Frances Peard (continued 6)

Side by side with Nat Wills, Anthony Miles knelt down by the bedside.

“Do you know me, David?” he said, with the gentleness that death teaches us.

Once more David tried to speak, once more the words failed him. His eyes turned away in piteous entreaty, and the doctor, passing his arm round him, got him to swallow a few drops of stimulant. Then those who were nearest heard his voice as if front far away.

“I was going to you—next—that letter—”

“The letter?” repeated Anthony in surprise. The shadow of his life was not touching him at that moment; he could not understand.

“Have you given him a letter?” asked Mr Bennett.

“The letter—- about the—will.”

The blood rushed over Anthony’s face. He understood at last. For an instant it was like the lifting of an iron weight, for an instant his heart leaped up. Mr Bennett came closer and began to question eagerly,—

“Do you mean the Cornish letter?—the one all the talk has been about?”

“I ought to have told—O God, have mercy!”

“Told what?—What do you mean?—Say it out, man!”

“Give him time,” said the doctor, quietly.

“It did come—I saw the postmark—Polmear—I gave it myself to—”

“Hush!” said Anthony, very gravely and kindly. “You need not tell us any more, David, for I know it all.”

“But—Anthony, Anthony, my dear fellow, for Heaven’s sake, let us hear what he means. Our coming here I consider quite providential. Here is this abominable story on the point of being cleared up. Don’t stop him for worlds.”

“Mr Miles never had—it,” said Stephens, speaking more strongly. “You will find the bits—I picked up—and the date in my pocket-book. He tore it up—”

“There is nothing more to be said,” interrupted the young man, much moved. “If this has been on your conscience, David, I am very sorry, for I knew that the letter reached Underham, although I never saw it. Your being able to tell these gentlemen so much ought to be a good thing for me, I suppose,” he went on with a touch of the old bitterness; “but as to other particulars, the way you can best repair any wrong is by keeping silence.” The dying man’s eyes met his once more with a mute look of anguish. Was the sin he had nursed to die with him without his being permitted to reveal it?

“I thought—you hindered the—good work,” he said, lifting his feeble hands as if to ask for mercy.

“And what troubles you now is, that you feel you have wronged Mr Miles?” said the doctor, who began to understand something.

“David, listen,” said Anthony, speaking in a low gentle voice. “May God forgive me as I forgive you, freely, fully. May God forgive my hard thoughts of you. He is teaching us both something, and I think I have the most to learn. I wish there was one soul could cling to me as that poor boy is clinging now to you.”

David’s eyes turned slowly towards Nat Wills, and softened into a look of great love.

“Nat,” he said faintly,—“Nat!”

“I’ll go just where you likes,” said the boy, eagerly looking up.

“Then you’ll go to Thorpe—to Mr Salter—Mr Miles will, maybe, help you—and you’ll tell. There’s nothing like telling before it’s too late.” His voice had grown stronger, his eye brightened.

“Do you know that it was Mr Miles who saved your life?” said Mr Bennett, who had been a good deal shocked by what he heard.

But David was still looking at the boy.

“The mist is lifting from the water,” he said slowly. “Does Faith see it?—Faith told me she would—look, look!”

“He is wandering,” said the doctor, softly.

What does the soul see when the cords are loosened for a moment, and it goes where our feeble pity follows, not knowing what we say? Do the mists lift indeed, and does the glory of the Day Dawn shine in its nearness? Whatever David may have beheld, something of its wonder touched his face, and brightened it with an intense joy, a joy which rested, and at which by and by they looked reverently as at something which had done with earth and its sin forever.

Chapter Thirty Two.

Mr Mannering was sitting in his library the next morning, when Mr Bennett was announced. It was not yet twelve o’clock, and the Underham lawyer was generally deep in his work at that hour, so that Mr Mannering met him with a touch of wonder in his cordiality.

“The more welcome because I should as soon have expected Thorpe to receive a visit from the Mayor and Corporation as from you at this time of day. Sit down, pray. My papers are all over the place, but I believe you can find a chair.”

“If I had not known better, I should have said you were still in harness, I own,” said Mr Bennett, looking round upon the familiar signs of business.

“Harness? I sometimes think that for men who have passed the greater part of their lives at work there is no getting out of it. There is a review in the last Quarterly which all the world is talking about, and I can assure you I have not yet found five minutes in which to look at it. The truth is that an unlucky mortal who has neither time, money, nor health, should make up his mind to endure a great deal in this world.”

“What’s that, Charles?” said Mr Robert, coming in with a ruddy glow upon his face. “If you had Stokes for a gardener, you might begin to talk about endurance. Glad to see you, Bennett, this fine fresh morning. All well, I hope?”

“All my household, thank you,” said Mr Bennett, settling himself to his story with great satisfaction. “But we had a sad accident in Thorpe last night. Anthony Miles had been dining with us, and had not left half an hour when back he came, and really it was fortunate that Ada had gone up stairs, or she might have been terribly alarmed to see him dripping from head to foot at that hour of the night. However, the ladies were out of the way, by a stroke of good fortune.”

“Dripping! Had he tumbled into the water?”

“Not at all, not at all. It was a foolish thing to do, but it seems he saw the man fall, and jumped in after him. And then, of course, he came to me for dry clothes.”

Mr Mannering was leaning forward in a trim attitude of attention, with his legs crossed, and his head a little bent. Mr Robert was fidgeting as usual under Mr Bennett’s prose.

“But who was drowned or dragged out, or what was the end of it?” he said hastily. “Bless the boy, he’ll be himself again, if people believe him to be a hero. Who was it, Bennett?”

“Ah, there is the extraordinary coincidence. It was such a fortunate thing that I went back with Anthony, because, although it was not the case for a formal deposition, I am ready to prove that he made a voluntary declaration.”

“He—who, who?”

“The young man’s name is David Stephens,” said Mr Bennett in a tone of mild reproof. “He is a clerk at the post-office.”

“Young Stephens, the humpback preacher! Deposition?—Do you mean there had been a quarrel or anything?”

“My dear Mr Robert, if you were to guess for a week you would never imagine what he had to say,” said Mr Bennett, sitting back in his chair, and tapping one hand lightly with the other, too secure of his story to mind the little pokes and digs that were being administered. “I can assure you that in the whole course of my experience I have never met with anything I consider so strange. It just appeared the shadowy kind of accusation which is most difficult to rebut; and, although I was convinced that it might be explained in some perfectly honourable manner, it cannot be doubted that there were persons whom it did influence otherwise.”

Mr Mannering looked as courteously attentive as ever, Mr Robert had sunk into a despairing silence.

“My most sanguine hopes hardly amounted to an actual acquittal, owing, as I have said, to the difficulty of proving anything in the matter—”

“You are talking about Anthony Miles,” cried Mr Robert, jumping up, and becoming very red in the face. “But what on earth had that young Stephens to do with it?”

“Could you have imagined that he had in his hands this letter which made all the stir, that he gave it to a certain person, and that, it having been destroyed, Stephens was able to tell us where we might find one or two of its fragments, minute fragments I need not say, but sufficient for the purpose of identification, and such as under the circumstances may be considered conclusive.”

“Conclusive?—but of what? The existence of that letter is the very fact to which we have all been trying to shut our eyes,” said Mr Mannering, dubiously joining his fingers.

“The letter existed,” said Mr Bennett, leaning forward and speaking emphatically,—“the letter existed, but it never reached the owner to whom it was addressed. Another person received it from Stephens, and, as I have told you, apparently destroyed it. One or two things must have excited Stephens’s suspicions, for he managed to possess himself of a shred or two of the writing. I have them with me.”

Nobody spoke for a moment. Mr Robert walked to the window and blew his nose violently. Mr Mannering took the tiny witnesses, and fitted them together with his long slender fingers.

“Here are four,” he said at last, “one with only the word ‘will,’ which is valueless; another may be ‘proposal’ with the first letter and half of the second missing, and the remaining two are, I should say, unmistakably part of the signature. You are right, Bennett. They prove nothing, and yet under the circumstances they prove a great deal. I am heartily pleased.”

“Who was the rascal?” asked his brother from the window.

