by Ellen Wood
He nodded. “Until Adam’s death, I was not Sir Karl, you see. The day you came with her from Basham, and they told her the fly waiting at the station was for Lady Andinnian, she was stricken with terror, believing they meant herself.”
“Oh, if I had known all this time!” bewailed Lucy. “Stuck up here in my false pride and folly, instead of helping you to shield them and to lighten their burthen! I cannot hope that you will ever quite forgive me in your heart, Karl.”
“Had it been as I supposed it was, I am not quite sure that I should. Not quite, Lucy, even to our old age. You took it up so harshly and selfishly, looking at it from my point of view, and resented it in so extraordinary a fashion, so bitter a spirit—”
“Oh don’t, don’t!” she pleaded, slipping down to his feet again in the depth of her remorse, the old sense of shame on her burning cheeks. “Won’t you be merciful to me? I have suffered much.”
“Why, my darling, you are mistaking me again,” he cried tenderly, as he once more raised her. “I said, ‘Looking at it from my point of view.’ Looking at it from yours, Lucy, I am amazed at your gentle forbearance. Few young wives would have been as good and patient as you.”
“Then do you really forgive me?” she asked, raising her eyes and her wet cheeks.
“Before I answer that, I think I must ask whether you forgive my having married you — now that you know all.”
“Oh, Karl!”
She fell upon his shoulder, her arms round his neck. Karl caught her face to his. He might take what kisses he chose from it again.
“Karl, would you please let me go to see her?” she whispered.
“See whom?” asked Karl, in rather a hard tone, his mind pretty full just then of Miss Blake.
“Poor Lady Andinnian.”
“Yes, if you will,” he softly said. “I think she would like it. But, my dear, you must call her ‘Mrs. Grey’ remember. Not only for safety, but that she would prefer it.”
They went over in the afternoon. Miss Blake, quite accidentally this time, for she was returning home quietly from confession at St. Jerome’s — and a wholesale catalogue of peccadilloes she must have been disclosing, one would say, by the length of the hearing — saw them enter. It puzzled her not a little. Sir Karl taking his wife there! What fresh ruse, what further deceit was he going to try? Oh but it was sinful! Worse than anything ever taken for Mr. Cattacomb’s absolution at St. Jerome’s.
Lucy behaved badly: without the slightest dignity whatever. The first thing she did was to burst out crying, and kiss Mrs. Grey’s hand: as if — it really seemed so to Mrs. Grey — she did not dare to offer to kiss her cheek. Very sad and pretty she looked in her widow’s mourning.
It was a sad interview: though in some respects a soothing and satisfactory one. Lucy explained, without entering into any details whatever, that she had not known who it was residing at the Maze, or she should have been over before, Karl and Sir Adam permitting her. Rose supposed that for safety’s sake Karl had deemed it well to keep the secret intact. And there the matter ended.
“You will come and stay with me at the Court before you leave,” pleaded Lucy.
Rose shook her head. “It is very kind of you to wish it, Lady Andinnian; very kind indeed under the circumstances; but it could not be. I shall not pass through these gates until I pass through them with Ann Hopley for good, That will be very soon.”
“At least, you will come and stay with us sometime in the future.”
“I think not Unless I should get a fever upon me to see the spot once more that contains my husband and child. In that case, I might trespass on you for a day or two if you would have me. Thank you very much, Lady Andinnian.”
“You will let me come over again before you leave?”
“Oh, I should be pleased — if Sir Karl has no objection. Thank you, Karl,” she added, holding out her hands to him, “thank you for all. You have been to us ever the most faithful friend and brother.”
The church bell at Foxwood was ringing for the late afternoon service as they quitted the Maze — for Mr. Sumnor, in spite of his discouragement and nonattendance, kept on the daily service. The ting-tang was sounding from St Jerome’s, and several damsels, who had come round by the Court to call for Miss Blake, were trooping past. Lucy bowed; Karl lifted his hat: he had ceased to care who saw him going in and out of the Maze gate now.
“Karl,” said Lucy, “I should like to go to prayers this evening. I shall take no harm: it is scarcely dusk yet.”
He turned to take her. Mr. Sumnor and the clerk were in the church; hardly anybody else — just as it had been that other evening when Lucy had crept in. Even Miss Diana was off to St. Jerome’s, in the wake of her flighty nieces. Lucy went on to her own pew this time.
Oh, what a contrast it was! — this evening and that. Now she was utterly still in her rapt thankfulness; then she had lain on the floor, her heart crying aloud to God in its agony. What could she do to show her gratitude to Him, who had turned the darkness into this radiant light? She could do nothing. Nothing, save strive to let her whole life be spent as a thankoffering. Karl noted her excessive stillness, her blinding tears; and he probably guessed her thoughts.
While he was talking with Mr. Sumnor after the service, Lucy went in to the vicarage. Margaret, lying in the dusk, for the room was only lighted by its bit of fire, could not see who had entered.
“Is it you, Martha?” she said, thinking it was her sister. “You are back early.”
“It is I — Lucy,” said Lady Andinnian. “Oh, Margaret, I was obliged to come to you just for a minute. Karl is outside, and we have been to church. I have something to tell.”
Margaret Sumnor put out both her hands in token of welcome. Instead of taking them, Lucy knelt by the reclining board, and brought her face close to her friend’s, and spoke in a hushed whisper.
“Margaret, I want to thank you, and I don’t know how. I have been thinking how impossible it will be for me ever to thank God: and it seems to be nearly as impossible ever to thank you. Do you remember what you once said to me, Margaret, about bearing and waiting? Well, but for you, I don’t think I could have borne or waited, even in the poor way I have; and — and—”
She broke down: sobs of emotion checked her utterance.
“Be calm, my dear,” said Margaret “You have come to tell me that the trouble is over.”
“Yes: God has ended it. And, Margaret, I never need have had a shade of it: I was on a wrong track all the while. I — I was led to think ill of my husband; I treated him worse than any one will ever know or would believe: while he was good and loyal to the core in all ways, and in the most bitter trouble the world can inflict. Oh, