"I don't believe very much about Crocker, my young woman. You had better look to yourself, or, perhaps, you'll find when you have got yourself married that Crocker has not got a roof to cover you."

Lord Hampstead had walked over to Paradise Row, and was seated with Mrs. Roden when this little squabble was going on. "You don't think that I ought to let things remain as they are," he said to Mrs.

Roden. To all such questions Mrs. Roden found it very difficult to make any reply. She did in truth think that they ought to be allowed to remain as they were,--or rather that some severance should be made more decided even than that which now existed. Putting aside her own ideas, she was quite sure that Marion would not consent to a marriage. And, as it was so, and must be so, it was better, she thought, that the young people should see no more of each other.

This writing of daily letters,--what good could it do to either of them? To her indeed, to Marion, with her fixed purpose, and settled religious convictions, and almost certain fate, little evil might be done. But to Lord Hampstead the result would be, and was, terribly pernicious. He was sacrificing himself, not only as Mrs. Roden thought for the present moment, but for many years perhaps,--perhaps for his future life,--to a hopeless pa.s.sion. A cloud was falling upon him which might too probably darken his whole career. From the day on which she had unfortunately taken Marion to Hendon Hall, she had never ceased to regret the acquaintance which she had caused. To her thinking the whole affair had been unfortunate. Between people so divided there should have been no intimacy, and yet this intimacy had been due to her. "It is impossible that I should not see her,"

continued Lord Hampstead. "I will see her."

"If you would see her, and then make up your mind to part with her,--that I think would be good."

"To see her, and say farewell to her for ever?"

"Yes, my lord."

"Certainly not. That I will never do. If it should come to pa.s.s that she must go from me for ever, I would have her in my arms to the very last!"

"At such a moment, my lord, those whom nature has given to her for her friends--"

"Has not nature given me too for her friend? Can any friend love her more truly than I do? Those should be with us when we die to whom our life is of most importance. Is there any one to whom her life can be half as much as it is to me? The husband is the dearest to his wife.

When I look upon her as going from me for ever, then may I not say that she is the same to me as my wife."

"Why--why,--why?"

"I know what you mean, Mrs. Roden. What is the use of asking 'why'

when the thing is done? Could I make it so now, as though I had never seen her? Could I if I would? Would I if I could? What is the good of thinking of antecedents which are impossible? She has become my treasure. Whether past and fleeting, or likely to last me for my life, she is my treasure. Can I make a change because you ask why,--and why,--and why? Why did I ever come here? Why did I know your son? Why have I got a something here within me which kills me when I think that I shall be separated from her, and yet crowns me with glory when I feel that she has loved me. If she must leave me, I have to bear it. What I shall do, where I shall go, whether I shall stand or fall, I do not pretend to say. A man does not know, himself, of what stuff he is made, till he has been tried. But whatever may be my lot, it cannot be altered by any care or custody now. She is my own, and I will not be separated from her. If she were dead, I should know that she was gone. She would have left me, and I could not help myself. As yet she is living, and may live, and I will be with her. I must go to her there, or she must come here to me. If he will permit it I will take some home for myself close to hers. What will it matter now, though every one should know it? Let them all know it.

Should she live she will become mine. If she must go,--what will the world know but that I have lost her who was to have been my wife?"

Even Mrs. Roden had not the heart to tell him that he had seen Marion for the last time. It would have been useless to tell him so, for he would not have obeyed the behest contained in such an a.s.sertion. Ideas of prudence and ideas of health had restrained him hitherto,--but he had been restrained only for a time. No one had dared suggest to him that he should never again see his Marion. "I suppose that we must ask Mr. Fay," she replied. She was herself more powerful than the Quaker, as she was well aware; but it had become necessary to her to say something.

"Mr. Fay has less to say to it even than I have," said Hampstead. "My belief is that Marion herself is the only one among us who is strong.

If it were not that she is determined, he would yield and you would yield."

"Who can know as she knows?" said Mrs. Roden. "Which among us is so likely to be guided by what is right? Which is so pure, and honest, and loving? Her conscience tells her what is best."

"I am not sure of that," said he. "Her conscience may fill her as well as another with fears that are unnecessary. I cannot think that a girl should be encouraged by those around her to doom herself after this fashion. Who has a right to say that G.o.d has determined that she shall die early?" Mrs. Roden shook her head. "I am not going to teach others what religion demands, but to me it seems that we should leave these things in G.o.d's hands. That she may doubt as to herself may be natural enough, but others should not have encouraged her."

"You mean me, my lord?"

"You must not be angry with me, Mrs. Roden. The matter to me is so vital that I have to say what I think about it. It does seem to me that I am kept away from her, whereas, by all the ties which can bind a man and a woman together, I ought to be with her. Forms and ceremonies seem to sink to nothing, when I think of all she is to me, and remember that I am told that she is soon to be taken away from me."

"How would it be if she had a mother?"

"Why should her mother refuse my love for her daughter? But she has no mother. She has a father who has accepted me. I do believe that had the matter been left wholly to him, Marion would now be my wife."

"I was away, my lord, in Italy."

"I will not be so harsh to such a friend as you, as to say that I wish you had remained there; but I feel,--I cannot but feel--"

"My lord, I think the truth is that you hardly know how strong in such a matter as this our Marion herself can be. Neither have I nor has her father prevailed upon her. I can go back now, and tell you without breach of confidence all that pa.s.sed between her and me. When first your name was discussed between us; when first I saw that you seemed to make much of her--"

"Make much of her!" exclaimed Hampstead, angrily.

"Yes; make much of her! When first I thought that you were becoming fond of her."