Mr Bennett pursed up his lips and did not answer until Mr Robert repeated his question, and then he said,—

“That is the most unsatisfactory part of the business, I lament to say. Will you believe that Anthony Miles knew all that I have told you from the first, and would not speak, and that now he has prevented our becoming acquainted with the name of the person?”

“Whew! That complicates the matter again. How can Anthony be such a fool!”

“I have urged everything in my power,” Mr Bennett went on, rather pompously. “His position in regard to my family gave me the right to do so. But he is exceedingly determined. He says the information is not new to himself, and he even requests me to keep complete silence on the subject.”

“Don’t pay any attention to his crotchets, Bennett,” said Mr Robert, marching back from the window. “Silence?—Tell everybody, everybody!—it’s the only thing to do. He has proved himself too incapable to be allowed any longer to manage his own affairs. Besides, for Miss Lovell’s sake—I’m delighted, more than delighted; that business has been a load on my mind ever since I first heard of it. We’ll give a dinner-party, Charles, and ask the whole neighbourhood; I’ll write to that dry old Pitt, and insist that he shall come down and eat his words before he has any other dinner. Poor boy, we’ve treated him shamefully. But, I say, Bennett, what of Stephens? It seems to me that he comes badly enough out of it. What has he got to say for himself, eh?”

His kind, ugly face was radiant. Mr Bennett looked up nervously, for the tragedy of the night before had touched him more deeply than he knew himself.

“I don’t think we had better say anything further about his part of the business, poor fellow,” he answered, a little apologetically. “He is dead now, and he did his utmost at the last. Perhaps it’s easier to judge than to understand.”

“Dead! I thought that Anthony Miles had saved him?”

“Bowles said from what he saw and heard from a miserable boy—who, by the way, belongs to your village—that Stephens had got down to a very low ebb with want of food and want of rest, and the shock was too great. It really was very affecting, the boy’s grief and all that, and this morning the house is besieged. I think the poor fellow must have had some good in him, in spite of the ugly look his silence has.”

When Mr Bennett had gone, Mr Robert came back to the library, rubbing his hands.

“Well, Charles,” he said.

“Well, my dear Robert.”

“I am going to the cottage at once.”

“I would go with you if this lumbago only left me the power of moving. But let me forewarn you not to expect a very warm reception from Anthony.”

“Warm or not, I couldn’t stay away an hour. I shall go on to Hardlands, and perhaps somehow or other get a lift to the Milmans or to Stanton. It seems a sin to leave that matter uncleared another day. You’ll write to Pitt, Charles,” added his brother, suddenly becoming grave. “I suppose we both guess who was the other person?”

“I am afraid we do.”

“It was sheer folly to have sacrificed himself, but, naturally, their relationship added to his reluctance. Well, we have no right to make other people acquainted with what is simply conjecture, but I shall be surprised if others besides ourselves do not put two and two together.”

“Nevertheless, remember that as the story cannot be made altogether clear, we may expect incredulity yet.”

“The story is clear enough,” said Mr Robert, indignantly. “Nobody can doubt it who is not wilfully malicious. Anthony’s statement was that on a certain date he had received no letter. People could not prove that he had, but it was just open to doubt,—upon my word, I don’t think I’ll ever doubt again to my dying day,—now comes a witness who can swear that Anthony is correct, who saw the letter in other hands, and produces a portion of that letter destroyed. What on earth can be asked for more? If you are not satisfied, Charles, I shall say you are as unreasonable as Stokes.”

He went away laughing and rubbing his hands. The day was warm and damp, the clouds had a uniform tint of grey, drops clung to the beautiful bare boughs, which had so much cheerful undergrowth of green that they lost their wintry aspect, as Mr Robert started on his triumphal progress, which, however, like other triumphs, was not free from disappointment. Anthony was not at the cottage, and Mrs Miles would have resented any rejoicing over a proof which it seemed to her absolutely wickedness to demand. Mr Mannering could not be sure that her son had told her anything, and the only compensation of which he dared to avail himself was praise of Anthony’s courage the night before.

“Which way has he gone?” he asked, as he stood at the door.

“I think he has walked up to Hardlands. I wish he would have kept quiet to-day, after the shock and all,” said Mrs Miles, proudly.

“I suspect the shock was in the right direction, in spite of my gentleman’s pride,” Mr Robert reflected, walking out of the gate. “It will not hurt me to trudge to the Milmans, and then he shall make his own revelations at Hardlands. If only the Squire could have seen the day!”

Chapter Thirty Three.

“For Love himself took part against himself To warn us off, and Duty loved of Love.” Tennyson.

That afternoon Winifred was at home alone, rather an unusual thing for her, but Mrs Orde had occasion to go to Aunecester, and her son and Bessie had gone with her, while Winifred was glad of some excuse for staying at home, not having yet become accustomed to the sight of the street where her eyes were constantly picturing what had happened such a little time ago. A large fire was blazing, and she opened the long window, and sat down with some pretence of work in her hand, but after a few minutes’ attention her eyes wandered away to the grey familiar view before her. The firs to the left looked thin and dreary, the grass of the field which stretched beyond the lawn had grown a little coarse, no lights flashed from a mass of low heavy-lying clouds, all colours except cold greys and browns seemed to, have been drawn from the distant trees, the cottages, the little line of sea, the sad hills. Winifred’s eyes filled with tears as she looked out. It would have been so natural for the Squire’s strong figure to have made the foreground of the picture, his voice might so well have been heard calling the dogs, and gathering around him a little circle of cheery life, that the blank solitude smote her with desolate pain. It is, however, possible that when such a sad and unacknowledged jar has grown into a girls life as had come to Winifred, there is a certain luxury in a permitted sorrow. It seems at the time as if trouble were being heaped upon trouble, but it really takes away that hard feeling of repression which is like an iron band on a wound. Perhaps there is hardly a grief over which we mourn, but has those hidden behind it of which the world knows nothing. How imperceptibly do other memories weave themselves round the one remembrance that is so sad and yet so dear! How heavy with longing may be the thoughts which creep softly back to days not very long ago, except for that drag which makes time seem interminable! It was not only over her father’s image that Winifred was crying softly when she heard a sound, and Anthony Miles came in.

It may have been that he was too preoccupied with his own feelings to notice her tears, or that he did not dare to notice them. Winifred herself rose hastily, and sat down again a little hastily too, taking care to turn her back to the light which she had before been facing. She knew that her hand was trembling, and although it might have been caused by the momentary surprise, the feeling of weakness it produced unnerved her, and she was thankful that Anthony, when he sat down, sat leaning forward with his elbow on his knee, and his face on his hand, looking straight before him through the open window at the dull greyness, as if he saw nothing on either side.

A minute before Winifred had not felt as if it were possible to speak, but it is often necessary to fly from silence and take refuge in commonplaces, and she gathered up the work which lay in her lap and said,—

“I hope you did not want to see the others, for they have driven to Aunecester.”

“I did not want to see any one but you, Winifred,” said Anthony, without changing his position.

The words were so unlike what she expected, that she trembled again with a thrill that was neither joy nor fear, but something more exquisitely painful. Anthony went on after a moment’s pause,—“I suppose you do not know what happened last night?”

“Last night? No.”

“That poor fellow of whom we were speaking the other evening, David Stephens, fell into the water, and died in a few hours.”

“O poor Faith!” said Winifred, touched by an instantaneous sympathy.

“Yes,” said Anthony, gravely. “We would have sent her home, but she has begged my mother to let her stay.”

“Were you there?—how did you know about it?—where was it?”

“Yes, I was there. It was in Underham,” said Anthony. He had spoken throughout in the same short abstracted tone, as if a fit of absence were upon him; but what he had told her was sufficient to account for it, and she had forgotten herself in its sadness, and was looking at him with compassionate eyes, when he turned round for the first time, and said slowly, “I wished to see you alone, because you may as well know that it is proved—sufficiently, I suppose, for the satisfaction of my friends—that I am not quite the rogue they made me out to be. I can’t answer any questions, and it is not possible now, any more than then, to explain exactly what did take place. Therefore, there is, of course, still room for doubt. At the same time David, before he died, poor fellow, declared that the letter never reached my hand, so—you may take the evidence for what it is worth. You are the only person to whom I shall repeat it.”

