“he comes, the herald of a noisy world;
news from all nations lumbering at his back.
. . . . . messenger of grief
perhaps to thousands, and of joy to some:
to him indifferent whether grief or joy.
the task.
“art than dead?
dead? . . . . .
could from earth’s ways that figure alight
be lost and i not know ‘twas so?
of that fresh voice the gay delight
fade from earth’s air, and i not know!”
matthew arnold.
it was not, certainly, a pleasant change from altes to london, for poor marion. for a day or two she was perfectly alone, her father, as she had expected, absent; and she herself too anxious and dispirited to care to announce her return to the few friends, so-called, with whom she was on anything like intimate terms.
on the third day mr. vere made his appearance. marion was sitting alone, late in the afternoon, in the same room in which we first saw her, when he returned. she heard him enter the house, she heard his step on the stair, and rose, half trembling, to greet him. oh, how she wished she could feel glad to see him! what she had of late gone through had both softened and widened her heart. she was very ready to love this father of hers, if only he would let her, but alas, it was too late in the day for anything of this kind!
he came in. a tall, slightly bent, grizzled man. looking older, considerably so, than his age, and giving one, somehow, the impression that he must always have appeared so.
he shook hands with his daughter in what he intended for a cordial manner, and then in a jerky sort of way kissed her forehead, as if he were half ashamed of what he was doing.
still, for him, this was a good deal, and marion tried her best to respond to it heartily.
“so you’re back again, my dear,” he remarked by way of greeting.
“yes, papa,” she replied; “i arrived here on tuesday morning. poor cissy went on to cheltenham at once to begin her preparations. i have been so happy at altes, dear papa, so very happy. i shall always be so grateful to you for having allowed me to go with cissy. and now that i have come back, i am so anxious to do what i can in return for your kindness. you must let me be of use to you, papa—more than i have been hitherto.”
“ah, yes, humph, just so!” half grunted, half muttered mr. vere. “very glad you have enjoyed yourself. i wish i could get a holiday myself. i am more knocked up than i ever remember feeling before.”
this was wonderfully communicative and gracious! “i am so sorry. i thought you were not looking very well,” remarked marion. but her father didn’t encourage any further expression of filial solicitude. his head already half hidden in a newspaper which he had brought into the room with him, he appeared lost to the world outside its folds.
suddenly he startled marion by speaking again.
“what’s all this nonsense about cecilia archer setting of to india just now?” he asked; “at this season it’s utter madness! she’ll kill herself before she gets there. i thought she had more sense.”
“the doctors have given her leave,” replied marion: “i believe they thought the risk would be greater of detaining her at home, when she is in such anxiety. and besides, she is going to simla, which is a very healthy place.”
“anxiety, fiddlesticks!” growled mr. vere, “what good did anxiety ever do any one? simla, humbug! to get there she must pass through the very worst and unhealthiest part of the whole continent—at this season, that’s to say; as you might know if you would speak less thoughtlessly.”
“i am very sorry,” began marion, but the head had again retired behind the newspaper, and she said no more.
in another moment it appeared again.
“there have been a lot of invitations for you. i did not think it worth while to send them to altes. you can look them over, and tell me if there are any you wish to accept. what gaiety you wish for, you must be content with early this year, for lady barnstaple is going abroad in a few weeks to some german baths, and i don’t care about your going out with any one else.”
“thank you, papa,” said marion, really grateful for the unusual interest he expressed in her concerns, “i shall look over the invitations but i don’t think i care very much about going out this year. a very few times before lady barnstaple leaves town, will quite content me. i have a letter from harry,” she went on, feeling unusually bold, “he wants to know if he may come up from woolwich for next saturday and sunday to see me. it is so long since we have seen each other,” she added deprecatingly, for something in the way the newspaper rustled, frightened away her newly found audacity.
“harry wants to know if he may come for next saturday and sunday, does he?” said mr. vere, very slowly, distinctly emphasizing each word of the sentence, “then, you will perhaps be so good as to tell him from me that most certainly he may not come here for saturday, sunday, or any other day, fill i see fit to send for him. idle young idiot, that he is! i wonder he is not ashamed to propose such a thing. had he worked as he should have done years ago, he might now have been at the head of the woolwich academy, instead of being, at seventeen, obliged to cram at a tutor’s to obtain even a line commission. and now, forsooth, he thinks he is to have it all his own way and run up and down to town, whenever the fancy seizes him! i tell you, marion, you mean well, i believe, but if there is to be peace among us, you must be careful what sort of influence you exert over your brother. i give you fair warning of this. see that you attend to it.” and so saying, he marched out of the room, newspaper in hand, without giving his daughter time to reply.
