"You are amused, Gartley!" she said.

"You are so clever, aunt!" he returned.

"Major Marvel has all the merit of my wit," she answered. This gave the _coup de grace_ to the major's temptation to do evil that good might come, and sacrifice himself that Hester might not be sacrificed.

After dinner, they sat down to whist, of which Miss Vavasor was very fond. When however she found they did not play for money, though she praised the asceticism of the manner, she plainly took little interest in the game. The major therefore, who had no scruples either of conscience or of pocket in the matter, suggested that his lordship and Hester should take their places, and proposed cribbage to her, for what points she pleased. To this she acceded at once. The major was the best player in his regiment, but Miss Vavasor had much the better of it, and regretted she had not set the points higher. All her life she had had money in the one eye and the poor earldom in the other. The major laid down his halfcrowns so cheerfully, with such a look of satisfaction even, that she came quite to like the man, and to hope he would be there for some time, and prove as fond of cribbage as she was. The fear of lord Gartley as to the malign influence of the major vanished entirely.

And now that he was more at his ease, and saw that his aunt was at least far from displeased with Hester, lord Gartley began to radiate his fascinations. All his finer nature appeared. He grew playful, even teasing; gave again and again a quick repartee; and sang as his aunt had never heard him sing before. But when Hester sang, the thing was done, and the aunt won: she perceived at once what a sensation such a singer would make in her heavenly circle! She had, to be sure, a little _too_ much expression, and sang well enough for a professional, which was too well for a lady with no object in her singing except to please. But in manner and style, to mention neither beauty nor accomplishments, she would be a decided gain to the family, possessing even in herself a not inconsiderable counterpoise to the t.i.tle. Then who could tell but this cousin--who seemed to have plenty of money, he parted with it so easily--might be moved by like n.o.ble feelings with her own to make a poor countess a rich one. The thing, I say, was settled, so far as the chief family-worshipper was concerned.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

COURTSHIP IN EARNEST.

I do not care to dwell upon what followed. Christmas was a merry day to all but the major, who did not like the engagement any better than before. He found refuge and consolation with Mark. The boy was merry in a mild, reflected way, because the rest were merry, but preferred his own room with "dear Majie," to the drawing-room with the grand lady. He would steal from it, a.s.sured that in a moment the major would be after him, to keep him company, and tell him such stories!

Lord Gartley now began to make love with full intent and purpose. "How could she listen to him!" says this and that reader? I can but echo the exclamation, "How could she!" To explain the thing is more than I am bound to undertake. As I may have said twenty times before, how this woman will have this man is one of the deeper mysteries of the world--yea, of the maker of the world, perhaps. One thing I may fairly suggest--that where men see no reason why a woman should love this or that man, she may see something in him which they do not see, or do not value as she does. Alas for her if she only imagines it! Another thing we may be sure of--that in few cases does the woman see what the men know: much of that which is manifest to the eyes of the male world, is by the male world scrupulously hidden from the female. One thing more I would touch upon which men are more likely never to have thought of than to have forgotten: that the love which a beautiful woman gives a man, is in itself not an atom more precious than that which a plain woman gives.

In the two hearts they are the same, if the hearts be like; if not, the advantage may well be with the plain woman. The love of a beautiful woman is no more thrown away than the love of the plainest. The same holds with regard to women of differing intellectual developments or endowment. But when a woman of high hopes and aims--a woman filled with eternal aspirations after life, and unity with her divine original gives herself to such a one as lord Gartley, I cannot help thinking she must have seriously mistaken some things both in him and in herself, the consequence, probably, of some self-sufficiency, ambition, or other fault in her, which requires the correction of suffering.

Hester found her lover now very pleasant. If sometimes he struck a jarring chord, she was always able to find some way of accounting for it, or explaining it away--if not entirely to her satisfaction, yet so far that she was able to go on hoping everything, and for the present to put off any further consideration of the particular phenomenon to the time when, like most self-deceiving women, she _scarcely_ doubted she would have greater influence over him--namely, the time when, man and wife, they would be one flesh. But where there is not already a far deeper unity than marriage can give, marriage itself can do little to bring two souls together--may do much to drive them asunder.