Passionate tears sprang into Winifred’s eyes. This clearing of Anthony’s honour, for which she had prayed and yearned, had all gladness frozen out of it by the coldness of his words and the want of trust they implied. Her fate crimsoned, and when she tried to speak her voice was choked. Anthony, who had expected congratulations instead of this silence, turned towards her in surprise, and met her look intensely reproachful. He started up and walked quickly to the window. That look thrilled him suddenly with a doubt that carried sweet anguish and bitter joy. Had her faith been, after all, unshaken? Had it been he who had thrust her from him?—his pride which had separated them forever? He turned round and looked at Winifred again; burning words rose to his lips, and died away: if he had found a voice I do not know what he might not have said, but for a moment it was impossible to speak, and Winifred, although she was trembling under his eyes, was bravely holding back her own emotion.

“I am so thankful,” she said. “Now all that has past will lose its pain. I don’t want to ask any questions, but it has been very cruel for you,—for us all,” she added softly.

“Pain does not go away so easily as you believe. I think it has only just begun,” said poor Anthony. “Answer me one thing, Winifred. Does this that I have told you make no difference in your thoughts of me?”

“How should it!—how should it!” she cried out with an impetuosity of rejection which startled him. “O, how could you think so! Do we not know each other?—are we not friends?—can you suppose that for one moment I ever doubted you?” She stood up and looked at him with reproachful eyes, only eager to repel the accusation. He, looking also, knew for the first time that he, not she, had failed; that the want of trust, the want of friendship, had been on his side, not hers. And yet she said that now the past would lose its pain! He turned away with something like a groan.

“What is the use of it all then?” he said.

“One thinks of other people, I suppose,” said Winifred, trying to understand his mood. “So many people are ready to believe evil. If you are not glad for your own sake, you must be for those for whom you care—”

She stopped trembling, for he was facing her again, with his eyes fixed upon her, and a depth in their gaze before which her heart fluttered and leapt up. For an instant she felt as if it had met his own; for an instant the happiness that flooded her carried her on its triumphant tide; for an instant the world was full of a sweet joy, beyond either measurement or control,—for an instant and no more. Her voice had scarcely faltered, and she might have been only completing the sentence when she said in a low tone,—

“For Miss Lovell, especially.”

She was looking away from him and did not know whether he had changed his position or not, for he did not answer. There was a strange heavy silence in which she could hear a watch ticking, the sigh of the wind among the fir-trees, a scream from the distant train, the throbbing of her heart. All her strength seemed to have gone out in those four words.

“Yes,” said Anthony, at last, hoarsely, “for Miss Lovell, especially.”

Something in his voice or in the mechanical repetition of her words brought back Winifred’s courage.

“For her sake and your mother’s,” she said, earnestly. “However insignificant an accusation may be, its falseness must be a grief to the friends who best know how very false it is. I hope you will not try to prevent our being glad, although I dare say the poor man’s fate makes rejoicing seem heartless.”

“It makes me believe that failure is the end of our best hopes,—of all that is best in us,” said Anthony, standing with his back to her and speaking in a tone of deep despondency.

“Not failure, really,” said Winifred, with a flush of lovely eager colour rising in her cheeks. “Surely it is not possible that what is best can fail. It may seem so even to ourselves, but it cannot be the thing itself, only our way of thinking of it. Don’t you believe that failure and victory are sometimes one?” Anthony was silent. Was it so indeed? Sometimes one, triumph and defeat, death and life, the end and the beginning? Was it now—when he was ready to cry out that all was at its dreariest, with pangs of which he was tasting the most utter sharpness—now that he caught, through the clouds, a glimpse of something beyond change and beyond sorrow? He came and stood in front of Winifred, and put out his hand.

“I can’t tell,” he said. “It may be so, and I think you are more lively to be right than I. At all events, one has to learn how to accept failure, and perhaps—some day—one will understand better. God bless you, Winifred.”

She sat where he left her; she heard doors open and shut, and, turning round, saw him presently go quickly down the little path, pass under the fir-trees, and disappear from sight. Her breath came and went rapidly, a light was in her eyes. With all her struggle, those minutes had not been so bitter to her as to him; there was a joy in knowing that he loved her, it seemed to lift a secret reproach off her heart; and though this knowledge might bring sharper sadness to her by and by, for the moment the relief was so great as to make all sadness seem endurable.

Chapter Thirty Four.

Thanks in a great measure to Mr Robert’s policy, the news of Anthony’s clearing spread rapidly through the neighbourhood. The Milmans had a luncheon party about a week afterwards, and as Lady Milman said to her daughter beforehand, it was really quite a comfort to have something to talk about. She contrived, very skilfully, to keep the welcome topic out of the desultory conversation before luncheon, feeling that it was too valuable to be broken into fragments, as would then have been its fate. But in the first pause after they were seated in the dining-room, Mrs Featherly’s voice was heard emphatically declaring,—

“A very strange and unsatisfactory story this, about Anthony Miles. Not that I ever expected the matter to be cleared up in the manner one has a right to desire, but with his father vicar and all, I often told Mr Featherly that I should make a point of hoping against hope.”

“Well, I don’t know about its being unsatisfactory,” said Lady Milman, looking very handsome, and inclined to take a kindlier view of things. “It’s odd, of course, and unlucky that we can’t hear the whole affair, but so long as he did not receive the letter it is really no difference who did. I always liked Anthony Miles, and I think his jumping into the water and saving the man who had done him so much harm was a very fine thing.”

“O, but it was in the dark, so he could not possibly have known. I can tell you precisely how it all occurred,” said Mrs Featherly, who would have scorned to have been unable to give a precise account of anything which happened within a circuit of ten miles. “He had that minute left the Bennetts’, and heard a scream and a splash, and saw some one in the water, so of course he could do nothing less than jump in. There were the steps close by, and there was no possible danger.”

“Ah, it’s a capital thing to be able to economise one’s neighbours’ virtues,” said old Mr Wood of the Grange, helping himself to mayonnaise.

“Well, if Anthony Miles knew who it was,” said Mrs Featherly, tartly, “he showed a very proper spirit, a dissenter and all. Dissenters are never to be trusted, and this one behaved in a most reprehensible manner, going about in my husband’s parish and making himself exceedingly troublesome,—though I should be the last person to speak ill of the dead.”

“It is unsatisfactory, as you say, because they can’t feel it,” put in Mr Wood again, in a tone of assent, which Mrs Featherly accepted as a tribute to her argument.

“I have no doubt that it is all true so far as that David Stephens acted very wrongly,” she continued, “but then I do feel that if one hears part one should hear all. I should like to know, if Anthony Miles did not get the letter, who did?”

Mr Mannering had already laid down his knife and fork, and joined the tips of his fingers together, divided between a desire to speak and a fear of impoliteness.

“Excuse me,” he said, in his pleasant, courteous tones, “but I cannot but feel with Lady Milman that here we open another subject. I am sure Mrs Featherly, with her usual candour, will admit that Anthony Miles’s conduct may be considered blameless in the matter?”

“Indeed, I am not so presumptuous as to call any human being’s conduct blameless,” said Mrs Featherly aggressively, “especially that of a young man who has the snare of no profession. Not that anything seems to have any effect nowadays. There is that young Warren, good for nothing but to dance attendance upon Miss Ada Lovell. I have told Mr Featherly he really must make a point before long of speaking to Mr Bennett.”

“Warren?” said Sir Thomas Milman, joining in from the end of the table. “That will be his cousin whose death was in yesterday’s paper. It must have been sudden, very sudden. He only came to the title about four months ago, and now it goes, I should say, to this young fellow’s father. Isn’t it so, Mannering?—you’re up in all this sort of thing.”

“Sir Henry Warren is undoubtedly dead, and if this young man’s father is his uncle, it must be as you say,” said Mr Mannering, a little startled. “But I always understood theirs to be a family of great possessions. I had no idea this young Warren belonged to them.”

“Well, as often as not there’s a poor branch hanging on to the big stem, though they don’t very often get such a puff of good luck as this to set them straight. But there’s no doubt about the money.”

“O, they creak of money,” said Mr Wood. “Their pedigree is not long enough to have given them time to spend it as yet. They must wait for that till they get a little good blood into the family.”