it was well he did so, for the fast coming tears would have choked her voice. though by no means a woman of the lachrymose order, marion’s self-control had of late somewhat deserted her, and she had so longed to see harry! not only this, she had come home, though anxious and depressed, thoroughly determined to fulfil to the best of her power, her daughter’s duty. the hope that no very long time would elapse, before she might be taken to a more congenial home, naturally encouraged her to the better performance of her present duties, before they should be beyond her power—among the things of the past: and joined to this, was a half superstitious, hardly acknowledged belief, that according to her present earnestness in well-doing, would be the measure of her future happiness.
was she more of a heathen, poor little soul, for so thinking, than many, in their own opinion, far wiser people? doing good for good’s own sake is a doctrine not often inculcated, even by those who think themselves the most “orthodox” and spiritual-minded.
“surely, surely,” cries the eager, anxious heart, “if i but bear this patiently, and to the best of my poor power perform these hard and uninviting duties, surely i shall at last meet with my reward? the father above ‘is not a man that he should lie,’ and has he not promised ‘good things’ to the patient doer of present duty; ‘long days and blessedness to such as honour his commandments?”
such is the unexpressed, unacknowledged hope of many an aching, longing heart. a hope which perhaps strengthens to do bravely, and bear uncomplainingly, at times when higher motives might be powerless.
vain hopes, unwarranted expectations, are they? nay, not so. the “good things” are no dream, the “blessedness” no delusion, though they may not indeed consist of the one thing craved for by the anguished heart, that one gift, whatever it be, which at such seasons seems to our dark and imperfect vision the only blessing worth having, without which existence itself were no boon!
and now to poor marion. full, as i have said, of her ardent resolutions, her self-administered incentive to exertion, the thought that if she were not a good daughter at home, she would never deserve to be placed in a happier sphere, where duty, become so sweet and attractive, would no longer be a hard taskmaster, but a smiling handmaiden—now, full of all these earnest thoughts and aspirations, it was indeed hard upon her, very hard, to be thus chilled and repelled by her father.
and at first he had seemed so kind, so much gentler and less reserved than usual! there was certainly some change in him, which she could not understand. he was no longer so calm and unbending as he had been—more impulsive in both ways—kinder, and yet so much more irritable than she had ever known him. what could be the meaning of it? he looked ill too, and confessed to not feeling as well as usual. marion felt anxious and concerned, and almost forgave him the harshness of that last speech, though her eyes filled with tears as she recalled it.
“oh how sorry ralph would be for me if he knew it!” she thought. “oh, if only i could see him and tell him all my troubles, and ask him to take care of me for always!”
and she longed for him so intensely, that had he suddenly entered the room and stood beside her she would not have been surprised!
and had she only known it—ah! it tears me even to write it—after all these years since that dreary march afternoon; and though long since then, these hopes and sorrows of my poor child’s have faded and softened into the faint shadows of the past; all, even now, i can hardly bear to think of it—at that very moment ralph was in a house on the opposite side of that very square, closeted with sir archibald cunningham, while they discussed the business which had brought the younger man to england, and of which the successful conclusion was sending him back to altes the next morning hopeful and elated, feeling strong enough to face all the world in general, and his mother in particular, now that no insurmountable obstacle stood between him and the only woman he had ever loved.
but this marion did not, could not, know.
so she stood by the window in a half dream of vague hope and expectation. something, she felt sure, was going to happen: a sensation often the result of over-strained nerves, or excited imagination, but for all that none the less consolatory in its way while it lasts.
what happened was a ring at the bell! it was almost too dark to distinguish the form of the visitor as he ran up the two or three steps that separated the hall door from the pavement; in vain marion strained her eyes. she could perceive nothing clearly, so she took to listening breathlessly.
the door was opened, but shut quickly.
“no visitor, then,” thought marion, and her heart sank. but another moment, and it rose again.
“two letters for you, ma’am,” said the servant entering, but as hastily retreating in search of a light. letters; ah, yes, good news often comes by the post, so what may not these contain?
one from harry. a few rough, kindly words, begging her not to take it to heart if her request for his saturday’s visit was refused by her father.