She began to put him in training, as she thought, for the help he was to give her with her loved poor. "What a silly!" exclaims a common-minded girl-reader. "That was not the way to land her fish!" But let those who are content to have fishy husbands, net or hook and land them as they can; a woman has more in herself than any husband can give her, though he may take much from her. Lord Gartley had no real conception of her outlook on life, and regarded all her endeavor as born of the desire to perfect his voice and singing. With such teaching he must, he imagined, soon become her worthy equal. He had no notion of the sort of thing genius is. Few have. They think of it as something supreme in itself, whereas it is altogether dependent on truth in the inward parts. It may last for a time separated from truth, but it dies its life, not lives it. Its utterance depends on enthusiasm; all enthusiasm depends on love and n.o.bility of purpose; and love and n.o.bility depend upon truth--that is, live truth. Not millions of years, without an utter regeneration of nature, could make such a man as Gartley sing like Hester. His faculties were in the power of decay, therefore of the things that pa.s.s; Hester was of the powers that give life, and keep things going and growing. She sang because of the song that was in her soul. Her music came out of her being, not out of her brain and her throat. If such a one as Gartley can sing, there is no reason why he should be kept singing. In all the arts the man who does not reach to higher things falls away from the things he has. The love of money will ruin poet, painter, or musician.

For Hester the days now pa.s.sed in pleasure. I fear the closer contact with lord Gartley, different he was in her thought from what he was in his own best, influenced at least the _rate_ of her growth towards the upper regions. We cannot be heart and soul and self in the company of the evil--and the untrue is the evil, however beheld as an angel of light in the mirage of our loving eyes, without sad loss. Her prayers were not so fervent, her aspirations not so strong. I see again the curl on the lip of a certain kind of girl-reader! Her judgment here is but foolishness. She is much too low in the creation yet, be she as high-born and beautiful as a heathen G.o.ddess, to understand the things of which I am writing. But she has got to understand them--they are not mine--and the understanding may come in dread pain, and dire dismay.

Hester was one of those who in their chambers are not alone, but with him who seeth in secret; and not to get so near to G.o.d in her chamber--I can but speak in human figure--did not argue well for the new relationship. But the Lord is mindful of his own. He does not forget because we forget. Horror and pain may come, but not because he forgets--nay, just because he does not forget. That is a thing G.o.d never does.

There are many women who would have bewitched Gartley more, yet great was his delight in the presence and converse of Hester, and he yielded himself with pleasing grace. Inclined to rebel at times when wearied with her demands on his attention and endeavour, he yet condescended to them with something of the playfulness with which one would humour a child: he would have a sweet revenge by and by! His turn would come soon, and he would have to instruct her in many things she was now ignorant of! She had never moved in his great world: he must teach her its laws, instruct her how to shine, how to make the most of herself, how to do honour to his choice! He had but the vaguest idea of the _folly_ that possessed her. He thought of her relation to the poor but as a pa.s.sing--indeed a past phase of a hitherto objectless life.

Anything beyond a little easy benevolence would be impossible to the wife of lord Gartley! That she should contemplate the pursuit of her former objects with even greater freedom and devotion than before, would have seemed to him a thing utterly incredible. And Hester would have been equally staggered to find he had so failed to understand her after the way she had opened her heart to him. To imagine that for anything she would forsake the work she had been sent to do! So things went on _upon a mutual misunderstanding_--to make a bull for my purpose--each in the common meaning of the word getting more and more in love with the other every day, while in reality they were separating farther and farther, in as much as each one was revelling in thoughts that were alien to the other. An occasional blasting doubt would cross the mind of Hester, but she banished it like an evil spectre.

Miss Vavasor continued the most pleasant and unexacting of guests. Her perfect breeding, sustained by a quiet temper and kindly disposition, was easily, by simple hearts, taken for the sweetness it only simulated.

To people like Miss Vavasor does the thought never occur--what if the thing they find it so necessary to simulate should actually in itself be indispensable? What if their necessity of simulating it comes of its absolute necessity!