“I shall make a point of calling upon Mrs Bennett this afternoon,” said Mrs Featherly, who had been listening in blank amazement, “so that I may learn exactly what has happened. Mr Warren the son of a baronet! Well, I must say he has always performed his duties in an exemplary manner, and I shall be quite glad to show him a little attention, that he may see we appreciate it. It is certainly one’s duty to do so. I shall make a point of it.” Even Mrs Bennett had been raised to something like excitement, when her husband told her of Mr Warren’s sudden prosperity.

“So much happens every day that it quite takes away my breath,” she said comfortably from the soft chair in which she was sitting. “Then, my dear Tom, Mr Warren will not stay with you? Dear me, Ada, you and I shall be quite sorry to lose him, he has really always made himself so pleasant and so attentive. I hope he will come and tell us all about it. And the poor young man who is dead, how sudden for him! Only three-and-twenty, too!”

“He takes it very properly,” said Mr Bennett, rubbing his hands. “Of course it puts me to a little inconvenience, and he spoke very well about it, very well. Offered to stay, and said quite the right thing. But I should not take any advantage of that sort, as you may suppose. He’ll go to the University, I imagine, and probably to the bar afterwards. Odd world, Ada, my dear, isn’t it?” As for Ada, the tears had rushed suddenly into her eyes. She murmured something in reply, but the weight of disappointment which she felt almost frightened herself, and when she made a faint attempt to assure herself that Mr Warren was nothing to her, it was only to become conscious that he was truly the embodiment of those things for which she most cared,—brightness, compliments, admiration, attention; and now—how much more besides! Ada was only romantic when romance did not interfere with more solid comforts, but to have all within her reach, and yet to be obliged to turn away, was a trial which touched her sorely. It seemed to develop a vein of bitterness, as opposed as possible to the petty prettinesses of her life, which made her thoroughly uncomfortable, and which she tried to dignify by the name of misery, although her feelings were at no time deep enough to admit of strong names. It added to her vexation that, so short a time ago, Anthony should himself have offered to free her from her engagement. Her vanity found so pleasant an excuse for his words in setting them down to a fear on his part that she should not be fully satisfied, that she felt no anger towards him for what he had said, but it provoked her that it should not have been later, when she might have been guided by these new circumstances. Marriage with Mr Warren had hitherto been out of the question; and now that its possibility was suddenly presented to her, Ada wept the bitterest tears of disappointment she had ever shed in her life. People with whom life has gone smoothly are not disposed to admit of any course of events whereby they are defrauded, as they think, of the good things that yet should fall to their share; the very shadow of withdrawal astonishes them in a manner which is not without its pathetic side to those who have tasted draughts out of the depths. There is, too, in these natures, often a curious power of centralisation, so that their own life becomes the point round which all others revolve, and in relation to which all others are considered. Ada would have understood the sin of another girl acting in what the world would call a heartless fashion; yet, so far as Anthony’s heart was concerned, she looked at it only as made for the satisfaction of her own; so that it would not have entered her head that suffering which seemed wrong and unendurable for herself might not properly have fallen to his share, and indeed there was, perhaps, a feeling as if a balance were struck with Providence, by admitting the necessity of tribulation for other people. It was not the pain she might inflict which weighed upon her now, but a vague dissatisfied conviction that her uncle and aunt would not permit her to throw over Anthony; a kind of dim sense, it might be, of honour, growing out of an atmosphere which, if easily selfish, was not dishonourable. Marrying him, she would feel all her life long that a great injury had been done her, yet she was aware that, cruel as it was, she might be called upon to endure this wrong.

Things seemed so harshly upset that, for the first time in her life, Ada caught sight of her tear-stained face in the glass, and her pretty eyes swollen and discoloured, without any answering impulse being awakened to put aside what so greatly marred her beauty, as easily crushed as a flower by a storm. On the contrary, she was touched by a sort of despair that the prettiness of which she was wholly conscious could not, after all, give her what she had a right to expect from it. It was a curious petty turmoil, yet for one of Ada’s nature it marked serious disturbance that she should have gone down stairs after only languidly pushing back her hair, without the usual marks of trim order which characterised her, and that she should have been pettish in her answers to her aunt. She was so evidently out of spirits when Anthony came in, that it was impossible for him not to remark it, but he was almost grateful for the change. Her constant flow of smiles grew at times to be full of weariness, the weariness which makes people feel conscience-stricken at the little repulsion that rises up. He looked very ill, and unlike a man from whom a heavy burden had just been lifted. Is it not so often?—what we want comes, and it is no longer what we want,—the load is taken off, but we would fain have it back again, if its weight might only be exchanged for the aching pain that has grown up elsewhere; we rail at the present, and lo, it passes away, and in its vanishing shadow we see the glory of an angel’s face, and stretch out our hands with vain weeping.

Anthony Miles had come that day with a determination to press his marriage, and to take Ada away from Underham. They would settle in London, by which he knew that he should fulfil one of Ada’s dreams, and there he would fling himself into work with a will, if not with much heart. Something of that shame of disappointment which scourges into fresh energy was upon him. He had resolved to be very gentle with Ada, and the change in her manner made it more easy than usual. She was sitting listlessly in an arm-chair near the fire, for her grief would never be likely to interfere with her comforts, and at this moment a sense of injury was uppermost, for which she instinctively felt compensations to be her due.

“I am afraid you have another headache,” said Anthony, standing before her, and looking down, with a vague compassion in his heart.

“Nobody thinks anything about my headaches,” said Ada, in a complaining voice. “When Aunt Henrietta is ill herself, she makes a great fuss about it, but she never cares about other people. This place does not agree with me; Dr Fletcher has always said so, but they will not believe him.”

“Will you let me take you away from it, then?” said Anthony, speaking sadly, but kindly, and trying to put away all thoughts but care for her. “London, you know, might suit you better.”

“Are you talking about our marrying?” Ada’s face lit up for a moment with a vision of her wedding-dress, but dropped again into its new expression of dissatisfied listlessness. “My uncle must settle all that.”

“But you do not object?”

“I don’t know,—I have a headache,—there can’t be any hurry.”

The indifference of the tone struck him, but it was too much an echo of his own feeling to seem as if it were anything strange.

“Then I will speak to him?” he said.

“Very well,” said Ada, turning away with tears in her eyes.

“Is there nothing I can do for you?” said Anthony, still touched with the feeling that it was bodily suffering she was experiencing.

“No,—nothing. I can’t talk. There is a ring, who is it?”

“I think I hear Warren’s voice.”

He did not expect to see her jump up, and turn with a smiling face to greet the new-comer. Not a trace of her languor remained; she talked, laughed, and congratulated, all in a breath. “What does it mean?” thought Anthony, looking at her sparkling eyes in wonder. Sniff had stolen in unperceived behind Mr Warren, and crept under his master’s chair; but seeing his hand hanging down could not, even at the risk of detection, refrain from a rapturous lick. Anthony got the dog’s head in his hand and fondled it, while he sat and wondered mutely.

“And you are really going away?” Ada was saying. “We shall all miss you so much.”

“You may be certain I shall come back again.”

“O yes, you must. Still—I don’t know—I am afraid there will be something different, and I dare say you will have forgotten all about us.”

“I am sure I shall never forget,—how could I?” said Mr Warren, turning very red, and almost stammering in his eagerness. “I have met with so much kindness in this house, I do not believe I shall be so happy anywhere as I have been in Underham.”

“O, but you will live in the country, and in such a beautiful place!” Ada said, shaking her curl, and sighing involuntarily as she thought of what her lot might have been.

