“where love is great, the littlest doubts are fear,
where little fears grow great, great love grows there.”
shakespeare.
“i don’t much like that horse your husband is riding to-day, my dear,” said lady anne, as she sat down to her knitting beside the fire-place. “it’s all very well young men riding these high-spirited animals, breaking them in and so on, but geoffrey is no longer a young man in that sense of the word. his neck is no longer his own property. he has you to think of and—and—i think you must scold him a little and make him be more cautious.”
“i fear i could do little good, my dear lady anne,” said marion, as lightly as she could. “you see bachelor habits are not so easily broken through! it will take some time to teach geoffrey the double value attached to his neck.”
“ah well,” said the elder lady. “i suppose it would be rather hard on a man to give up what has always been his great amusement. you may be thankful, my dear, that rash riding is the worst ‘bachelor habit’ that you will ever discover in your husband. except perhaps smoking. geoffrey does smoke rather too much, i think. don’t think me impertinent—though i have no boys at home now, i take a great interest in young men, and for years geoffrey has been like one of our own. as to riding yourself you are very wise to have given it up, my dear. the girls don’t understand, you see. of course, poor dears, it would not occur to them, or they would not have teased you so. but you are very wise, my dear, very wise indeed to run no risk—not that it might not perhaps do no harm, but it is better not, much better,” she repeated, with sundry grandmotherly nods expressive of the utmost sagacity.
marion looked up with extreme mystification.
“i don’t quite understand you, lady anne,” she said. “i am not the least nervous about riding, or afraid of its doing me harm in any way. last year it did me a great deal of good. it is only that just lately i haven’t felt quite in spirits for it.”
“of course not, my dear. it is quite natural you should not feel so. you must not mind me, my dear, but look upon me in the light of a mother. if i can be of use to you in any way you must not hesitate to ask me. it will be quite a pleasure in a year or two to see little people trotting about the manor farm—it will brighten up the old place, and geoffrey is so fond of children.”
marion’s face flushed. now she understood the good lady’s mysterious allusions. considerably annoyed, and yet anxious to conceal that she felt so, she replied rather stiffly: “you are very kind, lady anne, but i assure you you are quite mistaken. there is no reason of the kind for my giving up riding.”
lady anne looked incredulous, and before marion felt sure that she had succeeded in convincing her of the truth of what she had said, their tête-à-tête was interrupted.
but it had given a new turn to marion’s thoughts. never before in the few unhappy months of her married life had it occurred to her to think of the possibility of her at some future time occupying a new relation, the sweetest, the tenderest of all—that of a mother. and to geoffrey’s children! poor geoffrey, he was “so fond of children,” lady anne said. the few simple words softened her to him marvellously. she began to wonder if such a tie might perhaps draw them together, if little arms and innocent baby lips might have power to achieve what at present seemed a hopeless task. or was it already too late? she did not blame him; in her gentle, womanly mood she blamed no one but herself. it was her own doing; if indeed, as she feared, it was the case, that her husband no longer loved her. these reflections engrossed her during the quiet afternoon, which otherwise she might have found dull and wearisome. she felt surprised when the servant appeared with afternoon tea, and lady anne, waking from her peaceful slumber in her arm-chair, began to remark how suddenly it had got dark, and to wonder why the riding party had not yet returned.
“captain ferndale will be arriving immediately,” she said, “and it will look so awkward if georgie is not at home.”
marion looked out. dark, as yet, it was hardly, but dusk decidedly. much such an afternoon as the one on which, now more than a year ago, geoffrey had first ventured to tell her of his feelings towards her, which confession she had so ungraciously received.
“why did i not keep to what i said then?” she asked herself. “how much better for both of us had i done so! poor geoffrey, he thought me cruel then, how much more reason has he to reproach me now!”
she was recalled to the present by lady anne’s voice.
“do you see anything of them, my dear?” she asked.
“no,” said marion, listeningly. but almost as she spoke the faint, far-off clatter of approaching horses’ feet became audible. “there they are,” she exclaimed, and a certain feeling of welcome stole into her heart. somehow she felt anxious to be “good” to geoffrey; to make up to him, for the morning’s hard, sneering words. with which wish she ran out into the hall to receive her husband and the two girls. they were dismounting as she reached the door. outside it looked foggy and chilly. she could not clearly distinguish either horses or riders.