“he has been so queer lately,” wrote harry, “so changeable and irritable, i am afraid of putting him out, and almost sorry i suggested it. “never mind, if he won’t let me come. we are sure to meet before long. it is a comfort to know you are near at hand.”
so much from harry. the other was from cissy, but it felt thick—was there, could there be, an enclosure? yes, sure enough, inside cissy’s few loving words of last farewell, it lay. a foreign letter, in an unfamiliar hand, addressed to,
miss freer, care of mrs. archer,
23, west parade,
cheltenham.
she tore it open. what a disappointment! a large sheet of thin paper covered with the text-hand she knew so well. a child’s letter, from poor little sybil in fact, folded and directed by the new governess already installed in place or her dear miss freer.
that was all! ralph folded the letters. his own to miss fryer he destroyed.
“miss brown is very kind,” wrote sybil, “but i cry for you when i am in bed. uncle ralph has not come home, but i think he will be very sorry you have gone away.”
that was all!
there was, however, a certain amount of satisfaction in the fact of the letter come safe to hand. it showed that she need fear no postal delay or miscarriage, owing to the roundabout manner in which her letters must come. for cissy added in a postscript, “i forward the only letter for miss freer that has come, and i am leaving with my mother-in-law (a very careful and methodical person) most particular directions to forward at once to you all letters that may arrive to my care, for that same mysterious young lady.”
marion would much have liked at once to reply to poor, affectionate, little sybil; but as things were, she thought it better not.
this, and more important matters, would all be set straight soon—or never. in the latter case it was better for the child to forget her; in the former, a short delay in thanking her little friend would be immaterial.
for the next few weeks the soul of marion’s day was the post-hour.
how she woke and rose early to be ready to hear the ring she came to know so well.
how she composed herself to sleep by the thought of what might be coming in the morning!
but the weeks went on—the weeks, so easy to write of—but each, alas with its appalling list of days, and hours, and minutes! looking back to the time of her return from altes, six weeks later, marion could hardly believe that mouths, if not years, had not passed since the evening she parted with ralph. her life at this time was strangely solitary. she saw little of her father, though she had forgotten none of her good resolutions, and in many hitherto neglected ways, endeavoured to show him her daughterly affection and anxiety for his comfort.
he was, on the whole, kinder in manner to her than had been his wont, but still strangely irritable and uncertain in temper. the change was remarked by others besides herself; and once or twice commented upon by some of the more intimate of mr. vere’s friends and allies, who now and then visited at his house.
“he is wearing himself out. miss vere,” said one or these gentlemen to her, “mind and body. the amount of work he has gone through in the last few years would have killed most men long ago. he is wearing himself out.”
poor marion thought it only too probable, and more than ever regretted the unnatural isolation from his children, in which her father had chosen to live, which now utterly precluded her from remonstrance or interference of any kind.
as the season advanced she went out a little more, under the chaperonage of her god-mother, lady barnstaple. but it was weary work—balls, concerts—whatever it was, weary and unenjoyable. she had not, naturally, enough of what are called “animal spirits” to throw off suffering, even temporarily, under excitement, as many, by no means heartless, women are able to do. her indifferent, almost absent manner, came to be remarked by the few who knew her well enough to notice her; and more than one desirable “parti,” who had in former days been struck by the girl’s sweet brightness and gentle gaiety, was frightened away by the indefinable change that had come over her.
“miss vere looks as if she were going into a decline,” was murmured on more than one occasion, when her slender figure and pale, grave face were discerned among the crowd.
“such a pity, is it not? and she promised to be so pretty last year. do you remember her mother—oh, no, it was long before your time, of course—constantia percy, she was, the merivale percies, you know, and such a lovely creature! they do say mr. vere bullied her to death. i could believe it of him. those very clever, ambitious men, my dear, are not the best husbands. have you heard that a baronetcy is spoken of for him? no? ah, then it may be mere gossip,” and so on.
not till may did marion get a glimpse of harry, and then but a hurried one. mr. vere graciously permitted him to come up to town on his sister’s birthday, which fell in “the pleasant month.”
his visit was really the first bright spot in her life since her return to england. how well and happy he looked! and how sweet it was to be thanked by his own lips for what she had done for him—done, though she knew it not, at a priced that had cost her dear!
for she was still as far as ever from guessing the real nature of the difficulty that ralph had alluded to.
still she imagined it to be connected with florence vyse, and in this found the only reasonable solution of his continued silence—a silence, she now began to fear, never likely to be broken or explained.
a little incident led her to do at last what she had not hitherto felt fit for,—to write to cissy a full account of the whole from beginning to end, and to ask her advice as to the propriety of disclosing to sir ralph the secret of her assumed name and position while at altes. a disclosure which, were it to be made, could be done by no one so well as by cissy, and which, were it once clearly explained to sir ralph, would satisfy her; even if the result destroyed her last lingering hope that after all some mistake through her change of name had occurred, that in some way the mysterious obstacle in the way of his marrying miss freer, might be removed by her appearing in her true colours as marion vere.
if indeed he could forgive the deception!
it was a few chance words overheard at a dinner party, that led to her taking this step.
she had accompanied her father to one or the rare entertainments he honoured with his presence, and finding herself at dinner very “stupidly” placed—her neighbour on the right being a discontented gourmand, (terrible conjunction! a good-natured gourmand being barely endurable), and he on the left a “highest” church curate, a class with whom she could never, unlike most young ladies, succeed in “getting on” as it is called—she gave them both up in despair, and amused herself by listening to the snatches of conversation that reached her ears.
suddenly a name caught her attention.
