"You cannot conceive anything more perfect than the way Margaret is behaving," wrote Lady Davyntry to her brother, when the first novelty and shock of Mrs. Carteret's death had somewhat subsided, "in this sad affair. Her conduct to her father is most admirable. He, poor man, is in a wretched state--more, perhaps, of bewilderment than grief, but altogether unhinged.
"Master's put out terrible," was the account I had from one of the Chayleigh servants, and, odd and horrid as it sounds, I really think that is the best description of poor Mr. Carteret's state of mind. Anything he is not used to "puts him out," and he is singularly little used to trouble or emotion of any kind.
"He wanders about in a way distressing to behold, and cannot be induced to occupy himself. 'There ain't no keeping him in the study,' Foster said to me; 'and as much as stick a pin in a butterfly, Mr. James nor Miss Margaret can't indoose him to do.'
"He seems to have lost all his taste for his specimens, but Margaret has hit upon a great idea for his relief and amusement. This is no other than to talk to her father about the interest which the poor woman who is gone took in his pursuits, and how much she would have regretted his abandonment of them.
"There is a touch of pious fraud in this, for no one can possibly know better than Margaret that Mrs. Carteret never took any interest in anything but herself, and was rather more indifferent to her husband's pursuits than to any other matters; but the fraud is pious and successful.
"I have just had a note from her telling me he is more cheerful, and has been watching her dusting specimens this morning. She also says--but, on second thoughts, I enclose the note.
"With all this, my darling Madge has been very candid and sincere. She has felt the awfulness and the import of the event most deeply, but she has not pretended to a personal sorrow which it is impossible she should feel, and I honour her for that--indeed, I honour her for everything, and love her better every day.
"Mr. Dugdale has taken Mrs. Carteret's death to heart terribly. She was sincerely attached to him, I believe, and I fancy he was the only person in the world who loved her, while he managed her perfectly, and quite understood her queer disposition. I have seen very little of him, but Margaret has told me a good deal about him.
"If you remember, we used to think that he and she did not get on well together--that she did not like him. With all her reserve, Margaret is not difficult to understand; she may keep facts to herself, but she does not disguise feelings, and I am glad to think she and Mr. Dugdale get on nicely now that they are in such responsible charge at Chayleigh.
"If my letter bores you, my dear Fitz, I really cannot help it, for my head and my heart are both full of Margaret. The Martleys and Forbeses sent a strong contingent down to the funeral, and two of the Martleys stayed a week: very handsome young men, not in the least like their sister, who was very much older.
"I could not help thinking how vexed the poor woman would have been if she could have seen Henry Hartley so captivated by her stepdaughter. He fell in love with Margaret with quite old-fashioned celerity, but she calmly ignored him and his love. Mr. Dugdale saw it plainly, and did not like it by any means. They have all had enough of the Martleys, I fancy.
"The young men took their sister's death very easily; the eldest was evidently glad to get away; and I cannot be very much surprised or very angry. This event will make a great difference to Margaret. I have always had a presentiment--I have, how ever you may laugh--that she would not have to leave Chayleigh. Of course, she cannot think of doing so now; she must remain with her father.
"Captain Carteret is on his way home, Mr. Dugdale came here yesterday with Margaret for the first time. I believe something was said about his leaving Chayleigh and going back to Oxford, but Mr. Carteret would not hear of it; he clings to Mr. Dugdale more even than to Margaret. So they will settle down together, no doubt. It is a good thing Captain Carteret was not here sooner; the gloom will have pretty well dispersed before he comes.
"Your account of the Deane is delightful. I think you are quite right not to refurnish the drawing-rooms just yet. Perhaps I might screw up my courage to going there in summer, and then I could choose colours, and so on, for you. You do not really want drawing-rooms at present, and I should not mind anything of the kind if I were you. You may not remain at the Deane long. Indeed, I hope you are thinking of coming back to me; I want to consult you about such a lot of things; and I hate letter-writing, and explain myself so badly."
For a lady who hated letter-writing, Lady Davyntry indulged in it a good deal; and, with singular self-denial, devoted herself to keeping her brother thoroughly well informed concerning affairs in the neighbourhood.
