“one law holds ever good,
that nothing comes to life of man on earth
unscathed throughout by woe.”
plumptre’s sophocles.
she had thought the worst over, but it hardly proved to be so. he lay, indeed, peaceful and calm, her own geoffrey again, restored to himself in mind and spirit, no longer tossed by the anguish of delirium, or deadened by unrefreshing stupor. but he did not gain strength. from day to day no progress was made. dr. hamley was nonplussed.
“he doesn’t seem to wish to get better,” he said to marion. “i can’t understand it. i have tried every argument to rouse him, but he only says he is perfectly comfortable, and begs to be left undisturbed. i have told him if he goes on like this he will never get well, but he doesn’t seem to care. he smiles and thanks me with that sweet voice of his till i feel ready to shake him.”
and marion at last began to lose heart.
one evening—it was growing late, geoffrey was already settled for the night—she sat alone in the little parlour, very weary and very sad, when her glance fell on her husband’s old bible, lying on the side table. it was the one they had always used at family prayers, in the days when they were the centre of a household, and it had accompanied them to millington, but during the last few weeks, spent principally in geoffrey’s bedroom, it had not been opened. half mechanically now marion drew it towards her, and opened it at one of her favourite chapters, some few verses of which, sweet words of comfort and support, she read with silent, but not the less fervent appreciation. as she lifted the book to replace it, a letter fell out. she started and shivered as the superscription met her eyes. “to be read by my widow when all is over with me.” and in the corner the initials, “g. b.,” and the date, “june 14th,” the eve of the day on which geoffrey had been taken ill.
after a moment’s consideration she deliberately broke the seal, drew forth and read the paper it contained.
it was letter, addressed to herself, and ran as follows:—
“my dearest wife,
“i feel that i am going to be very ill, and i have a strong belief that i shall not recover from the illness which is coming upon me. i have felt it coming on for some time, but i had hoped to keep up a little longer till i had been able to make better arrangements for your comfort. what i could, i have done. within the last day or two i have received the two thousand pounds due to you as creditor, by the old bank. i have made it over to the care of mr. framley vere. he will, i trust, prove a better trustee than i did, my poor child. some other matters i have also explained to him—as to the guardianship of our little daughter, &c. i have also for some time past had a promise from veronica, that so long as you require it, the shelter of her home shall be open to you. i think you will be happy with her for a time. she wishes to have you and the baby with her very much. but it is not so much about these matters i wish to write to you. it is about yourself, my own darling! you have been the dearest and best of wives to me. you pained me once, terribly, how terribly i trust you may never know, but it was not your fault. i had brought it on myself by my own selfishness, my headstrong, presumptuous determination to have you for my own at all costs. but that pain is past. your devotion to me of late has more than effaced what indeed i never blamed you for. i think god that i am not to be a life-long burden to you, generous, unselfish woman that you are. for, my dearest, you must not from any mistaken regard to my memory, any morbid wish to atone for the pain you could not help once causing me, refrain from accepting the happiness which, sooner or later, will, i feel sure, be yours to take or refuse. his name i do not know. i know indeed nothing but what you yourself told me. i have never sought to know more. but long ago you told me he was good and noble, otherwise, indeed, how could one so pure and sweet as you have given him your heart? i gathered, too, that he was rich, and of good position, socially; so there will be no outward difficulties in the way. i have, too, an instinctive belief that he has been constant to you. once, indeed, you said as much yourself to me. quite lately some words of yours dropped half unconsciously—i think it was the day we dined at the baxters’; you were sitting by the fire late that evening on our return, and you did not know i was in the room—gave me to understand that he had not married any one else. (i am getting so tired, i can hardly hold my pen.) i had meant to say a great deal more. but i can sum it up in a few words. show that you forgive me, dearest, for the cloud i have brought over your life, by being happy in the future, as but for me you would have been long before this. for your goodness to me, your great and tender pity, the devotion all the more wonderful because of its utter unselfishness—for all you have given me, all you have been to me, for so much affection as you could give me, i would thank you if i had words to do so. i cannot express half i feel, my own love, my darling! i am not sorry to die young, for, my dearest, there was one thing you could not give me, and without it i own to you the thought of life—long years of fruitless longing on my side, of almost superhuman effort on yours to make up for what could not be made up for is less attractive to me than that of death. you will always, i know, think tenderly of me. when all is over with me, no bitterness will mingle with your remembrance of me.
“yours most devotedly,
“geoffrey.”
she read every word of it without moving. when she had finished it, she folded it reverentially and replaced it in the envelope. then she sank on the ground beside the chair on which she had been sitting, and hiding her face in her hands, knelt there in perfect silence for a long time.
the night was far advanced when at length she crept upstairs to her husband’s room. by the faint night-light she saw that he was lying perfectly still, his eyes closed. she thought he was asleep.
in a few minutes he moved slightly.
“marion,” he said, “is that you?”
“yes,” she answered softly. “i thought you were asleep.”
“is it not very late for you to be up?” he asked. “i won’t keep you, but i want to say one thing to you which has been troubling me. when i was at the worst, marion, delirious, i mean, did i not speak about a letter? it was one i wrote the night before i was taken ill, and i cannot remember where i put it. i should not like it to be lost, and yet i am afraid it would vex you, startle you, if you found it just now. if only i could get up and look for it!”
“you need not wish that, geoffrey,” she said in a very low voice. “i have found the letter. it slipped out of your big bible that lies on the table downstairs.”
he started. “you have found it?” he repeated.
“yes, found it, and—don’t blame me, geoffrey—i have read it.”
“when?” he asked.
“this very evening. an hour or two ago.”
there was a dead silence for some minutes.
then the wife bent over her husband. she wound her arms round his neck, she buried her face in his breast, so that he could not see the tears that rushed at last to her eyes, could scarcely hear the words, the pleading, earnest words that rose to her lips.
“geoffrey,” she said, “my own geoffrey. i have read the letter. it is generous and beautiful and unselfish. it is like you. but for all that, don’t you see, don’t you feel, geoffrey, it is all a mistake?”
“yes,” she replied; “a mistake. it was all true that i told you, of course. true that i loved that other with a girl’s passionate first love, and i suffered fearfully that day—soon after we were married, geoffrey, before i had learnt to know you—when i met him, and the sight of his face, the sound of his voice, most of all my agony of pity for his terrible sorrow, revived it all for the time. not merely for the time in one sense; for i shall always honour and care for him, love him even, with the sort of tender, reverential love we give to the dead; but it is all different from now, that love is softened and sacred, and as if—yes, that is the only way i can say it—as if he had long been dead. but you, geoffrey, you are my own dear living husband, the father of my little child, the dear geoffrey that has suffered so, and been so brave and patient. you need me. geoffrey. i belong to you as i never did to him. and i need you. we have grown into each other’s lives and beings, and we can’t be separated. if you die and leave me, i can’t stay behind. not even for baby. oh, say you won’t die. don’t, don’t say you want to leave me.”
“want to leave you?” he repeated in a broken voice. “my darling, my darling, if this wonderful thing you tell me is true, how could i ever want to leave you? how can i ever find words to tell you the wonderful perfection of happiness you have brought me? but is it true? you would not, you could not deceive me, marion, lying here, till five minutes ago believing myself a dying man. before god tell me, marion, my wife, it is not out of pity you have spoken thus to me—not out of pity you have told me that you love me?”
he raised her head so that he could see the expression of her face, the truth and earnestness in her clear deep eyes.
“it is true, geoffrey,” she said solemnly. “it is thoroughly and utterly true. no pity could have made me say what i have said just now. it is no new thing this love of mine for you. long, long ago i felt it growing, quietly and steadily and firmly. only then i thought it had come too late. my worst sufferings at the manor farm were when i thought this.”
he said no more; he was perfectly satisfied. he kissed her brow, her mouth, her eyes, as if to seal the blessedness of his new found joy. then he lay back, and closed his eyes, for he was weak still, weak almost as an infant. and the sun, when it rose that morning above the smoke and heavy, dusty air surrounding the great city, might have seen one pleasant sight, the sweet sleeping face of geoffrey baldwin, a man to whom, after bitter disappointment and sore trouble, manfully met and patiently borne, god in his goodness had sent new life and little looked-for happiness.
from this time forth, as might have been expected, geoffrey made steady progress towards recovery. it was still, of course, but slow work; there were days on which both he and marion felt sadly disheartened, but dr. hamley kept up their spirits by assuring them that all was going on well; as well, that is to say, as could be expected after so serious, so nearly fatal an illness.
and at last they grew satisfied that his opinion was correct, for by the end of august geoffrey was going about again, and beginning to speak of ere long resuming his daily duties; for thanks to the representations of that monster in human form, the worthy mr. allen, mr. baldwin’s situation in the counting-house of messrs. baxter bros. had been kept open for him.
but there was a great hole made in the three hundred pounds of ready money they had been hoping by this time to furnish a little house with!
on one point marion was resolute. before geoffrey should “dare to allude to such a thing as going back to business,” he must have a little change of air. to which he offered no great objection provided she would go with him. “she,” of course, including baby mary and her nurse. so to sandbeach they went for a week, thereby making a still greater hole in the little nest-egg, but enjoying themselves amazingly nevertheless.
back again at millington, there was no help for it. geoffrey must no longer delay presenting himself at mr. baxter’s office, and resuming the weary jog-trot of his uncongenial duties. but it was with a lighter heart than ever he had dared to hope for, that the young man paced the long stretch of dirty pavement, which in the last fifteen months had grown so familiar to him.
marion was watching anxiously for his re-turn.
“you are not very tired, geoffrey?” she asked, as she met him at the door.
“oh no,” he replied cheerfully. “i’ve got on very well, and i did eat some luncheon, marion, i did, indeed. they were very kind and cordial to me down there, old baxter and the rest, hoping i was all right again, and all that sort of thing.”
later in the evening, as they were sitting together quietly, geoffrey resting on the sofa, he suddenly exclaimed, “by-the-by, marion, i heard rather a queer thing to-day. last week while we were at sandbeach it appears we had a visitor.”
“a visitor?” she repeated. “what do you mean?”
“well, not a visitor exactly. he didn’t come to this house; but somebody, a gentleman, called at the office and asked if i was there. they told him of my illness, so he asked to see old baxter, and made particular enquiries about me. how long i had been ill, and i don’t know all what. he didn’t leave his name, at least if he did baxter won’t tell it; but the clerks say they are sure he was what they call a ‘swell.’ (don’t scold me, marion, i'm not talking slang.) i should never have heard of it, but through one of them who saw him come in, and overheard my name. old baxter was uncommonly civil to him, they say; showed him out himself, and was fearfully obsequious. i wish the sight of my grand friend, if he is a friend of mine, would make the old screw raise my salary, i know! but there's no chance of any such luck. i shall never get on in millington i fear, marion. i can’t understand their ways. i can keep books and so on well enough. i’ve had to do with farm books all my life; but it’s quite a different sort of thing.”
“poor geoffrey,” she said, sympathisingly. “but it will never do for you to get low-spirited the very first day you’re back at your work. let us talk of something else. who can this gentleman have been. what was he like?”
“not tall, they said,” answered her husband. “about the middle size and slight. not good-looking, but gentlemanlike; very dark, and black hair, rather grey for his age, for they say he didn’t look much over thirty. i can think of no one i know answering this description, who would be likely to be enquiring after me. can you?”
“i don’t know,” said marion, rather dreamily, but any one more observant than geoffrey would have thought that for a woman she manifested singularly little curiosity about the mysterious unknown.
“black hair, rather grey for his age,” she murmured softly to herself more than once that evening. “it had not a thread of silver when i knew it.”
a week later came one morning a letter for geoffrey which, arriving after he had left for business, excited, not a little, marion’s curiosity during the day. it was addressed in a somewhat stiff, old-fashioned hand, and its postmark was mallingford. she had more than half a mind to open it, fearful of the effect of possible bad news coming suddenly on her husband; but ended by not doing so. afterwards she was very glad she had left it for geoffrey to read first himself.
it was from old squire copley, containing a formal offer to mr. baldwin from lord brackley, of his brentshire agency, unexpectedly made vacant by the death of the last holder some six weeks before!
“i need hardly, my dear fellow,” wrote the squire, “urge your acceptance of this offer. it is a capital good thing of its kind, the income, one way and another, very little short of a thousand a year, inclusive of course of the house, a sweet pretty place for a young couple as one would wish to see. brackley has been down here himself for a week or two, looking into things a bit, and when he told me you had been recommended to him for the post, and that he was entertaining the idea, i was as pleased, i assure you, as if you had been a son of my own. ‘the very man for the place,’ said i. and so say one and all hereabouts, my boy. lady anne and maggie—georgie’s in india, you know—will be only too delighted to welcome you and your wife and the little one i heard of if i’m not mistaken, back to your old neighbourhood. and i’m not afraid that you will break your hearts at having to leave millington, for you’re brentshire born and bred, and so in a sense is your wife.”
then followed a little local gossip, to which, however, it was hardly to be expected that geoffrey or his wife could at this moment pay much attention.
they looked at each other with tears in their eyes, but sunshine in their hearts.
“oh, geoffrey, how thankful i am!” she exclaimed. “now you will have a chance of getting like your old self again. now i need not feel anxious about you any more. how happy, how very happy we shall be.”
“my darling,” he replied, drawing her towards him, “will you really be happy in a pretty country home of your own with a stupid old ploughman like me? squire copley is right, it is a dear little place, the house where we shall live. much prettier than the manor farm, though not so large. but i am not sorry to begin our new life in a new house. you had plenty of sorrow in the old one, my dearest. heaven grant you may have little in your new home! none at least of my causing.”
“and only think how delightful it will be to have a garden for mary to play in when she begins to toddle about by herself,” exclaimed marion.
“and a home to welcome poor harry to at christmas,” added geoffrey.
truly there were few, if any, happier people that night in the world, than mrs. appleby’s two young lodgers!
late in october that year there came a sort of indian summer. a week or two of inexpressible beauty, tinged with a certain mellow tenderness, a sort of pensive echo of the summer glories past and gone, peculiar to this lovely “été de saint martin,” of which we so seldom see anything in our part of the world.
it was just at this time that the baldwins, after a week or two spent at mallingford with veronica temple, took up their quarters in their new home. a pretty, cosy nest of a place as it was, it could hardly have been seen to greater advantage than on the day on which marion first entered it as its mistress.
“you are pleased with it, dear?” asked geoffrey, and the look with which she answered him said far more than words.
“i have been rather puzzled by something i heard to day,” geoffrey went on after a moment’s pause. “i was speaking to our clergyman, mr. brace, you know, whom i happened to meet in the village. he was congratulating me on our return. ‘yes,’ he said to me, ‘it is the very thing for you, baldwin. sir ralph severn could not have given you a better proof of his friendship than by recommending you to his uncle for the post.’ i felt exceedingly amazed at this, marion, but i said nothing to mr. bruce. i thought i would first tell you about it. is it not strange that sir ralph severn, whom to my knowledge i have seen in my life, whom i hardly know by name, should have recommended me to lord brackley? and it must be the case, for bruce evidently had heard it from lord brackley, and i know he is not the sort of man to mention a thing without foundation. is it not very strange? surely there can have been no mistake about it!” and poor geoffrey looked perplexed and distressed.
marion’s heart beat a little faster, but she felt that the right time had come.
“no, dear geoffrey,” she said gently, “there is no mistake. i have suspected this before. i guessed who the stranger was that called at mr. baxter’s and enquired all about you and your circumstances. i recognized him from what you told me of his personal appearance. it was he that got you lord brackley’s offer. don’t you know now, geoffrey? can’t you guess who sir ralph severn is, and why he did this?”
for a moment geoffrey sat silent, still with the look of bewilderment and anxiety. then a sudden light broke over his face.
“yes,” he said. “yes, i see. i see it all. and from the bottom of my heart i thank him for his goodness, and i pray god to bless him. but marion, my dearest, my own darling,” and as he spoke he drew her towards him and looked with the tender trust of happy love into the clear sweet eyes that met his gaze, “i could not—generous and noble as he is—i could not have said what i have, could not have felt as i do, but for the remembrance of the sweetest hour of my life, the night when you found the letter, and told me, my darling, that i need not die—that you had learnt to love me.”
marion hid her face in her husband’s breast and felt that she was at rest and happy. but tears rose gently to her eyes, as there flashed across her mind the remembrance of her dream.
“dear, i look from my hiding-place,
are you still so fair?— have you still the eyes?
be happy.”