“severn, did you say? oh yes, i know whom you mean. he was out there before; at a——, i mean. a peculiar person, is he not? a great linguist, or philologist, i should say. so he is going out again, you say?”
“so sir archibald told me just before he left. ‘i expect to have my old vice out again in a few months, when cameron returns,’ was what he said. i take some interest in it, as my son and his wife are thinking of spending next winter out there, for her health.”
“oh, indeed!” was the reply in the first voice, and then the conversation diverged to other topics.
it was very strange! what could be the meaning of it? it must be the same “severn” they spoke of; the description suited, exactly. this did not look like marrying florence vyse! marion thought it over till her brain was weary, looked at it first in one light, then in another; the final result of her cogitations being the letter to cissy alluded to above. it was now about the middle of june. by the end of the month she was hoping to hear of cissy’s arrival in india; by the end of september, at latest, she calculated she might receive an answer to her present letter.
this done, she felt more at rest than had been the case with her for many a day. it seemed to her she had acted wisely in allowing no false dignity to stand between her and the man she loved and trusted so entirely, and on the other hand the step she had taken in no way infringed the delicate boundary of her maidenly reserve, in after life need cause her no blush to look back upon.
harry’s vacation was at hand, and he was looking forward with eager delight to spending it in her society. marion resolved that he should not be disappointed of his anticipated pleasure. “the end of september,” she set before herself as a sort of goal, till then resolving to the utmost of her power to set aside her personal anxieties, and enjoy the present. nor were her endeavours vain. harry and she had never been happier together than during these holidays, and she herself unconsciously regained much of her usual health and elasticity both of mind and body.
a fortnight, by their father’s orders, was spent at brighton. here, one day, altes and its precious associations were suddenly brought to her mind. harry and she were strolling on the sands, when a voice beside her made her start.
“could it be, is it then posseeble that i have the plaisir to look at mees feere?” it could be none other than monsieur de l’orme. he indeed it was, as large, or rather as small as life, got up in what he considered a perfectly unexceptionable english costume, the details of which can be better imagined than described. poor little man! he was so inexpressibly delighted with himself and every one else, that his gaiety was infectious.
marion greeted him cordially.
“for it is just possible,” thought she, “that through him i may hear something, however little, of him who is never really absent from my thoughts.”
but it was not so. the little frenchman had left altes soon after mrs. archer’s departure, and since then had been wandering to and fro, now at last finding himself at the summit or his desires, a visitor in “le pays charmant d’angleterre.”
his account of his travels was very amusing, only he was so dreadfully polite about everything.
london he had found “manifique, tout ce qu’il y a de plus beau,” but “triste, vairee triste, surtout le dimanche.” “laysteer squarr,” had not, he confessed, quite come up to his ideal of the much vaunted comfort anglais, and the cab fares had struck him as slightly exorbitant, not being accustomed in france to pay something extra to the driver over and above the five itself, as he found was always expected by london cabbies.
“but my dear monsieur,” broke in harry at this point, “you must have been regularly done. i declare it’s a national disgrace to treat strangers so!”
m. de l’orme looked puzzled.
“pardon,” he exclaimed, “i do not quite at all onderstand. monsieur say, i have been ‘donne.’ donne? i request tousand forgives. that i am then beast! mais ‘donne.’ c’est bien ‘fini,’ ‘achevé,’ que monsieur veut dire?”
“oh, no,” said harry bluntly, “not that at all. done means cheated, taken in. you understand now? i meant that the cabbies had been cheating you, in other words ‘doing you,’ and uncommonly brown too,” he added in a lower voice.