“I like a sociable place like this better,” said the young fellow honestly, “and as to that, it’s the people—”

He stopped suddenly, with a perception that Anthony was sitting and looking grimly at him. He had a soft heart, and the idea of going away from Ada was solidifying his feelings, which had hitherto scarcely taken shape beyond the amusement of the moment, so that for the first time it gave him an actual pang to remember that the real separation lay in this engagement of Ada’s. One or two discoveries were made in that moment. Anthony awakened to the perception that another mistake must be added to the list, and it was a mistake which, whatever may be a man’s feelings, is sure to gall him. An apparently transparent affection, such as Ada’s, had been grateful to him at a time when he was very sore with all the world, and the fact of this soreness and of his own changed position gave it an air of reality which he had never thought of questioning. Even if he had discovered that her heart held no great depths, what was there he believed to be all his own; and Mr Warren would have been the last person presented to his thoughts as a possible rival until now, when Ada’s manner and sudden change from gloom to gaiety made him very wroth, with the anger not of jealousy, but of wounded pride. Nor did his own failure towards her soften him, for he satisfied himself by thinking that he had at least told her the truth, and put the matter into her own choice, while she had deliberately deceived him by liking this young idiot, and showing her preference unblushingly the instant the fellow’s position was changed. Anthony’s face grew blacker and blacker, and Ada, perhaps desirous of driving him to desperation, put out all her charms for Mr Warren. There was a certain comfortable prettiness about the room, about the cheerful colouring, and the big fire which looked brighter and brighter as the afternoon shortened, and in the midst of it all one of those half-absurd, half-tragic complications, which sometimes seem to get inextricably knotted round a life. Anthony jumped up at last.

“I am glad your headache is better,” he said shortly.

“Are you going? Good bye, then,” said Ada, in an indifferent voice.

He stood still, and looked at her for a moment, so that her eyes fell under his. But she recovered herself immediately, and glanced up as if she were waiting for him to speak. He said no more, however, but went out of the room, Sniff barking with delight the instant he found himself safely in the hall.

As he walked home, his feelings could scarcely be called enviable, the less so because, turn which way he would, there seemed no line of action which he could take. It was impossible for him to find fault with Ada, who, indeed, had done nothing against which he could bring a serious complaint; it was more manner than words, and to fall foul of manner requires a lover’s quarrel, and a lover’s quarrel a lover. He could no more go seriously to Ada and blame her than he could fight smoke with a sword. And after his one failure he said to himself that come what would there should be no further attempt on his part to loosen the bond which bound them to each other. But he was very miserable. For until now he had felt that, although the deepest love was wanting which happiest marriages need, something they both had towards a happiness which, if not the greatest, might serve instead,—on her part a simple unreasoning affection, on his a certain gratitude and tenderness. He had not thought of these failing until this new turn of the wheel. Now he could no longer feel the gentle kindliness to which he had trusted as the foundation of a moderate happiness; and even at that, insufficient as it once seemed, he looked back as a drowning man looks at the harsh rock from which he has been torn. He could do nothing except wait, and there was a passiveness about his future which made it seem utterly dark and hateful to poor Anthony.

As he came near the Red House, the day brightened in some degree; the faint beauty of the sun had gained strength, little cold lovelinesses were creeping into life, a poor little pool of water was shining away, and a scarlet glory of berries flamed from the hedge where a tiny wren slipped in and out, scarcely moving the grass. Mr Robert was just riding out of the gate, and pulled up to greet Anthony.

“This rainy weather has knocked poor Charles over altogether,” he said, “and I’m going to fetch Bowles. He always gets moped when he can’t go out. Ah, Anthony, in old days you would have been up to see us long ago.”

There was a little tone of sadness in Mr Robert’s cheery voice, which Anthony detected in a moment, and it may have been a proof that the young man’s own troubles were no longer hardening him, that it touched him in the way it did.

“The old days—?” he said, his words almost failing him. Mr Robert looked at him in an odd, questioning way.

“My dear fellow,” he said, putting out his hand and grasping Anthony’s, “I’m ready to admit that I didn’t stand by you as stoutly as you’d a right to expect, and I ask your pardon for it. If you knew the story of my life, for even red-faced old bachelors have stories, perhaps you’d see some sort of reason for my feeling about it. But then we none of us take what we don’t see for granted.” Anthony was utterly shamed and overcome. “Don’t, don’t!” he said, putting up his hand to his face, for he had a generous temper, quick to respond to kindness, and he felt now, somehow, as if he had been in the wrong throughout. Mr Robert went on in his kind grave voice,—

“Perhaps I’d no claim to it, but I wish you could have treated me as your friend, and let me know how matters stood exactly. You’ll not be angry at my saying that I guess now what a painful position you were in. I’m not sure that you were right, mind you, but I am sure that not one man in twenty would have behaved as you did.”

He wrung his hand again, and went on. The two men understood each other at last; it is sometimes a little odd to think how a few minutes and a word or two will mend or mar enough for a lifetime. Things did not seem quite so sad to Anthony after that little interview. He would try to do what was right to Ada, to everybody. The bitterness which made him refuse to accept friendship, because it had disappointed him once, was gone; for he had been too blind himself to demand that others should see perfectly, and he felt as if he owed them all amends, if only for the sake of Winifred, whom he had so misjudged.

Chapter Thirty Five.

That winter dragged heavily to more than one of those whose stories I have been telling in a broken one-sided fashion enough. Anthony, one of whose failings, perhaps, was the procrastination which is often joined to a certain eager impetuosity, was going on from day to day without taking a decided step as to his marriage. The spring had been the time originally proposed; and though at one time he had been disposed to hasten matters, his wish had received a check which he had not forgotten. Ada, indeed, did not encourage him to press it. She had lost her old brightness, and the constant smiles were exchanged for a kind of listless irritability, which sometimes broke out into querulous complaint. Nothing had been heard of Mr Warren since he had left them; it seemed as if the young man were trying to forget Underham, or were ashamed of his feelings. At Hardlands life was very quiet. Mrs Orde was doing her best to act as a mother to the two girls; people said how fortunate it was that she was able to live with them, which was true enough; and yet poor Winifred sometimes wondered how many little jars and frets had grown into her life. Frank Orde, who was there again soon after Easter, sometimes wondered sadly, too. His step-mother was a true-hearted woman, full of practical common-sense, but there was a want of sympathy between her and Winifred which could not be explained. The girl was always admiring her and blaming herself for it, but it is probable that it was one of those contrarieties which could hardly have been otherwise. There are people who, quite unconsciously, seem to place us at a disadvantage. We may like them, even love them, but it is from some force of circumstances: they destroy our ease, banish our ideas, and reduce us in some strange fashion to nonentities. Winifred used to puzzle herself by trying to think how this could be. She had a strong sweet nature, to which people turned instinctively for help, but she would shrink at some little speech of her aunt’s which yet was quite free from any sting of unkindness. The fear of bringing it down upon herself would often hamper her, even prevent her from doing what she longed to do. One is struck sometimes by the boundaries with which certain lives are hedged in. They seem so small, a word, an allusion,—perhaps no more than a thread, and yet the thread is as impassable as any fence. Frank Orde, who loved Winifred with all his heart, used to wonder sadly, as I have said, at the want of harmony between the two women who were to him the best and dearest in the world. Perhaps, if he had but known it, here was a little unfolding of the riddle, a touch of jealousy making the mother cold and sarcastic. It was not much, but it caused Winifred’s life to be a little harder than it need have been, at a time when it was hard enough, poor child!

She and Anthony met but seldom through the winter, for after that one interview, which Winifred blamed herself for holding in tender remembrance, they knew that it was better not to see each other more than was necessary. But when the spring came, the time when all beautiful things seem possible, the burden weighed more heavily, and she longed feverishly to hear that the marriage day was fixed.

Anthony, too, felt that the delay must not last much longer. Ada could not accuse him of having given her no time in which to make her resolution, and these months of waiting seemed to be eating the heart out of more lives than one. Without coming to a determination beforehand, he one morning obeyed a sudden impulse and started for Underham to see Mr Bennett and let matters be set in train.

His mother went to the gate with him, where Nat Wills was at work, putting in some plants which Mr Robert had sent over. Anthony turned round more than once to see her nodding at him, and smiling with happy content. As he passed through the village the little gardens were bright with clumps of blue gentianellas, out of the midst of which scarlet anemones blazed. Inside the school the children were singing and marching, and stamping merrily as they marched; the rooks were hard at work, the air was full of sound: here was Anthony setting off to fix his wedding-day. They are sad hearts sometimes that go on what should be the happiest errands.

He had scarcely got out of the village, however, when, to his surprise, he saw Mr Bennett himself driving towards him. He did not notice Anthony until he was close upon him, and then pulled up suddenly.

“I was coming to Thorpe to see you, Miles,” he said in an oddly constrained voice. “I suppose you are on the road to our house?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Well, would you mind driving a mile towards Appleton with me instead? I’ve some things I must talk over with you quietly, and should be glad to feel secure from interruptions.”

