you’ll meet him. Only you mustn’t mind—”

He hesitated, for he did not feel sure of Anthony’s manner of accepting a reconciliation, or whether, indeed, he would accept it at all, and yet he did not like to throw difficulties in the way. But the Squire understood him with unusual quickness.

“You mean the lad’s a bit cranky,” he said, “but that’s to be expected. Perhaps he and I may fire up a little, for, as I said, I’m never sure of myself, but there’s his father between us, and—well, I think we shall shake hands this time.”

Not as he thought; but was it the less truly so far as he was concerned? For a minute or two Mr Robert stood and looked after him as he went along the Close, a thick, sturdy figure, with country-cut clothes, and the unmistakable air of a gentleman. The Cathedral towers rose up on one side in soft noble lines against the quiet sky, leaves fluttered gently down, a little child ran across the stones in pursuit of a puppy, and fell almost at the Squire’s feet. Mr Robert saw him pick it up, brush its frock like a woman, and stop its cries with something out of his pocket. The child toddled back triumphant, the Squire walked on towards the High Street, and Mr Robert turned in the other direction. Some indefinite sense of uneasiness had touched him, though, after all, there was no form to give it. If Mr Chester’s manner had been at first slightly unusual, he explained it himself by saying that he had been stirred by old recollections, and the vagueness his friend had noticed quite died away by the end of their conversation. He was walking slowly, but with no perceptible faltering.

“And a man’s wedding-day must be enough to set things going in his head,” Mr Robert reflected. “If matters had fallen out differently now with Margaret Hare—Well, well, so I am going to make an old fool of myself, too. I’d better get on to the carrier, and set Mrs Jones’s mind easy about her lobster.”

Distances are not very great in Aunecester, and it did not take long for Mr Mannering to reach the White Horse, transact his business, and go back to the principal street to wait for his brother. There was one particular bookseller’s shop, to which people had parcels sent, and where they lounged away what time they had in hand, and just before he reached it Mr Mannering noticed an unusual stir and thickening of the passers-by. He concluded that the band might be playing again, or that some little event connected with the Association had attracted a crowd. It was not until he was close to one of the groups that the scattered words they let fall attracted his attention.

“An accident, did you say?” he said, stopping before a man whose face was red and heated.

“Yes, sir. A gentleman knocked down. That’s the boy, and a chase I’ve had to catch him.”

Mr Mannering began to see a horse, a policeman, and a frightened-looking lad in the midst of the crowd.

“Nothing very serious, I hope?”

“It looked serious, sir, when we picked him up. He is took into the shop, and they’ve sent for the doctor. Boys don’t care what they ride over.”

“I fancy something was wrong before the horse touched him, though,” said another man, with a child in his arms. “There was time enough else for him to have got out of the way.”

“Who is it?” asked Mr Mannering, with a sudden wakening of anxiety. At that moment Anthony Miles came quickly out of the shop, almost running against him in his hurry.

“Have you seen them?” he said hastily, when he saw who it was. His face was drawn and pallid, like that of a man who has received a great shock.

“Who, who?” said Mr Robert, gripping his arm. “It isn’t the Squire that’s hurt?”

“Yes,” said Anthony impatiently. “He’s in there. Somebody must find Winifred, or she’ll be in the thick of it in a minute.”

“She is at the Cathedral, she and Bessie,” said Mr Mannering, asking no more questions, but feeling his heart sink. “They must be coming out about this time. God help them, poor children!”

Anthony was off before the words were out of his mouth. Mr Robert, his kind ugly face a shade paler than usual, turned into the shop, which was full of curious customers, and made his way to a back room to which they motioned him gravely.

It was a little dark room, lit only by a skylight, on which the blacks had rested many a day, and hung all round with heavy draperies of cloaks and other garments, which at this moment had something weird in their familiar aspect. The Squire had been laid upon chairs, hastily placed together to form a couch; the doctor and one or two of the shop-people were talking together in a low voice as Mr Robert came in, and a frightened girl, holding a bottle in her hand, stood a little behind the group.

By their faces he knew at once that there was no hope. Perhaps for the moment what came most sharply home to him was the incongruity of the Squire’s fresh open-air daily life, and this strange death-room of his. He said eagerly to the doctor,—

“Can’t we get him out of this?”

“Not to Thorpe,” Dr Fletcher said gravely. “But we can move him to my house. I have sent for a carriage.”

“Is he quite unconscious?”

“Quite. There will be no suffering.”

There was no need to ask more. Death itself seems as helplessly matter of fact as the life before it. Mr Robert stood and looked down with moist eyes at the honest face that had been so full of vigour but the day before, when the Squire went through his day’s shooting like a man of half his years; and then thought of him as he had seen him that very hour, on his way to make peace, comforting a little child. Those had been his last words, the kind, good heart showing itself behind its little roughnesses, and softened as it may have been—who knows?—by a dim foreshadowing.

Chapter Twenty Five.

“Its silence made the tumult in my breast More audible; its peace revealed my own unrest.” Jean Ingelow.