“you are rather late,” she exclaimed. “isn’t it very cold? how has coquette been behaving?”
it was georgie’s voice that replied.
“oh, is that you, marion? we’ve had such a gallop home. the fog came on so suddenly. geoffrey is back, of course?”
“geoffrey!” said marion in surprise. “why should he be back before you? no, he has not come. i was asking you how his new purchase had been behaving.”
“she’s a vixen,” replied georgie; if i were a gentleman i would call her something worse. prince and she teazed each other so, that we separated. geoffrey said he would come home by the fields and take it out of her. we came home by the road; but it is ever so long ago since we separated, and he said he would be home long before us. what can he be about?”
a strange sensation crept over marion. hardly anxiety, hardly apprehension. rather a sort of standing still of her whole being with sudden awe, sudden terror of what for the first time darted into her imagination as the possible end of the whole, the solution of the problem of her life-mistake. like a picture she saw it all before her as if by magic. there been an accident; geoffrey was killed! she, his wife no longer, but freed by this awful cutting of the knot from the bonds which had galled her so sorely, against which she had murmured so ceaselessly. but was it a feeling of relief which accompanied the vision, which for the moment she believed to be prophetic? was it not rather a sensation compared to which all her past sufferings seemed trivial and childish—a draught of that bitterest of cups of which it is given to us poor mortals to drink, unavailing, “too late,” self-reproach? if geoffrey were dead, it seemed to her, his wife, standing there and remembering all, that she and she alone, had killed him. she said not a word. in perfect silence she watched margaret and georgie gather up their long muddy skirts and hasten across the hall, peeping in as they passed the open door of the morning-room to reassure their mother’s anxiety. she followed them mechanically; heard, as if in a dream, lady anne’s exclamations of concern on hearing that mr. baldwin was not with them; and while the good lady trotted off to share her motherly uneasiness with the squire, at this time of day always ensconced in his private den, marion crept upstairs to the room in which but a few hours before she had carelessly thrown off her hat and hurried below to risk no chance of a tête-à-tête with her husband! her evening dress lay on the bed—through the open door into the dressing-room she saw by the firelight geoffrey’s as yet unopened portmanteau. she shuddered as it caught her eye. would he ever open it again? would she ever again hear his voice, see his stalwart figure and fair sunny face? or how might she not see him? would they bring him home pale and stiff, stretched out in that long, dreadful way she had once or twice in her london life seen a something that had been a man, carried by to the hospital after some fatal accident? or, worse still, would his fair hair perhaps be dabbled with blood, his blue eyes distorted with agony, his beautiful face all crushed and disfigured?
ah! it was too horrible.
“forgive me, dear geoffrey, forgive me,” she said in her remorse, as if her words could reach him. “oh, god, forgive me for my wickedness, and do not punish me so fearfully. for how can i live, how endure the light of day with the remembrance of what i have done?”
crouched by the fire, she remained thus for some time. then hearing a slight bustle down-stairs in the hall, she rose and went out into the vestibule, looking over the staircase to see what was taking place below. it was an arrival, but not geoffrey. captain ferndale evidently. she saw little georgie fly across the hall, followed more deliberately by margaret and her mother.
how happy they all seemed! had they forgotten all about her, and geoffrey, out in the fog, alive or dead, nobody seemed to care! but she wronged them. captain ferndale was hardly welcomed, before they all began telling him of their anxiety.
“papa has sent out men in all directions,” said georgie, “i am perfectly certain something must have happened. the horse he was on is a most vicious creature. i was frightened out of my wits when he was riding beside me, though of course i didn’t say so to poor marion, mrs. baldwin, you know, fred. by-the-by, maggie, where is she?”
“in her room, i think,” said margaret. “i’ll go and see. we have put back dinner half-an-hour in hopes geoffrey may come back safe and sound by then. but i confess i am very uneasy.”
marion stole back to her room, and was sitting there quietly when in a minute or two margaret joined her.