At any other time Anthony might have been struck with the contradiction that after he had jumped into the dog-cart, Mr Bennett, instead of plunging at once into his subject in his usual good-tempered, pompous fashion, remained silent, and seemed to have a difficulty in beginning the conversation. But Anthony was too much absorbed in his own difficulties to notice those of another, and the silence was too great a relief for him to think it strange.

It troubled his companion, however, for he did not know how to break it, and being a straightforward man, any roundabout course was very unwelcome. He looked over the hedge-rows on either side, at the fields which, owing to a wann wet winter, had lost no vividness of green, at the apple orchards nestling round the old thatched and weather-beaten farms, at the less frequent patches where the blue green of the young wheat contrasted with the red earth from which it sprang; but nothing that he saw helped him to his purpose.

“There’s been too much rain for the crops,” he said at last, with a sudden vigour as if this were the thought he had been maturing all the while. “At this rate everything will be washed up again. I saw Fisher at the turnpike,—you know Fisher?—and he detained me for at least fifteen minutes talking over his grievances. Otherwise I should have met you nearer home.”

“Fisher talks for a dozen people besides himself. Mr Mannering is his landlord, is he not?”

“Ah, yes, yes. Mr Robert is a thoroughly upright man,” said Mr Bennett, vaguely. “Never in my life saw any one so pleased as he was when I took him out news of what that poor Stephens had said,—never. Well, I was always certain something would set that matter straight.”

“You at least acted as if it had never been crooked,” Anthony said warmly, at once.

“Don’t say anything about it,” said Mr Bennett, getting red and uncomfortable. “There’s another thing I’m afraid is crooked, which—which I’m ashamed to talk to you about, that’s the long and short of it. I never thought I could be driven to fence and shuffle over any business as I’ve been shuffling now. I’d sooner bite my tongue out than tell it. But there’s the thing,—past my altering, and I’ve the shame of it, if that’s any comfort to you.”

The man was speaking in short sharp sentences, as unlike as possible to his usual genial rather over-familiar manner. Some presentiment seemed to seize Anthony, and his face grew hard.

“Well, what is it?” he said in the deep tone he sometimes used.

“I wouldn’t have had this to tell you for half a years income.”

“If it has to be told I can’t see that any good can be caused by delay.”

Certainly Anthony’s manner was not encouraging. “I only hope you will exonerate me and her aunt,” said Mr Bennett, nervously.

“Then it’s about Ada?” said Anthony, after a moment’s pause.

“I’m ashamed to say it is.”

“Well?”

“It’s anything but well. Though I am her uncle, I do say she has behaved disgracefully. She says she did not know her own mind when she accepted you, and that she has discovered she always cared for Adolphus Warren. His going away, she declares, opened her eyes—”

“You should give effects their right causes,” said Anthony, in a low bitter voice. “Say the change in his position.”

“I’m half afraid of it,” said Mr Bennett, whipping the old grey in his perturbation. “What can I say? Nothing can be worse. It has cut us both to the heart. I utterly declined at first to tell you, I was so ashamed; but she’s had one fit of hysterics after another, until her aunt is quite worn out; and, unpleasant as it was, I felt you ought to be kept in ignorance no longer. I’ve always thought she was so amenable to what was right, but I’m really afraid nothing will move her.”

“You need not fear my making the attempt,” said Anthony, still in the same tone.

“You’ve a right to hold her to her promise,” said Mr Bennett, unheeding. “Of course you’ve a right, and so I told her. But women are such irrational beings, that I really believe sometimes their minds can’t grasp the obligation of a right. You might bring an action against her, for the matter of that. I should not oppose it. Any possible reparation—”

“Do you suppose that would console me?” said Anthony, grimly. “But I’ll tell you the whole truth, for you have behaved just as every one in the neighbourhood would have expected from you. It isn’t pleasant for a man to be kicked over at any time, but I had begun to think, from one or two reasons with which I need not trouble you, that we had made a mutual mistake. I went so far one day as to tell Miss Lovell something of the sort—”

“You did!” said Mr Bennett, facing round in wonder.

“And if she had known her own mind,—it was not so long ago as to make that impossible,—it would have saved some unpleasantness.”

“You don’t feel it so much, then?” said Mr Bennett, not quite sure whether he liked this or not.

“I imagine you would hardly begrudge me that alleviation?”

“O, certainly not, certainly not! I’m exceedingly relieved to find the blow not so heavy as we feared it might be. Then I presume the unfortunate affair may be allowed to drop as quietly as we can arrange between us?”

“I shall not call out Warren, nor begin a lawsuit, if that is what you mean. As to the quietness, I have no doubt that by this time all Underham knows that Miss Lovell has thrown me over.”

“Confound Mrs Featherly!” muttered Mr Bennett, under his breath.

“Don’t be uneasy. In these cases it is always the rejected who is the object of scorn. Besides, is not Warren the heir to a baronetcy?”

“I don’t know what you mean. It was none of my seeking,” said Mr Bennett, hotly.

“Well, well, you should allow for a man’s grimacing a little when he finds himself in such an unexpected position. Now, as the news has been broken to me, and we are not on the way for anywhere so far as I am concerned, I will jump out, and wish you good by.”

Mr Bennett reined up the old grey so suddenly that he almost threw her on her haunches.

“Good heavens, what am I about!” he said apologetically. “This business has quite upset me. And I honestly tell you, Miles, I don’t understand your way of taking it. In my days, if my wife had treated me so, I—I should have cut my throat—though I’m sure I don’t want you to do anything so rash. Still—”

Anthony had sprung into the road, and now was leaning over the wheel with his arm against the dog-cart. He said in a changed voice, “I can’t wonder that it should puzzle you. I have been a puzzle to myself for a long time past. I doubt whether ever any one has managed to make so many mistakes as I. Don’t blame Ada too much, I have been at least as much in fault as she, and yet I want both you and Mrs Bennett to think as kindly of me as you can. Nothing can ever touch the remembrance of your goodness.”

He spoke with a strong feeling which brought Mr Bennett back to his side in a moment. He caught Anthony’s hand, and began shaking it vehemently.

“My dear fellow, you’ve behaved—I can’t tell you how I think you’ve behaved,” he said, stopping only to begin again. It was the greatest possible relief to him that he might go home and tell his wife that matters were all comfortably settled, and that they need not be angry with Ada any more.

“Do you think so?” said Anthony, oddly. He shook hands again to satisfy Mr Bennett, and then drew back from the dog-cart. The old grey, a little affronted at her unaccustomed treatment, started off with a snort. Mr Bennett was looking back, and waving farewells so long as the road kept Anthony in sight. Overhead the clouds were parting, a yellow sun shone out and struck the young glistening leaves, a blackbird was whistling with clear beautiful notes; a great heap of weeds was burning in a field close by where some boys were shouting. Anthony found himself noting everything, wondering idly, and shutting his mind’s door by that sort of compulsion which we have all of us in some measure in our power. When he could no longer do this, he set off, and walked for half a mile as quickly as if he were walking a match.

That Ada should have treated him in this manner was the utmost humiliation his pride could have endured, the more so because she had bestowed upon him so many gentle flatteries, had been so soft and yielding, so free from even the small reproaches for which he acknowledged she might at times have had an excuse. And the humiliation became greater as he began to recollect past trifles which had been forgotten, but which floated up to his remembrance now, as the flood which sweeps away boundaries will bring to the surface little in significant straws. He recalled words and actions of Ada’s throughout their engagement; the manner in which she had quoted Mr Warren, who had been too small a figure to make an impression on Anthony; the readiness with which she accepted his society; he recollected that evening when he had made his appeal to Ada, and had seen two dim figures coming towards him under the trees, and her quick excuses. He turned from himself with a sick disgust as he realised how completely he had taken the false for the true, the true for the false. There was a terrible satire in his life, or so it seemed to him when he thought of his old self-reliance, and the end of it all.

