“Ich ginge im Waldo
So für mich him,
Und nichts zu suchen
Das war mein Sinn
Im Schotten sah ich
Ein Blümchen stehn
Wie Sterne leuchtend
Wie Aüglein sch?n.
Ich wollt’es brechen
Da sagt’es fein,
Soll ich zum Welken
Gebrochen sein?”—
G?THE.
THEY were married in the end of June, after all engagement of six weeks only. There were no reasons for delay, and several which made expedition expedient. Harry spent his last fortnight in England with them, and the marriage took place at its close. It was a very quiet affair, of which Marion’s recent illness and continued mourning for her father were patent and satisfactory explanations, even to the double-motive-loving gossips of Mallingford.
A sorrowful farewell to Harry, whose whispered words of relief and satisfaction at leaving his sister in such good hands, were the most grateful to her ears of the congratulations forthcoming on this, as on all such occasions; a fervent blessing from Veronica; a snappish adieu from Miss Tremlett, and the bride and bridegroom were gone—started on their own account on the life journey which, up hill and down dale, through fair weather and foul, they had chosen to travel together.
They did not spend their honeymoon abroad.
Geoffrey proposed that they should do so, but Marion negatived it, and decided in favour of a certain county which I need not particularize save by saying that its scenery is picturesque, its wayside inns charming, and its fishing the best of its kind. Geoffrey was very fond of fishing, and Marion was well content to spend the quiet, sleepy midsummer days, book in hand, lounging on the grassy banks at his side. She was not very strong yet, and travelling tired her; so after a week or two’s rambling, they settled down in one of the sweetest nooks they had come upon, and took up their temporary abode at the very prettiest of the wayside inns I alluded to, by name and sign “The Peacock.”
The neighbourhood was not much frequented save by anglers and artists, of both of whom there were plenty. But it was before the railway days in this pretty county, and tourists of the more objectionable kinds were unknown. So everything as to outer surroundings was charming, and the two made a very satisfactory newly-married pair. He so handsome, she so sweet. Both to all appearance perfectly happy in themselves and each other. Which, to a great extent, was the case. Geoffrey was happy beyond all he had ever dreamt of as possible; his only misgiving the fear that he was all unworthy of so sweet a bride, his only anxiety lest the wind should blow on her too rudely, or the slightest roughness be in her path. Beyond this absorbing dread of not succeeding in making her happy, the impression on his sunny, hopeful nature, left by the girl’s sad little history of her “first love,” had already began to fade. He reverenced and trusted her so deeply that the slight melancholy still clinging to her seemed to him to render her only the more beautiful, the more tender and precious, and worthy of all devotion. Doubt, suspicion, jealousy, or even the shadows of such unlovely visitants, were utterly foreign to his being. She had told him it was “all over” —that sad page in her history. He believed her, and loved her the more for the suffering she had endured. She had stirred up in him by her recital no feeling of anger or irritation towards his unknown rival. She had blamed no one for what had happened. All, she told him, had been the result of unpropitious circumstances; in saying which she had done wisely. It made it the easier for him to forget what there was little use in his remembering.
And she herself? Was she too, happy? After all the storms and wearing suspense through which she had passed, had she in truth found a haven of rest and security. She thought so. “I am content,” she said to herself, “content and at peace, which is more than many can say.”
True; but not what one likes to hear of as the nearest approach to happiness to be hoped for by a girl over whose head twenty summers have barely passed.
At the sign of the Peacock for a time we must leave them, while we hear a little more as to what in these last few months had happened to Ralph.
He remained in Italy with his mother and her household through the winter which Marion had passed at Mallingford. The month of May saw them all at last re-established at Medhurst, but not for very long. The place had been to some extent neglected during the two or three years of the family’s absence; the house looked dingy and smelt fusty. Before they could take up their quarters therein “for good,” before Florence’s marriage could be celebrated with fitting magnificence, the mansion must be thoroughly “done up”—“beautified,” I believe, is the correct technical expression. So for a season Medhurst was delivered over to the tender mercies of painters and paper-hangers, upholsterers and decorators, and “the family,” par excellence, of the neighbourhood, flitted north-wards for the time, to a favourite and pleasant little watering-place, in the same county where Geoffrey and his wife were spending their honeymoon, but a few hours’ drive from the very inn which for some days past they had made their head-quarters.