She found the company of the major agreeable in the slow time she had for her nephew's sake to pa.s.s with such primitive people, and was glad of what she might otherwise have counted barely endurable. For Mr.

Raymount, he would not leave what he counted his work for any G.o.ddess in creation: Hester had got her fixedness of purpose through him, and its direction through her mother. But it was well he did not give Miss Vavasor much of his company: if they had been alone together for a quarter of an hour, they would have parted sworn foes, hating each other almost as much as is possible without having loved. So the major, instead of putting a stop to the unworthy alliance, found himself actually furthering the affair, doing his part with the lady on whom the success of the enemy depended. He was still now and then tempted to break through and have a hideous revenge; but, with no great sense of personal dignity to restrain him, he was really a man of honour and behaved like one, curbing himself with no little severity.

So the time went on till after the twelfth night, when Miss Vavasor took her leave for a round of visits, and lord Gartley went up to town, with intention thereafter to pay a visit to his property, such as it was. He would return to Yrndale in three weeks or a month, when the final arrangements for the marriage would be made.

A correspondence naturally commenced, and Hester, unwarned by former experience, received his first letter joyfully. But, the letter read, lo, there was the same disappointment as of old! And as the first letter, so the last and all between. In Hester's presence, she suggesting and leading, he would utter what seemed to indicate the presence of what she would have in him; but alone in his room, without guide to his thoughts, without the stimulus of her presence or the sense of her moral atmosphere, the best things he could write were poor enough; they had no bones in them, and no other fire than that which the thought of Hester's loveliness could supply. So his letters were not inspiriting. They absorbed her atmosphere and after each followed a period of mental asphyxy. Had they been those of a person indifferent to her, she would have called them stupid, thrown them down, and thought no more of them. As it was, I doubt if she read many of them twice over.

But all would be well, she said to herself, when they met again. It was her absence that oppressed him, poor fellow! He was out of spirits, and could not write! He had not the faculty for writing that some had! Her father had told her of men that were excellent talkers, but set them down pen in hand and not a thought would come! Was it not to his praise rather than blame? Was not the presence of a man's own kind the best inspirer of his speech? It was his loving human nature--she would have persuaded herself, but never quite succeeded--that made utterance in a letter impossible to him. Yet she _would_ have liked a little genuine, definite response to the things she wrote! He seemed to have nothing to say from himself! He would a.s.sent and echo, but any response was always such as to make her doubt whether she had written plainly, invariably suggesting things of this world and not of the unseen, the world of thought and being. And when she mentioned work he always replied as if she meant an undefined something called _doing good_.

He never doubted the failure of that foolish concert of ladies and gentlemen given to the riff-raff of London, had taught her that whether man be equal in the sight of G.o.d or not, any attempt on the part of their natural superiors to treat them as such could not but be disastrous.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

CALAMITY.

One afternoon the post brought side by side with a letter from lord Gartley, one in a strange-looking cramped hand, which Mrs. Raymount recognized.

"What can Sarah be writing about?" she said, a sudden foreboding of evil crossing her mind.

"The water-rate perhaps," answered Hester, opening her own letter as she withdrew to read it. For she did not like to read Gartley's letters before her mother--not from shyness, but from shame: she would have liked ill to have her learn how poor her Gartley's utterances were upon paper. But ere she was six slow steps away, she turned at a cry from her mother.

"Good heavens, what can it be? Something has happened to him!" said Mrs.

Raymount.

Her face was white almost as the paper she held. Hester put her arms round her.

"Mother! mother! what is it?" she cried. "Anything about Corney?"

"I thought something would come to stop it all. We were too happy!" she moaned, and began to tremble.

"Come to papa, mamma dear," said Hester, frightened, but quiet. She stood as if fixed to the ground. Mr. Raymount's letters had been carried to him in the study, and one of them had put him into like perturbation.

He was pacing up and down the room almost as white as his wife, but his pallor was that of rage.