Yet it must be allowed that, although this sting of humiliation was the first dominant feeling in his mind, it quickly began to yield before the relief with which he felt as if a long strain had suddenly relaxed. He stood still and stretched himself, flinging back his arms with a longing to express this joy of freedom by some bodily action. There was a gate close by him which had fallen off its hinges; he set to work to put it up again, labouring with a fire and vigour which was like an old inheritance renewed, and afterwards leaning over it and looking from the high ground on which he stood to the wooded fields below. Where the hedge dipped he could see the Thorpe cottages lying in rich brown patches, the Hardlands’ firs, white smote curling up from the house. Ada and Mr Warren began to fade out of his mind like some blurred unpleasant dream; Winifred grew into life, brown-haired Winifred looking into his face with kind fearless eyes. He stood irresolute, an impulse which was as strong as it was sudden urging him. How could he so dishonour Winifred as to go to her at once, when but an hour ago he was the accepted, lover of another woman!—and yet, how could he not go? Even now he might be too late. Something had been said of Frank Orde in his hearing, against which his heart had leaped up with mute rage, but now it was a whirl of fear which shook him. It seemed as if all the emotions he had been holding in check were ready instantaneously to assert themselves, as if he could not endure another of those moments which up to this hour had stretched themselves out before him in long dull succession. His looks went yearningly down to that spot from which the smoke was curling easily upwards, and at last he jumped over the gate, and went with long strides down the field towards Hardlands.

Chapter Thirty Six.

“Comes a little cloudlet ’twixt ourselves and heaven, And from all the river fades the silver track; Put thine arms around me, whisper low, Forgiven, See how on the river starlight settles back!” Lord Lytton.

When Anthony was looking down upon the fir-trees, there were two people standing under them, and talking earnestly. One of them was putting out her hand and saying in a voice which was very sad and kind,—

“I believe I am a hundred years older than you, Frank. Do people’s hearts go on getting older and older at this rate, I wonder? I don’t seem to feel as if all that you are saying could be so. Perhaps I am beginning not to feel anything any more.”

“Don’t disbelieve me,” Frank said eagerly. “That is all I ask you, Winifred. Only try to believe how dearly I love you, and trust me, or let me have time to show you.”

She did not turn away from him, she did not even take away her hand which he had clasped, and yet nothing in her attitude or in her eyes seemed to have grown nearer to him during that moment in which they stood so close to each other under the fir-trees, a little hidden from the soft, warm sun. Winifred stood as if she were thinking, but it might have been of something outside herself, and with which she was only concerned as a looker-on. Her face was tenderly grave, but Frank sought in vain for any glow which should answer his. She was silent so long, however, that at last he could bear it no longer, and said in a voice which was all uneven and broken,—

“What do you say, Winifred? You will not refuse me that one little promise?”

She said immediately, looking into his face with unshrinking eyes,—

“Ah, Frank, it is because it is so little that I feel I dare not give it. Dear Frank, what are you offering me?—do you think I do not know its worth?—and for all your heart you ask no more than just a little dead sufferance. You want to give everything, and to have nothing back again.”

“What you call nothing—” began Frank, flushing, but she interrupted him quickly, with a new tone of pain in her voice.

“No, no,—why do we go on talking?—let us try to forget it all, let us try to be dear friends always, but do not ask me to do you a wrong which would make me hate myself.”

Winifred might have been impetuously thrusting back something. Perhaps she was: perhaps she had a little secret, impatient longing to escape somehow, anyhow, from the associations which imprisoned her. Frank, who knew all her little story, and knew no more than she who was coming at that moment with swift steps across the dewy grass, looked at her, and felt his heart sink, though he had not lost all hope. He could wait a lifetime, he thought, and patient waiting must gain her at last. Just then the little iron gate clicked as Anthony came through: he saw them standing with clasped hands, saw Winifred look up, and turn away quickly to the house. Was his secret misgiving true?—was it too late, after all? He half stopped; but Frank had seen him, and was strolling towards him.

The two men did not meet very cordially, but they went through the usual conventionalities.

“So you’re not off?” said Anthony.

Captain Orde, whose face was white, and whose hand was not quite so steady as usual, took out his fusee-box and struck a light.

“No, I’m not off till to-morrow,” he said, lighting his cigar slowly. “Will you have a cigar? I shall make one push for it to Colchester. Do you ever come that way?”

“Not nowadays. Though I don’t know where I shall find myself next. Sometimes I think of travelling for a year or two.”

“You don’t mean just knocking about Europe?”

“No, I should go farther afield.”

Captain Orde gave him a quick, rather questioning glance, and walked on silently.

“How will that agree with your other prospects?” he said at last.

“I have no particular prospects, as you call them,” said Anthony, shortly. “If you mean the engagement in which I had the honour to be concerned, it has come to an end.”

“Does Winifred know this?” Frank was asking very gravely in a moment.

“How should she?” said Anthony, angrily. He was intending to speak without excitement, but that little scene under the fir-trees danced up and down before his eyes. “You need not think that I shall tell her,” he went on in hot tumult, “for probably at this time Miss Chester is too much taken up with her own affairs to have thought to bestow upon those of other people.”

“Miss Chester is not going to marry me, if that is what you mean,” said Captain Orde, quietly. “I have asked her—more than once—and now for the last time.”

He spoke in a dull strained voice. For him there was neither charm nor glory, only a dreary pain, a grey colourless sky. Anthony was not worthy of Winifred, but, alas, did he not know that she cared for him; that she was at this very moment, perhaps, weeping for the helplessness, the sadness of her love; that he, whose path must not touch hers any more, might send her the light and joy for which she longed? He did not hear much of what Anthony was saying, until he found that he had left him, and was making his way towards the house with quick, hopeful steps. Frank, who was going up to the clump, stood still and watched. It is a little hard to run for a prize, and see it carried off by some one who has never seemed to set his heart upon it. When a man has struggled neck and neck with you, it is easier to yield than to another who has loitered carelessly, and yet comes up, and sweeps by with triumphant ease. Anthony was going to his victory, while Frank was left out in the cold. Yet, if there are failures out of which grow success, so also there are defeats which bring rejoicing songs, though we do not hear them yet, and all that reaches us is the sadness of sighing and the weariness of tears.

Winifred was crossing the hall as Anthony Miles came in. Mrs Orde had caught her for some consultation about Bessie’s masters, and she had been obliged for a little while to make and answer indifferent remarks while every nerve was on the strain, until she could bear it no longer, and, escaping from the room, was, as I have said, just crossing the hall when Anthony Miles came in.

There must be a world of subtile influences in the midst of which we live, and which is not the least wonderful part of our existence. As he, seeing her, stood for a moment with the door in his hand, the pretty lights and shades and trembling sunshine behind him, and his face so much in shadow that it was impossible for her hasty, tearful glance to read its expression, what strange joy sent a new thrill into her heart, and quickened it with intensest life? What swift movement of pity, tender and womanly, went out to Frank with the touch of wondering compassion for sorrows past so long ago, that since she had known of them night had turned into day, winter into spring, perplexity into contentment? It all only lasted for a moment, but why had it been? Anthony’s own glow of eagerness died out of his heart as he came upon her in that sudden fashion, looked at her standing in the delicate light, and felt as if he could not say a word. To them both that instant seemed endless, and yet it was only an instant.

For then they came back to—realities, shall we say? Anthony left the sunshine and sparkling greens behind him, and walked into the hall where Winifred was waiting and putting out her hand calmly.

“How is Mrs Miles?” she said, “Bessie was going to take the club books to her this afternoon, for I am ashamed to say that we have kept them two or three days beyond our time.”

“What will Mrs Featherly do to you?” said Anthony, holding her hand in his.

I do not think they were either of them conscious of what he was about. Perhaps it is part of the mystery of that strange world of which I have been speaking that there are states of feeling in which things that would thrill us at other times come and go quite unnoticed, and both Winifred and Anthony believed that they were cool and self-possessed, and did not think that he had her hand in his. Sniff, who had been in wild pursuit of a rabbit, dashed in at this moment, and flung himself down panting in a dark corner.

“Were you coming into the garden?” said Anthony. “Will you come?”

Winifred remembered Frank, and flushed and withdrew her hand.

“I don’t think I can,” she said, shaking her head. “I owe so many letters that it quite frightens me to think about it.”

“One day can make very little difference,” urged Anthony. “Pray come; I have something to tell you.”