Sir Ralph was still with his mother. She had “made a point” of his remaining with her for the first few months of her return home, and he, having no pressing interests of his own was willing enough to agree to her wishes. Florence was no longer with them. The few weeks intervening between their arrival in England and the time fixed for her marriage, she had preferred to spend in the “genteel” terrace with her mother and sisters. Nor did this decision call for any great exercise of self-denial on her part, for besides the real pleasure of being with her relations and showing off the honours present and prospective, attendant on the bride of Chepstow the golden, her mother’s modest dwelling was conveniently situated for expending to the best advantage in the purchase of a trousseau, the very liberal parting gift of her “dearest aunt and second mother.” Then in the future glittered Medhurst and the gorgeous preparations for the nuptials of the beauty and the millionaire. Truly Florence’s cup of happiness was full!
And plainly speaking, she was not missed by her late entertainers. Lady Severn and her son got on much better without her.
Sir Ralph was therefore at the little watering-place of Friars’ Springs, when, one day about the middle of July, a strange thing happened to him.
He received one morning, forwarded from Medhurst, an Indian letter, addressed to him in the same handwriting as the black-bordered envelope which last year had brought back to him his own letter to Miss Freer, a silent message from poor Cissy’s tomb, telling that his last hope was gone.
He was alone when he received this unexpected letter. Fortunately so, for not all his practised self-control could have concealed from other eyes the overwhelming intensity of emotion caused by the perusal of its extraordinary contents.
First he read the letter from Colonel Archer, which he discovered speedily was but an explanation, to a certain extent, of a second which it enclosed, in a blank envelope, but carefully sealed with black wax, evidently by Colonel Archer’s own hands, as it bore his crest. George Archer was not given to prolixity of style in his written communications; His letter, therefore, may be given verbatim:
“LANDOUR,
“APRIL 30TH, 18——.
“MY DEAR SEVERN—
“You will remember my writing to you a few days after my wife’s death, enclosing to you a letter which she desired me to send to you as quickly as possible, and which she directed me to find in a certain place. Do you remember also my saying to you that though I had followed her directions exactly, the state in which I found the letter did not altogether correspond with her description? She said I should find it all written and signed, but not folded or addressed. On the contrary, the letter I sent you I found folded and addressed, all ready in short, save the stamps, to be posted. I am terribly afraid, my dear Severn, that I have made some dreadful mistake. Evidently there were two letters to be forwarded to you, of which the one I did send, and which I much fear was the least important, had escaped my poor wife’s memory. Only yesterday, being obliged to search among my wife’s papers for a missing document of some importance, I came upon the enclosed letter in one of the leaves of her blotting-book, written and signed, as she said, and lying there evidently waiting to be by her folded and addressed. Not improbably she had intended to enclose it to you in the same envelope as contained the one I sent. I now recollect that I felt surprised at finding it unsealed. As little as possible of the enclosed has been read by me. In my first astonishment at my discovery I read some lines of the first page; enough to explain to me that without doubt it was the letter Cissy referred to. The name of my wife’s young cousin, Marion Vere, caught my eye. Also that of a Miss Freer, with whom I am wholly unacquainted. Marion Vere spent the winter at Altes with my wife. It is probable you there met her. Beyond this the whole affair is a mystery to me. Nor do I ever wish to have it explained unless agreeable to you to do so. I earnestly trust my culpable, but not altogether inexcusable, negligence, may have done no harm. It will be an immense relief to me to hear this. I write in haste to catch the mail, so believe me, my dear Severn,
“Yours most truly,
“GEORGE ARCHER.”
Ralph read through this letter carefully, and felt after doing so as if he were dreaming. What could it mean? “Marion Vere,” who could she be? “Miss Freer,” a total stranger to Colonel Archer! Not for some moments did it occur to him to turn for explanation to the sealed enclosure.
Here indeed he met with it in full! With feelings of the utmost astonishment and bewilderment, succeeded, as gradually the mists cleared away, by a revulsion of almost intoxicating intensity of delight, gratitude, returning hope and reviving anticipation, did his mind at last take in the meaning of the strange solution of all past mystery. This then had been the poor child’s secret, this the reason of all the mistakes and cross-purposes! His Marion after all was no poor little struggling governess, on whom though he would have been proud to wed her, his narrow prejudiced world might have looked askance; but the daughter of one of the leading men of the day, come of a stock with which even Lady Severn herself could have no fault to find. And she had dreaded his blaming her innocent deceit, Cissy told him; had feared it might lower her irretrievably in his eyes! Truly as the daughter of an ancient house he could love her no more fervently, than as the despised little governess, sprang from no one knew where, with even the shadow of a suspected disgrace on her family; but yet in a very different sense, this revelation did increase his devotion, for it showed him yet more the unselfishness of her character and its rare union of strength and gentleness; and made him the more anxious to compensate to her by a life of happiness, of perfect mutual love and trust, for all he now well understood she must have so uncomplainingly suffered. It had not been a wise proceeding, this little comedy of hers—assumed names and positions are edged tools in the hands of inexperienced girls of nineteen—so much even Ralph’s partial judgment of all that Marion had done, could all but allow. But all the same he could not but lore and admire her the more for the sisterly devotion which prompted the scheme, the bravery and patience which had enabled her to carry it out.