"You speak as though there had been some idle dallying. Did I not worship her? Did I not pour out my whole heart into her lap from the first moment in which I saw her? Did I hide it even from you? Was there any pretence, any falsehood?"

"No, indeed."

"Do not say that I made much of her. The phrase is vile. When she told me that she loved me, she made much of me."

"When first you showed us that you loved her," she continued, "I feared that it would not be for good."

"Why should it not be for good?"

"I will not speak of that now, but I thought so. I thought so, and I told my thoughts to Marion."

"You did?"

"I did;--and I think that in doing so, I did no more than my duty to a motherless girl. Of the reasons which I gave to her I will say nothing now. Her reasons were so much stronger, that mine were altogether unavailing. Her resolutions were built on so firm a rock, that they needed no persuasions of mine to strengthen them. I had ever known Marion to be pure, unselfish, and almost perfect. But I had never before seen how high she could rise, how certainly she could soar above all weakness and temptation. To her there was never a moment of doubt. She knew from the very first that it could not be so."

"It shall be so," he said, jumping up from his chair, and flinging up his arms.

"It was not I who persuaded her, or her father. Even you cannot persuade her. Having convinced herself that were she to marry you, she would injure you, not all her own pa.s.sionate love will induce her to accept the infinite delight of yielding to you. What may be best for you;--that is present to her mind, and nothing else. On that her heart is fixed, and so clear is her judgment respecting it, that she will not allow the words of any other to operate on her for a moment.

Marion Fay, Lord Hampstead, is infinitely too great to have been persuaded in any degree by me."

Nevertheless Mrs. Roden did allow herself to say that in her opinion the lover should be allowed to see his mistress. She herself would go to Pegwell Bay, and endeavour to bring Marion back to Holloway. That Lord Hampstead should himself go down and spend his long hours at the little seaside place did not seem to her to be fitting. But she promised that she would do her best to arrange at any rate another meeting in Paradise Row.

CHAPTER XIII.

LORD HAMPSTEAD AGAIN WITH MARION.

The Quaker had become as weak as water in his daughter's hands. To whatever she might have desired he would have given his a.s.sent. He went daily up from Pegwell Bay to Pogson and Littlebird's, but even then he was an altered man. It had been said there for a few days that his daughter was to become the wife of the eldest son of the Marquis of Kingsbury, and then it had been said that there could be no such marriage--because of Marion's health. The glory while it lasted he had borne meekly, but with a certain anxious satisfaction.

The pride of his life had been in Marion, and this young lord's choice had justified his pride. But the glory had been very fleeting.

And now it was understood through all Pogson and Littlebird's that their senior clerk had been crushed, not by the loss of his n.o.ble son-in-law, but by the cause which produced the loss. Under these circ.u.mstances poor Zachary Fay had hardly any will of his own, except to do that which his daughter suggested to him. When she told him that she would wish to go up to London for a few days, he a.s.sented as a matter of course. And when she explained that she wished to do so in order that she might see Lord Hampstead, he only shook his head sadly, and was silent.

"Of course I will come as you wish it," Marion had said in her letter to her lover. "What would I not do that you wish,--except when you wish things that you know you ought not? Mrs. Roden says that I am to go up to be lectured. You mustn't be very hard upon me. I don't think you ought to ask me to do things which you know,--which you know that I cannot do. Oh, my lover! oh, my love! would that it were all over, and that you were free!"

In answer to this, and to other letters of the kind, he wrote to her long argumentative epistles, in which he strove to repress the a.s.surances of his love, in order that he might convince her the better by the strength of his reasoning. He spoke to her of the will of G.o.d, and of the wickedness of which she would be guilty if she took upon herself to foretell the doings of Providence. He said much of the actual bond by which they had tied themselves together in declaring their mutual love. He endeavoured to explain to her that she could not be justified in settling such a question for herself without reference to the opinion of those who must know the world better than she did. Had the words of a short ceremony been spoken, she would have been bound to obey him as her husband. Was she not equally bound now, already, to acknowledge his superiority,--and if not by him, was it not her manifest duty to be guided by her father?

Then at the end of four carefully-written, well-stuffed pages, there would come two or three words of burning love. "My Marion, my self, my very heart!" It need hardly be said that as the well-stuffed pages went for nothing with Marion,--had not the least effect towards convincing her, so were the few words the very food on which she lived. There was no absurdity in the language of love that was not to her a gem so brilliant that it deserved to be garnered in the very treasure house of her memory! All those long useless sermons were preserved because they had been made rich and rare by the expression of his pa.s.sion.

She understood him, and valued him at the proper rate, and measured him correctly in everything. He was so true, she knew him to be so true, that even his superlatives could not be other than true! But as for his reasoning, she knew that that came also from his pa.s.sion. She could not argue the matter out with him, but he was wrong in it all.

She was not bound to listen to any other voice but that of her own conscience. She was bound not to subject him to the sorrows which would attend him were he to become her husband. She could not tell how weak or how strong might be his nature in bearing the burden of the grief which would certainly fall upon him at her death. She had heard, and had in part seen, that time does always mitigate the weight of that burden. Perhaps it might be best that she should go at once, so that no prolonged period of his future career should be injured by his waiting. She had begun to think that he would be unable to look for another wife while she lived. By degrees there came upon her the full conviction of the steadfastness, nay, of the stubbornness, of his heart. She had been told that men were not usually like that. When first he had become sweet to her, she had not thought that he would have been like that. Was it not almost unmanly,--or rather was it not womanly? And yet he,--strong and masterful as he was,--could he have aught of a woman's weakness about him? Could she have dreamed that it would be so from the first, she thought that from the very first she could have abstained.