Anthony told everything on their way from the Cathedral to the shop, for, indeed, he did not know what might not have happened even in so short a time. But except that the crowd had pretty well dispersed, leaving only a few of the more curious idlers to hang about, all was much as he left it, outside and in. Bessie was crying and trembling, but Winifred went softly in, without looking to the right or left, and, kneeling by her father’s side, clasped his hand in hers.

“We are going to take Mr Chester to my house, where he will be a good deal more comfortable,” said the doctor with the cheerfulness which is at all events intended for kindness.

“Not home?” Winifred asked, without looking up.

“My dear, the long drive would be more than he could bear while he is in this condition,” said Mr Robert gravely. “And now Dr Fletcher will have him altogether under his care, which is particularly desirable. The carriage is here: we only waited for you.”

She rose up, showing no agitation except a tremulous shiver which she could not repress, while Bessie clung to her and sobbed convulsively. Anthony, who was greatly shocked, had fallen involuntarily into his old brotherly ways. He brought a fly, and put the two sisters into it, and when Bessie looked at him imploringly, got in by their side instead of walking round with Mr Mannering. It was like a dream, the flags, and the bustle, and the people coming down the street from the concert, and this sad cloud chilling their hearts. He saw on the other side Mrs Bennett, and Ada, and Mr Warren: Ada was staring in wonder, but he cared nothing for that or anything else except the beseeching look in Winifred’s sad eyes.

By the time they reached the doctor’s house, Bessie had rallied from the first terror of the shock, and Winifred was as outwardly calm as possible, ready to receive her father, quick to comprehend Dr Fletcher’s directions, and so helpful and quiet that it was only now and then that Anthony knew that she turned to him with a mute appeal in the look, as if in this wave of sorrow she too had forgotten all estrangement and coldness, and gone back to the old days which both believed had passed away forever. There was a strange sort of tender pride in the way he watched her, which must have startled himself if he had been aware of it. But he was not. He was not thinking about himself, and, indeed, might have argued that the veriest stranger must have been touched and moved at such a time. When he was obliged to leave her, he could hardly bear to do so.

“I may come back in the morning, may I not?” he said, unable to avoid saying it.

“Do come,” Winifred had answered with a quiet acceptance, of his help, and going on to tell him what was wanted from Hardlands. As he went out of the door he met Mr Robert coming to see if he could be of any further use.

“I have made Charles go home, for he is not fit for this sad business,” said Mr Robert in an altered voice. “Poor things, poor things! It is one comfort to know he does not suffer. Fletcher says he will not recover consciousness. Good Heavens, I can’t believe it now! His last words,—ah! to be sure, Anthony, he was going off after you when it happened.”

And he told him what the Squire had said.

It touched Anthony inexpressibly, but it seemed also to bring back an avenging army of forgotten things, so that Mr Robert could not understand what made his face grow dark, and let his voice drop coldly as if it were a shame to waste a sacred thing on one so unforgiving, not knowing to what his words had suddenly recalled him. The past had been sweet through all its sorrow, and now it was over, and he must gather up his burden.

“The Bennetts are at Griffith’s, and were inquiring for you. Good-night,” said Mr Mannering shortly.

Anthony went mechanically towards the bookseller’s, knowing exactly all that would be said to him, the exclamations and questions which Ada was likely to pour out seeming unutterably wearisome at this moment when Winifred’s face would persistently rise before him, so brave, so patient, so womanly in its sorrow, that Ada could not stand the contrast. And yet he was to marry Ada, to become one with her, to swear to love her. He turned white when the thought struck him suddenly, as if it were a new knowledge. She was standing at the bookseller’s door, waiting impatiently, and smiling a pretty show of welcome, as usual.

“I am so glad you are come, Anthony; it was such a pity you did not go to the concert. And poor old Mr Chester,—do tell us all about it I don’t think I shall ever fancy Springfield’s shop again.”

“I don’t wonder you are shocked,” Anthony said, rousing himself and conscious that he owed her amends for the very agony of the last few minutes. “It seems hardly possible as yet to realise it.”

“No, it is dreadful,” said Ada, her looks wandering away. “Does Miss Chester feel it much? She looks as if it would take a good deal to move her. There are the Watsons,—you didn’t bow.” Mrs Bennett’s face at the other end of the shop looked like a refuge to which he might escape. To escape,—and he was to marry her! He had not yet heard the end of the petty inquiries which fluttered down upon him, but at length he saw Mrs Bennett and Ada driving away, and Ada pointing towards Springfield’s and explaining. Anthony went quickly into a back room, wrote two or three letters to the Squire’s nearest relations, rode as fast as he could to Thorpe, gave Miss Chesters directions to the Hardlands servants, and then, after a moment’s thought, turned his horse’s head back to Aunecester.

He said to Dr Fletcher, “Do not say anything of my being here to Miss Chester; it can do no good, I know, but—we were near neighbours, and I may as well sleep to-night at the Globe, so as to be at hand if I am wanted. You’ll send for me if I can do anything of any sort? And there is no change?”

“None whatever. We have, of course, had a consultation, and Dr Hill entirely takes my view of the case. I regret that I cannot tell you that he is more hopeful. I am inclined to think Mr Chester’s condition not altogether attributable to the blow, but that there might have been a simultaneous attack.”