"The scoundrel!" he groaned, and seizing a chair hurled it against the wall. "I had the suspicion he was a mean dog! Now all the world will know it--and that he is my son! What have I done--what has my wife done, that we should give being to a vile hound like this? What is there in her or in me--?"

There he paused, for he remembered: far back in the family some five generations or so, one had been hanged for forgery.

He threw himself in a chair, and wept with rage and shame. He had for years been writing of family and social duties; here was his ill.u.s.tration! His books were his words; here was his deed! How should he ever show himself again! He would leave the country! d.a.m.n the property!

The rascal should never succeed to it! Mark should have it--if he lived!

But he hoped he would die! He would like to poison them all, and go with them out of the disgrace--all but the dog that had brought it on them!

Hester marry an earl! Not if the truth would prevent it! Her engagement must at once be broken! Lord Gartley marry the sister of a thief!

While he was thus raging a knock came to the door, and a maid entered.

"Please, sir," she said, "Miss Raymount says will you come to mis'ess: she's taken bad!"

This brought him to himself. The horrible fate was hers too! He must go to her. How could she have heard the vile news? She must have heard it!

what else could make her ill! He followed the maid to the lawn. It was a cold morning of January sunshine. There stood his wife in his daughter's arms, trembling from head to foot, and apparently without power of motion! He asked no question, took her in his arms, bore her to her room, laid her on the bed, and sat down beside her, hardly caring if she died, for the sooner they were all dead the better! She lay like one dead, and do what she could Hester was unable to bring her to herself.

But by and by the doctor came.

She had caught up the letter and as her father sat there, she handed it to him. The substance and manner of it were these:

"Dear mistress, it is time to let you know of the goings on here. I never held with bearing of tales against my fellow-servants, and perhaps it's worse to bring tales against Master Cornelius, as is your own flesh and blood, but what am I to do as was left in charge, and to keep the house respectable? He's not been home this three nights; and you ought to know as there is a young lady, his cousin from New Zealand, as is come to the house a three or four times since you went away, and stayed a long time with him, though it is some time now that I ain't seen her.

She is a pretty, modest-looking young lady; though I must say I was ill-pleased when Mr. Cornelius would have her stay all night; and I up and told him if she was his cousin it wasn't as if she was his sister, and it wouldn't do, and I would walk out of the house if he insisted on me making up a bed for her. Then he laughed in my face, and told me I was an old fool, and he was only making game of me. But that was after he done his best to persuade me, and I wouldn't be persuaded. I told him if neither he nor the young lady had a character to keep, I had one to lose, and I wouldn't. But I don't think he said anything to her about staying all night; for she come down the stair as innocent-like as any dove, and bid me good night smiling, and they walked away together. And I wouldn't by no means have took upon me to be a spy, nor I wouldn't have mentioned the thing, for it's none of my business so long as n.o.body doesn't abuse the house as is my charge; but he ain't been home for three nights, and there is the feelings of a mother! and it's my part to let her know as her son ain't slept in his own bed for three nights, and that's a fact. So no more at present, and I hope dear mis'ess it won't kill you to hear on it. O why did his father leave him alone in London, with none but an old woman like me, as he always did look down upon, to look after him! Your humble servant for twenty years to command, S. H."

Mrs. Raymount had not read the half of this. It was enough to learn he had not been home for three nights. How is it? Parents with no reasonable ground for believing their children good, nay with considerable ground for believing them worse than many, are yet seized as by the awfully incredible when they hear they are going wrong. Helen Raymount concluded her boy had turned into bad ways because left in London, although she knew he had never taken to good ways while they were all with him. If he had never gone right why should she wonder he had gone wrong?

The doctor was sitting by the bedside, watching the effect of something he had given her. Mr. Raymount rose and led Hester from the room--sternly almost, as if she had been to blame for it all.

Some people when they are angry, speak as if they were angry with the person to whom they are in fact looking for comfort. When in trouble few of us are masters enough of ourselves, because few of us are children enough of our Father in heaven, to behave like gentlemen--after the fashion of "the first stock father of gentleness." But Hester understood her mother and did not resent.