She would, priding herself on her astuteness and believing herself inscrutably clever in the performance, send him pages of gossiping details about other people than the dwellers at Chayleigh; she would tell him about the Croftons, the Crokers, and the Willises, about friends in town and friends in foreign parts, whenever it appeared to her that her insistence upon Chayleigh was becoming too marked.
By such artful dodges did she seek to divert Mr. Baldwin's suspicions that she cherished the profound design of marrying him to her friend.
Her brother, on his part, carefully forbore to point out the inconsistency between her dislike of letter-writing and the frequency of her correspondence. He understood the guileless and amiable Eleanor thoroughly, and smiled over her letters as he thought how charmingly transparent the artifice was, and how easily he could have disposed of it all, had it not precisely coincided with his own wishes.
Time hung heavily on Mr. Baldwin's hands in the midst of his great possessions, and in the presence of his popularity with an assiduous neighbourhood. He had set his heart, he was ready to stake his whole future, upon winning the wearied heart of the pale-faced girl who had brought something into his life which had never been there before, and the hours and days lingered until the time should come which he had set before himself as fitting for the attempt.
Her first year of widowhood would soon have elapsed, and then he might, without offence, tell her that he loved her. So he named that time, in his own mind, for his return to Davyntry.
When Mrs. Carteret's death occurred, Mr. Baldwin did not alter his plan. The change in Margaret's prospects, the necessity for her remaining with her father, the fact that her sphere of duty was strictly defined now, gave him no uneasiness.
He would never ask her to leave her father. He knew Mr. Carteret well. It did not take much time or pains to acquire that knowledge, and he knew he had no strong attachment to Chayleigh. If he could but persuade Margaret to come and reign at the Deane, he had no doubt her father would readily go there too.
He had a conviction, which, after all, was not presumptuous for a man of his fortune and station to entertain, that in Margaret's brother he should find a friend. James Dugdale had told him a little of the family history--had given him a vague notion of the part Haldane had taken in the circumstances which had led to Margaret's disastrous marriage; and he felt that the young man would naturally rejoice that such a total change should be wrought in the life of his sister, who had paid so dearly for her imprudence.
A man of peculiarly simple tastes and habits, of unaffected ways of thinking about himself and other people, it rarely occurred to Fitzwilliam Baldwin to take his wealth into account; but he did so now, very reasonably. "It would not weigh with her for a minute," he thought; "but it will with them, and it will be pleasant to have them all for, and not against, me."
Life at Chayleigh had settled down again. The delusive appearance of immutability which human affairs assume--human affairs which are but a shifting quicksand--had established itself. The establishment, presided over by Margaret, went on in the ordinary way, the servants highly appreciating the change of régime; and Mr. Carteret was beginning to dispose of the days after his old fashion, when Mr. Baldwin returned to Davyntry, and Haldane Carteret arrived at Chayleigh.
The meeting between the brother and sister was frankly affectionate; the renewal of their companionship was delightful to both. Margaret thought her brother wonderfully improved. He was a handsome, manly, soldierly fellow, who had no trace of likeness to his gentle, studious, feeble father, but whose face, despite its bronzed skin and its thick dark moustache, awakened strange memories in Mr. Carteret's placid breast.
A curious mental phenomenon took place in the experience of Haldane's father. A little while ago, and he was fretting for Mrs. Carteret--if he had said he was wretchedly uncomfortable it would have been a more correct description of his state of mind; but he chose to call himself, to himself, profoundly miserable--and now, since Haldane came home, he had almost forgotten her.
True, he still sat mopingly in his chair, and stared vacantly out of the window, when they left him alone; but the reverie which filled those hours was no longer what it had been. With his son in his bright strong manhood, with his daughter in her womanhood--early shadowed, indeed, but beautiful--beside him, his heart turned to the past, and a gentle figure, a fair delicate face, long since turned to dust, kept him ghostly company in his solitude.
Margaret was much surprised when, shortly after Haldane's return, Mr. Carteret began to talk to her one day about her mother, and spoke of her with a cheerful freshness of remembrance which she had never supposed him to entertain.