There was nothing to stay for, and Anthony went, though not to the inn. He walked about the old town for more hours than he knew, thinking of many things. Those last words of the Squire had touched him acutely, and his thoughts were softened and almost tender towards the friends whose countenance he had been rejecting. But the idea which seemed to hold him with a rush of force was that he must see Winifred again; that, happen what might, it was impossible but that there should be a meeting, if not one day at least another. It did not strike him as an inconsistency that this thing which he wanted had been within his reach a hundred times when he would not avail himself of it; like most men when under the influence of a dominant feeling, he did not care to look back and trace the manner in which its dominion had gradually asserted itself, nor, indeed, to dwell upon it so far as to admit that it was a dominion at all. Was he not to marry Ada Lovell? Only pity moved him, pity that was natural enough, remembering the old familiar relations, or allowing himself to dwell upon the sweet womanly eyes which no darkness could shut out from him. For gradually the dusk had deepened into night, the Close in which he found himself was singularly deserted, now and then a figure that might have been a shadow passed him, a quiet light or two gleamed behind homely blinds, and by and by was extinguished, the trees stood black and motionless against the sky, only the great bell of the Cathedral clock now and then broke the silence, and was answered far and near by echoing tongues. Such a night was full of tender sadness, to poor Anthony perhaps dangerously soft and sweet, for he had been living of late, in spite of his engagement, in an atmosphere of cold restraint, peculiarly galling to his reserved yet affectionate nature. All Ada’s pretty assurances and the pleasant amenities of the Bennetts’ house had never removed the chill. They were something belonging to him, at which he looked equably, but they had never become part of himself. Alas, and yet to-day a word or two of Winifred’s—Winifred whom he did not love—had pierced it.

Winifred—whom he did not love.

With one of those unaccountable flashes by which an image is suddenly brought into our memory, there started before him a remembrance of her in the old Vicarage garden, that Sunday morning when he and she had strolled together to the mulberry-tree,—the quaintly formal hollyhocks, the busy martins flashing in and out, the daisies in the grass, Winifred softly singing the old psalm tune, and laying the cool rose against her cheek. Had he forgotten one of her words that day, this Winifred whom he did not love? And then he thought of her again at a time which he had never liked to look back upon, that winter day when she had met him in the lane, a spot of warm colour amidst the faded browns and greys,—thought of the gate and the cold distant moorland, and the words which had struck a chill into his life. It had seemed to him then as if it had been she who had done it, and he had never been able to dissociate her from her tidings; so that no generous pity for the woman who had wounded him, nor any understanding that she had done it because from another it might have come with too cruel harshness, had stirred his heart, until now when another compassion had forced the door, turned his eyes from himself, and shown him what Winifred had been.

The darkness reveals many things to us, and that night other things were abroad in the darkness,—death, the unfulfilled purpose of one whom he had chosen to regard as his enemy, if, indeed, it were not rather that God had fulfilled it in his own more perfect way,—these were working upon him, however unconsciously. Yet those revelations were full of anguish, opening out mistake after mistake in a manner which to a man who has over-trusted himself becomes an intolerable reproach. The accusation which had seemed literally to blast his life stood before him in juster, soberer proportions; his manner of meeting it became more cowardly and faithless, made bitter by an almost entire forgetfulness of the Hand from which the trial came. And in the midst of his angry despair, by his own act he must deliberately add another pang to his lot, and, putting away his friends, bind himself for life to a woman for whom his strongest feeling was the fancy for a smiling face. Perhaps, as yet, he hardly knew how slight that feeling was, but even by this time he was bitterly tasting the draught his own weakness had prepared. These thoughts all came to him with a quiet significance, adding tenfold to their power, yet touched by a certain solemn gravity which gave him the sense for which he most craved just now, the old childlike trustfulness in an overruling care. As we sow, so we must reap, but even the saddest harvest may yield us good sheaves, though not the crop we longed and hoped to gather. And this night was the first hour which seemed to bring Anthony face to face with his own work.

He had been walking mechanically about the Close. Turning out of it at last, he went back to Dr Fletcher’s house, and looked up at a light burning in an upper window, little thinking, however, that it was a watch by the dead, and not by the living, that it marked; for in spite of what Dr Fletcher had told him, the tidings he heard in the early morning fell like an unexpected blow. He would have gone away without a word, but that Dr Fletcher came out at the moment.

“There was never any rally or return to consciousness,” he said, leading the way into the dining-room, where his breakfast was spread, “and although this naturally aggravates the shock to his daughters, they have been spared a good deal that must have been very painful, poor things! My wife is with them. Will you have a cup of coffee with me?”

“He was always supposed to have such a good constitution,” said Anthony, looking stunned.

“Perhaps not so good as it seemed. He led a regular life, temperate and healthy,—I only wish there were more like him,—and he had never been tried by any severe illness. As to this, a more tenacious vitality might only have prolonged the suffering. I think you said you had written to the relations? I would have telegraphed this morning, but Miss Chester was anxious that her aunt should be spared the shock.”