“harry!” said marion in a tone of remonstrance.
but m. de l’orme was really too irresistible, and harry after all only a schoolboy.
they took the little man a walk (harry worse confounding his confusion by offering to put him in the way of “doing” brighton), exhibiting to him the beauties of this london-super-mare, with which kind attention he was so charmed, as to be rather at a loss for sufficiently effusive expressions in english, and obliged consequently to fall back upon his native tongue.
then harry took upon himself to invite him to dine with them, a proposal which marion could not but second; aghast though she was at her brother’s audacity; for at no hour of the day, and on no day of the week, were they secure from their father’s swooping down upon them. fortunately, however, m. de l’orme was obliged to leave brighton at once, and could not therefore accept their invitation, much to marion’s relief, for besides her fear of mr. vere’s appearance, she had been every moment in terror of the little frenchman coming, out with some allusion to her pupils at altes.
but the severn family was not mentioned till the last moment, when m. de l’orme observed casually that several of their altes acquaintances were spending the summer in switzerland. the berwicks, he said, were a lausanne, and “miladi sevèrne” had taken a maison de champaigne at vevey.
“all’s well that ends well,” and marion was thankful when their friend had bidden them an overflowing farewell, and taken himself off in an opposite direction.
by the middle of august harry was off again, for what he trusted would be his last half-year at the woolwich tutor’s; and marion returned to her lonely life, brightened only by the hope that the end of the following month would bring her an answer from cissy.
no letter from her cousin had yet reached her; but from the elder mrs. archer at cheltenham she had heard of the traveller’s safe arrival at their destination. these few weeks were not so bad as those immediately succeeding her return home. to certain people, weak-minded ones perhaps, in such circumstances, the looking forward to a distinct goal is a great help! but still it was weary work. all sorts of torturing fears would now and then rush into her mind—that ralph would have left for the east before any communication from cissy could reach him—that he would never forgive her deception—that he was already married to miss vyse; these and a hundred other “thick coming fancies” from time to time came to torment her; above all, in the middle of the night, would they crowd upon her, ten-fold deepened and magnified, by the strange power of the all-surrounding darkness and silence.
it sometimes struck her as curious that she never dreamt of ralph; for naturally she was a great dreamer, and since infancy had been accustomed to live over again in “mid-night fantasy,” the pleasures and sorrows, the hopes and disappointments of the day.
the end of september came at last. the indian mail was in, but as yet no letters for her. still she was not disheartened. not improbably cissy might have enclosed hers in a budget to her mother-in-law; or even supposing the worst, that her cousin had been prevented writing at once, she must just extend a little further her laboriously acquired patience, and hope for what the next mail might bring.
she rose early on the morning of the 30th, and sat at the dining room window, watching for the postman, as had come to be a habit with her. he came at last. brown, the discreet, seemed to guess she was eager to hear what he had brought. for before she asked any question, he announced, “no letters for you, ma’am—all for my master.”
she thought she had not expected any, but still ——. in another minute a second ring at the front bell was explained by brown’s re-appearance, with the times, which she took up, though hardly caring to see it, and amused herself in the listless way people often do, when perhaps their hears are well-nigh bursting with anxiety, by glancing over the advertisement sheet.
“births. no, no one that i care about i’m sure. i wonder what people do with all these hosts of children! there are some names—the wife of a somebody james., esq., notting hill; and another, the better half of a rev. mr. watson, in the midland counties, who, i really do believe, make their appearance here at least once a mouth!
“marriages. yes, i may happen to see some i know of. ah, i declare! well i need not waste any more pity on you, my dear sir.”
“ ‘at calcutta, on the so-and-so, by the reverend, &c., francis hunter berwick, captain 81st bengal native infantry, and acting commissioner in oude, to dora isabella, eldest daughter of r. d. bailey, esq., m. d.’ poor little thing! i daresay she’ll be very happy! but how strange it seems. so soon alter. well, never mind. i’m very glad.”
so marion soliloquised. having gone through the marriages, she was on the point of throwing the paper aside, when it occurred to her to look if among the deaths was announced that of a very old gentleman, their next door neighbour, whose funeral had taken place the previous day. a moment, and the paper fell from her hands, to be clutched at again, and glared at by the stony, unbelieving eyes, which one would hardly have recognised as the sweet, tender marion’s! then a burst of wild, bitter sobbing—an abandonment of grief, very piteous to see. poor girl, poor solitary child! this was the first time it had come so near her, the first time she had felt that agonising grief—the wild cry of revolt against the awful law of our nature, which, at such seasons, rends us with despair. god be thanked, he himself hears that terrible cry, “and pitieth.” his poor children! this was what marion saw in the death column of the times.
“on the 10th of august, at landour, north west provinces, suddenly, cecilia may vere, aged 28, the beloved wife of lieut.-colonel archer, h.m.’s 101st regiment, and only daughter of the late charles hope-lacy, esq. of wyesham, ——shire.”