"The colours she preferred, the books she liked, the places they had visited together, certain fancies she had in her illness--the smallest things, I assure you--is it not wonderful?" Margaret had asked of Lady Davyntry, as she was telling her this strange circumstance. "I never was more surprised, and, I need not say, delighted; I don't think poor Mrs. Carteret's fancies and sayings remain so fresh in his memory. After so many years, too! The fact is, I don't believe she ever really filled my mother's place at all."
Margaret was seated on a cushion in the bay of a great window in the drawing-room at Davyntry as she spoke thus. Her heavy bonnet and veil were thrown on the floor beside her, her pale, clear, speaking face, the eyes bright and humid, the lips parted eagerly, and the flickering light, which emotion always diffused over her face, playing on her features. Lady Davyntry stood in the window, and looked down upon her.
"I am sure she never did," said the impulsive Eleanor; "how could she? It is all very well for a man to marry again, as your father did, when he has little children, and no one but servants to look after them; but, of course, a second marriage never can be the same thing. All the romance of life is over, you know, and one knows how much fancy there is in everything; and, in fact, I can't understand it myself--not for a woman, I mean, who has been happy. A man is different."
And then Lady Davyntry suddenly discovered that, in proclaiming her general opinion, she was saying exactly the opposite to what she thought in the particular case in which she was most deeply interested, and stopped, very abruptly and awkwardly, and blushing painfully. But Margaret did not seem to perceive her embarrassment. Her hands were pressed together; her eyes looked out strangely, eagerly; her words came as though she had no control of them.
"And do you think an unhappy woman--one who has found nothing in her marriage but misery and degradation--one who has nothing of the dreams and fancies of her youth left for retrospection but sickening deceit and a horrible cheating self-delusion--one who has no good, or pure, or gentle, or upright recollection to cherish of a past which was all a lie, a base infamous lie--do you think a woman with a story like that in her life ought to marry again? Do you think--you, Eleanor, who are truth and honour themselves, and who, I suppose, in all your life never said, or did, or saw, or heard anything for which you have a right to blush or ought to wish to forget--do you think that a woman with a story like that in her life ought to marry? Do you think she ought to link her life to that of any man, however he might love her and pity her, and be prepared to bear with her, while she had to look back upon such a past, however guiltless she might be in it--do you think this, Eleanor? Tell me plainly the truth."
She put her hand up, and caught one of her friend's hands in hers. Lady Davyntry still stood and looked at her, and, laying her disengaged hand on her shoulder, answered her passionate question.
"Do I? Indeed I do, Margaret. Tell me, are you asking me this for yourself? Are you asking me if I think, because you have had the least-deserved misfortune to have been the wife of a bad man, and you have been released from him, you are to carry the chain in fancy which has been taken off you in reality? It's unlike you; it is morbid to ask, to think of such a thing. What are you but a young girl still? Are you to do penance all your life for the sins of another? No, no, Margaret; silent as you are about your past, you are asking me this question in reference to yourself. Is it not so? Do not place a half-confidence in me. Do not let a delusion like this take possession of your mind, and blight your future as your past has been blighted."
"There is nothing in my question," said Margaret, drawing her hand away from Lady Davyntry, and rising; "nothing in the sense you mean. My future seems plain and clear enough now. My place in the world is fixed, I fancy; but sometimes, Eleanor, sometimes the past, of which I have never spoken to you, of which I cannot speak, comes back to me, not only in its own dreadful shape, but with a dim undefined threat in it, and makes me afraid. You don't understand me; well for you that you do not. I trust you never may."
She picked up her bonnet and tied it on, and was folding her shawl round her, while Lady Davyntry stood by, longing to speak out all that was in her mind, and yet fearing to damage her own hopes by doing so and learning the worst, when the door opened, and Haldane Carteret and Mr. Baldwin came into the room.
Margaret was standing with her back towards the door, and facing a mirror, in which Lady Davyntry saw her face reflected. It was startlingly pale, and there was a wild look of pain in the eyes, quite other than sadness--sometimes a little stern--which was their usual expression.
Lady Davyntry could hardly reply to the cheery greeting of Haldane, so much was she struck by Margaret's change of countenance. Margaret spoke hurriedly to Mr. Baldwin. The only one of ............