Some hours’ reflection decided him that no time must be lost in tracing, by the light of Cissy’s communication, the girl whom he had little expected ever to see again. It all straight sailing enough now; the daughter of so well-known a man as Hartford Vere would be easy to find. He remembered hearing that the orphans of the late Mr. Vere had been left but scantily provided for; in all probability, therefore, their town house had been given up and the young people themselves received into the families of relatives, for he remembered too that Marion had told him more than once that she had no mother. Still he decided that London itself was the proper place in which to make enquiry, and thither he resolved as speedily a possible to betake himself.
One preliminary step only he felt it advisable to take. He must come to some understanding with his mother on the subject of his probable marriage. Not that he now anticipated much difficulty in this quarter, for things were very different between Lady Severn and her son from what they had been during the reign of Florence’s irritating influence.
The mother’s instinct had divined the change that had passed over her son; and now that she had come to know him better and love him more, there were few things she would not have agreed to, to give him pleasure. Often when he little suspected it, her heart ached for him, when the outward signs of the secret sorrow that had so changed him, came before her notice. The many grey hairs mingled with his black, the new furrows round eyes and mouth, the general air of depression and hopelessness, only too plainly visible even in one who had never been other than quiet and grave. She would have given worlds to have obtained his confidence; but she felt instinctively that she had neglected till too late to seek what now she would have prized so highly.
It was with no little gratification therefore that she this morning acceded to Sir Ralph’s request that she would spare him a little time to talk over some matters of importance connected with his private affairs.
“But no bad news, I trust?” she said, as a new idea struck her. “You do not look as if it were, but I do trust you are not going to tell me you are thinking of leaving me?”
“Not for long certainly,” he replied cordially. “A week or two at most will be the extent of my absence at present. No, my dear mother. What I have to say to you is more likely to lead to my settling near you permanently. A year or two ago I displeased you very much by not falling in with certain matrimonial schemes of yours on my behalf. I want to know if you have forgiven me?”
“Quite,” said Lady Severn. “I meant it for the best, Ralph, but I now think you were wiser than I. It would not have been a desirable arrangement. I am quite satisfied that Florence should not be more nearly connected with us.”
“But I want more than that, mother,” pursued Ralph, “I want you to do more than forgive me for not marrying to please you. I want your cordial, entire consent to my you to give you marrying to please myself.”
Lady Severn’s eyes filled with tears. A moment or two she hesitated; then said slowly and distinctly, “You shall have it, Ralph. Whomever you choose as your wife I shall cordially receive as my daughter. You have suffered, my poor boy, long and deeply. I thank God if things are looking brighter with you. Only—only one thing I must say, and if it pains you, forgive me. I don’t care about money. We have plenty, and whenever you marry, what John had shall be yours. His daughters are provided for. I have not forgotten how well you behaved at that time, Ralph, and as to herself personally, I feel no uneasiness about my future daughter. But, Ralph, you have queer notions about some things. Tell me, is she a lady? I would like the good old stock to be kept up. As I have promised so I will do: whoever she be I will receive her cordially. But it would be an immense relief to my mind to know that she really was one of our own class.”
Ralph smiled slightly, but there was no bitterness in his smile. He could afford now to be lenient towards what he considered his mother’s little foibles.
“Then that relief I can give you, mother,” he said. “She is a lady even in the very narrowest and most conventional sense of the word, as well in the wider and far more beautiful one. She comes of a stock as good ‘or better’ than your own. Better at least, in so far as I think I have heard there is no family of more ancient standing in the county they belong to. And well-conducted people too they have been on the whole, which, though, of course, a much less important consideration, is satisfactory to know.” (Lady Severn had no idea her son was “chaffing” her.) “She is not rich, but that I know you don’t care about. As to herself I would rather not tell you more just yet. Her name too I should prefer not mentioning, unless you particularly wish to hear it.”
“Oh, no, thank you,” said his mother, “I am quite content to wait till you feel ready to tell it me” (which by-the-way was a great story). “I am so thankful to know what you have told me, for you know, Ralph,” she went on apologetically, “you were rather peculiar in your ideas about social position and all that. There was that young girl at Altes, you remember, Miss Freer, whom Florence took such a dislike to. At one time—it was very absurd of me—but at one time I really had a fear of you in that quarter. She was a very sweet creature, I must say. I took quite an interest in her at first, till Florence told me how underhand and designing she was. Not that I altogether believed it. Florence was apt to be prejudiced—but there certainly was something strangely reserved about her for so young a person. But it may have been family troubles, poor th............