“geoffrey has not come in yet,” said the girl cheerfully as she entered, “but we are not surprised. it is so foggy, fred. ferndale says he had hard work to get here from the station.”
marion did not answer. margaret put her arm round her affectionately; but marion shrank back, and margaret felt a little chilled.
“you are not uneasy, mrs. baldwin?” she said kindly, but a little more stiffly than her wont. “you know your husband is so perfectly to be depended on as a rider. he is sure to be all right.”
marion looked up at her appealingly.
“don’t think me cross or cold, margaret, and don’t call me mrs. baldwin. i am very unhappy.”
the expression was a curious one. “very uneasy;” “dreadfully alarmed,” or some such phrase, would have seemed more suited to the circumstances. margaret copley felt puzzled. after all there was something very peculiar about marion baldwin; she could not make her out. there she sat staring into the fire, pale but perfectly calm. not a tear, not a symptom of nervousness; only saying in that quiet, deliberate way that she was “very unhappy.” margaret was too young, too inexperienced, and too practically ignorant of sorrow to detect the undertone of anguish, of bitter, remorseful misery in the few cold words—“i am very unhappy.”
marion said no more, and margaret did not disturb her. at last the dinner gong sounded. marion started: she had not changed her dress.
“never mind,” said margaret, “come down as you are. unless you would prefer staying up here.”
“oh, no,” said marion, “i shall dress very quickly. i shall be ready in five minutes.”
she had a morbid horror of appearing affected or exaggerated; and an instinctive determination to keep her feelings to herself. naturally, she made the mistake of overdoing her part.
she dressed quickly, went downstairs and sat through the long, weary dinner; to all appearance the calmest and least uneasy of the party. one after another of the grooms and gardeners, despatched with lanterns in various directions to seek the truant, returned after a fruitless search.
the squire grew more and more fidgety. lady anne was all but in tears—margaret and georgie unable to eat any dinner. marion seemed to herself to be standing on the edge of a fearful precipice, down which she dared not look; but she said nothing, and no stranger entering the company would have imagined that she, of all the party, was the one most chiefly concerned in the fate of geoffrey baldwin.
dinner over, the ladies mechanically adjourned as usual to the drawing-room. lady anne and margaret sat together by the fire, talking in a low voice. marion stayed near them for a moment, but lady anne’s sort of sick-room tone and half-pitying glances in her direction, irritated her. so she got a book, and seated herself by a little reading-table in the further corner of the room. georgie ran in and out: every five minutes braving the cold and fog at the hall-door to peep out to see, or hear rather, “if any one was coming,” like sister anne in the grim old story.
for more than half-an-hour they sat thus in almost unbroken silence. the squire and captain ferndale, with the usual manly horror of an impending “scene,” lingered longer than usual in the dining-room.
suddenly georgie darting back from one of her voyages of discovery to the hall-door, flew into the drawing-room exclaiming excitedly.
“mamma, maggie, i hear a horse!”
in an instant they all jumped up, and followed her into the hall. the door was wide open, the horse’s feet were heard plainly, steadily approaching, nearer and nearer.
marion remained in the drawing-room, only creeping close to the doorway, whence she could both hear and see all that took place.
“i do hope it is all right,” said lady anne, earnestly. “girls, fred,” (for by this time the gentlemen had joined them,) “do you think it is he?”
how could they tell, poor people? they only strained their eyes, vainly endeavouring to pierce the darkness, thick enough, as the country folks say, to be cut with a knife. a few servants’ heads appeared at the doors leading to the back regions; without which, of course, no domestic event can take place with correct decorum. the scene was really an effective one! the horse’s feet coming nearer and, nearer, the little group in the old oak-wainscoted hall, the pale face of the poor girl peeping out from the drawing-room doorway, thinking and feeling so much that none of those about her had the slightest conception of! what was to be the end of it? what was she about to hear? five minutes more suspense, it seemed to her she could not have endured.
there is but a step, according to a well-known adage, between the sublime and the ridiculous. thus almost could marion have expressed her feelings, when, as at last the horse drew near enough, for the rider to distinguish the anxious faces at the door, a voice out of the darkness reached them. it was geoffrey’s. loud and cheery it sounded.
“here i am, safe and sound! a nice adventure i’ve had. imagine me, brentshire born and bred, having lost my way in this horrible fog.”
“oh, i am so glad you’re all right,” cried georgie, clapping her hands.
and “we’ve been so frightened about you,” chimed in margaret and her mother.
the squire too, and captain ferndale were most hearty in their congratulations. likewise several members of the servants’ hall, and a few grooms and stable-boys who started up as if by magic, to lead away the naughty coquette who stood there in the fog humble and subdued enough, with but small traces of the mischievous spirit which had distinguished her departure some seven hours previously.
for the moment mr. baldwin was made quite a hero of, as he stood in the midst of the group, damp and muddy, but his fair face flushed and eager, as he related all that had fallen him and the beauty that had led him such a dance. everyone was intensely relieved at the comfortably commonplace end to the adventure which had caused so much anxiety: everyone was most sincere and hearty in their congratulations. all but one. the voice which alone he cared to hear was silent. he looked round eagerly and enquiringly.
“my wife, marion,” he said, “is still here? i had better go to tell her i am all right.”
“oh, yes,” said margaret, rather awkwardly, “i will go and tell her; but we have not let her know how uneasy we have been. she has not therefore been alarmed.”
“thank you,” said geoffrey. but on his heart the girl’s words fell with a strange chill. “she had not been alarmed,” this wife of his. it had been then so easy to prevent her feeling anxiety about him, that even this girl, a stranger almost to her, felt instinctively that the extreme coolness of the young wife at such a time, called loudly for some sort of excuse, some palliation of what to those about her had evidently looked very like utter heartlessness and indifference to his fate.
“if only they knew the whole,” he said to himself, “they would not wonder at her unnatural behaviour. ‘alarmed’ about me! no indeed! the saddest sight that can meet her eyes will be my returning alive and well.” and with this bitterness in his heart, he followed margaret to the drawing-room in quest of marion.
what evil spirit of pride and unlovely perversity had been whispering to her? and why, oh! why had she listened to its voice, wilfully stifling the pleadings of her gentle woman’s heart, and deliberately destroying what might have been the happy, softening influences of the day’s occurrences? much doubtless of the miserable state of things between these two, bound together by the closest, most sacred of ties, they—she—was not to be blamed for. “circumstances”—the only name we, in our ignorance, can find for the mysterious combinations which destroy the lives of so many—“circumstances” in great part, were the scape-goat in the case of the great mistake of marion’s life. she had meant to do right, poor child, and had tried her best to execute her intention. terrible mistakes we are all apt to make, the wisest of us perhaps more than the humbler and less confident. but for such, though the temporal punishment is often disproportionately heavy, in higher tribunals we are leniently judged. not so with deliberate acts of cruelty and unkindness to each other, such as marion baldwin was this evening guilty of.
she knew what she was about; she knew, though possibly she would not have owned it to herself, that she wished to wound geoffrey, deliberately meant and intended to punish for some offence towards herself which she would have found it difficult to define, the heart whose only blame, if blame it were, was its too great devotion to her.
she was angry with herself for having been frightened about him, mortified, though yet her relief was real, at the matter-of-fact conclusion of what she had been picturing to herself as a crisis in her fate. so, after the manner of people when angry with themselves, she did her best to make another as unhappy as herself.
when geoffrey entered the drawing-room, and margaret copley with instinctive delicacy withdrew, he did not at first perceive that his wife was present. in another moment, however, he caught sight of her, seated at the little table in the furthest corner of the room, apparently engrossed in a book. his heart throbbed with disappointment, wounded feeling, and even some mixture of indignation; but he controlled himself, and determined to give her a chance.
“marion,” he said, “i am going to take off my wet things, but i have just looked in to tell you i am all right. you heard me come just now, i suppose? lady anne and all the others were at the door to meet me. i’m afraid i have given you all a very uncomfortable evening, but it was coquette’s fault, not mine. however, all’s well that ends well, and i flatter myself the beauty has had a lesson that she won’t forget in a hurry.”
he went on speaking in a half nervous manner, for marion did not appear at first to hear him. when he left off she raised her eyes from her book, and said, in the provokingly indifferent, half-awake tone of a person still engrossed in the pages from which the attention is hardly withdrawn:
“i beg your pardon, geoffrey. i did not hear you come into the room. was it i you were speaking to? yes, i heard your horse come up to the door. what a fuss lady anne gets into for nothing at all! hadn’t you better go and change your things?”
and without giving him time to reply, her eyes were again bent on her book. geoffrey looked at her for a moment without speaking. she felt his gaze fixed on her, she felt, though he could not see, the expression of his face. almost she felt inclined to spring up and run towards him to ask his forgiveness, to tell him of the anxiety she had endured, the genuine relief she had experienced when she heard of his safe return.
“but he would not believe you,” whispered the evil spirit she had been listening to. “why lower yourself thus unnecessarily to one who no longer cares for you?”
and marion gave heed to the specious suggestion, and the opportunity faded away into the mournful crowd of things that might have been—good deeds never done, loving words never spoken.
the remainder of their visit at copley wood passed quietly and uneventfully, but marion was glad when it came to an end. she felt that she had fallen back in her friends’ good opinion; evidently they too thought her heartless and disagreeable, cold and selfish, reserved to an unwomanly degree.
all these epithets she piled on herself. in reality, the copleys, margaret especially, thought of her much more kindly than she imagined. they did not, could not, indeed, understand her; few things are more hopeless than any approach to mutual comprehension between the happy and the miserable. the happy, that is to say in the sense in which these inexperienced girls may be called so, happy in utter unconsciousness of the reverse of the picture, thoughtless in the innocent war in which birds and lambs and flowers are thoughtless. but still they were gentle judging, and what in marion’s character and behaviour they could not understand, they pitied and treated tenderly.
the depth of feeling in the few words geoffrey’s wife had addressed to margaret that evening by the fire, “i am very unhappy,” rang in the young girl’s ears, and emboldened her to speak kindly in her defence, when, as was often the case (for in country society people must talk about their neighbours or else be altogether silent), young mrs. baldwin’s peculiarities were discussed, and that, not in the most amiable of terms.
from this time geoffrey and his wife lived yet more independently of each other than before. one improvement took place in their relations; though after all i hardly know that it merits to be thus described. there was an end henceforth of all stormy scenes between them. so much marion had resolved upon; coldness and mutual indifference were evidently to be the order of their lives. let it be so, she decided, it was to the full as much geoffrey’s doing as hers. but at least she would show herself his equal in the tacit compact: she would not again lower herself by losing her temper and condescending to such aggressive weapons as sarcasm or recrimination. to the letter of the law, she determined in her pride, she would do her duty by him, so that in after days come what might, she need never reproach herself with any short-coming on her side; and geoffrey for his part, if she should be so fortunate as die and leave him free to choose a more congenial help-meet, might at least remember her with respect, if with no warmer feeling. foolish, presumptuous child! in the terrible “too late” days—of which the slight experience she had had the evening of geoffrey’s misadventure in the fog had profited her so little—in those days “the letter of the law,” fulfilled as no fallible mortal yet fulfilled it, would bring with its remembrance sorry comfort. very “husks that the swine do eat,” nay worse, mocking, gibbering fiends to torment us, are in those days the memories of “duties,” proudly and perfectly but unlovingly performed; acts of obedience, submission, self-denial even, however outwardly flaw-less, without the spirit which alone gives them value.
doubtless we all fall short in our relations taken to each other. never yet was the coffin lid closed on the dead face of a human being, but what in the hearts of those who had taken their last look, pressed their last kiss on the pale forehead—it might be the smooth, fair brow of a child, it might be the withered, furrowed face of a world-weary man or woman—there rose reproachful, sad-eyed ghosts of things they might have done for the dead, or, more grievous still, others they would now give much to have left undone.
but it is not at such times the thought of sharp, hasty words repented of as soon as spoken, or of unkind deeds done in the heat of passion and in saner moments atoned for with all the earnestness we can command; it is not the recollection of such things as these that stings us the most deeply. far more terrible and overwhelming, when we gaze on the dead face in its silent reproach, is the memory of deliberate unkindness—the long course of studied, repellent coldness; wrongs fancied or real, cherished and brooded over instead of forgiven and forgotten; duties even, performed, while yet love was withheld.