She looked at him, and that first flash of conviction had so faded away that her heart swelled with the thought, “He is come to tell me of their marriage.” It did not cause her any surprise, but it made her hand tremble as she took down her garden hat and went slowly out into the sunshine. Once there, she began to walk quickly, so that Anthony became a little vexed by the idea that she wished to avoid listening to him. The path was so narrow that he could not walk by her side, until presently it led to a wider part where were some horse-chestnuts bursting into leaf, and Winifred stood still and leaned over the iron railings to coax an old pet pony of the Squire’s. It was one of those soft bright growing days which are the most perfect in the world. Things were thrusting themselves out, calling, answering. Broken lights fell tenderly on the delicate tints. Sheets of pure blossoms swelled round the farms; the air was full of young, hopeful scents, of dancing insects; the grass was starred with innumerable daisies; a little troop of lambs came rushing up from, the end of the field, and leaped away again at sight of Sniff. Does Arcadia come sometimes?—Have we all felt it? It was Anthony on whom it was smiling now while he looked at Winifred, at her cheek a little turned from him, at the pretty curve of her arm as she held out some leaves for the old pony to nibble. As for her, she was thinking of an Arcadia for him and for another. And Frank, who had got up to the clump by this time, and could just see the two figures below him in the midst of all this peaceful greenery, thought that Arcadia had already begun for them. It looks like fairy-land to those that are shut out, and still its loveliness is not enough to satisfy us, little as we believe it. There are sweeter countries yet, though no outward beauty makes us long for them, and we see the dusty feet of the pilgrims, and the sadness of the journey, while the smile upon their hearts is hidden from us for a time. Arcadia may lie on the road, but it is not the end, and we may pass through other and harsher ways, and yet meet those we love. And up there under the trees were the sweet breezes, and the sunshine, and the larks singing overhead. Do not fear. There is no desolation in God’s earth.

“You have not heard what I came to tell you,” said Anthony, doubtfully.

The old pony’s head was close to Winifred, and she was twisting his white forelock round her fingers. The words did not come easily with which she wanted to assure him that she had guessed his errand, and at last she spoke hastily, though with no disturbance in her voice.

“Is it that your marriage day is fixed? If so you must let us wish you joy.”

“No, it is not that. It is just the reverse,” he said, with an unreasonable feeling that Winifred ought to know and understand all at once. She looked round at him with quick surprise, but she did not answer in any other manner, and he was obliged to go on. “Miss Lovell has changed her mind, and prefers marrying some one else.”

“You are laughing!” said Winifred, flushing angrily. “And it is not kind. You may suppose we care about it.”

“But I am not laughing,” said Anthony, in a low voice. When she looked at him, and saw that he was very grave, her hand began to tremble a little. He had become suddenly despairing with the conviction that it was an impossible thing to say, “I was engaged this morning to another woman, and yet I have always loved you;” he felt as if he dared not treat her so, and yet that he could not leave her.

“I don’t understand it,” Winifred began to say slowly. “Do you mean that she has been so heartless and cruel? O, I don’t think so, it is a mistake; you fancy things sometimes which people do not intend in the least! Have you been to Underham? Have you seen Miss Lovell yourself?”

“I have seen Mr Bennett. I assure you it was put in the plainest possible English. Young Warren is the lucky fellow.”

Perhaps her anger was useful, as it occasionally is, in keeping off other emotions. She threw back her head, with a gesture she sometimes used, a flush was on her cheek, and her eyes sparkled.

“How can you speak like that!” she said passionately. “I hate that people should pretend not to care for what hurts them. Why can’t you let us be sorry for you?”

“Because I am not sorry for myself, Winifred,” he said in a changed, deep tone. He took her hand in his, and held it close, and looked down into her eyes. “Because I have known for some time that the maddest mistake I ever made in my life was when I asked Ada Lovell to marry me. Because I feel as if a weight were lifted off my heart. Because I can breathe now, and live,—yes, and love,—I must say it, Winifred, my darling—”

For she had caught back her hand, and was standing, drawn to her full height, with her breath coming quickly, and no softening in her eyes. The words fell away from his lips. He, too, stood still and silent, looking at her with a dreary sinking of his heart. So this was the end.

“You are right,” he said, quietly, in another moment. “I ought to have known better. Well,—at least you will say good by? Things don’t straighten themselves in the way we are fools enough to dream they will. Good by, Winifred. Come, you’ll say good bye?”

He stood still for another minute, waiting, and a lark that had been singing jubilantly overhead dropped swiftly down in a hush of tender silence. Winifred scarcely dared move, Anthony’s tone heaped pain upon her heart, tears rushed into her eyes, but she said “Good bye,” putting out her hand, at which he caught.

“No, it is not good by,” he said suddenly. “Why should I be sent away?”

There was a quick change in his voice which set a hundred conflicting strings vibrating in her heart. How dared he speak in such a tone, and yet how dear it was! His strong feeling was carrying her with it, but she still found voice to say,—

“How can I know what you mean? How can you be one thing one day and another the next?” But Anthony disregarded the reproach. He said eagerly, “If you don’t love me, at least we are old friends; let us go back to what we were, and begin again. Don’t you think if you were to try very hard you might learn to like me a little bit, just a little bit?”

“I cannot learn to like you,” said Winifred, simply, “because we have always liked each other, and there can be no beginning again.” She said this very quietly, and then suddenly broke down. “O Anthony, Anthony,” she said, covering her face with her hands, “you have made it so difficult!”

And then she was in his arms. She had never consented, and yet he held her close to him. “My darling,” he said under his breath, “can you forgive me?”

Forgive him? Ah, yes, she loved him, and love will lavish forgiveness with a free hand, and a sweet joy in the bounty of its giving. If it were not so, how would it be with any of us? Was there ever such a moment,—so rich, so tender? And yet there must be better things, or Frank would not have been up there under the clump alone, there would not be so many sad hearts in the world, David Stephens would not have been lying under the grass.

Well, we shall know it all one day.

Very little has been said of late touching Marmaduke and his wife, the truth being that there is very little to say. They lived what must be called a prosperous life; at least, if there were any signs of disturbance in the midst of it, they were not such as became apparent to their neighbours. It was sometimes said that Mrs Lee was cold and distant, even with her husband, and that her looks had changed since her marriage, but her ill health was supposed to account satisfactorily for this, and nothing ever reached the ears of the outer world which could make it suppose that they were not a happy couple. Miss Philippa lived with them, by Mrs Lee’s especial request, and there could be no doubt of her happiness. But no children were born, and rumour declared, how truly it is impossible to say, that, after Mr and Mrs Lee died, their money would be bequeathed to a great London charity.

Anthony’s first attempt to find Margaret Hare’s husband and child had been checked by the despondency with which he had been visited when his world had lost its faith in him; but under a new spring of energy, he and Mr Robert were soon able to track the wanderers in Australia. Some of the circumstances were communicated to the father; he, however, utterly rejected all old Mr Tregennas’s intentions as a too late atonement. He was wealthy, and there was but one girl, and the certain hard determination which had carried him up in the struggle for existence now made him obstinately resolute against accepting his father-in-law’s money.

Anthony, Winifred, and their children live in London, but are often in Thorpe, where there are both living and dead to draw them, besides its own quiet and tender beauty. Anthony’s life was, perhaps, too soon filled with the things it wanted to admit of its ever becoming great in the manner in which people talk of greatness. But it is an exceedingly active and useful life, in the course of which he has made war upon more than one hydra-headed monster, and that with a success of which he often said his wife ought to share half the praise. She used to smile when she heard this, thinking of the many things which had helped her champion, besides her happy love. And, indeed, the influences that mould our lives are often scarcely known to ourselves, and come from as many sides as the winds that sweep the earth.

The End.

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Chapter 1

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Chapter 2

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Chapter 3

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Chapter 4

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Chapter 5

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Chapter 6

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Chapter 7

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Chapter 8

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Chapter 9

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Chapter 10

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Chapter 11

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Chapter 12

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Chapter 13

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Chapter 14

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Chapter 15

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Chapter 16

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Chapter 17

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Chapter 18

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Chapter 19

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Chapter 20

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Chapter 21

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Chapter 22

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Chapter 23

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Chapter 24

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Chapter 25

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Chapter 26

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Chapter 27

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Chapter 28

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Chapter 29

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Chapter 30

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Chapter 31

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Chapter 32

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Chapter 33

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Chapter 34

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Chapter 35

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Chapter 36

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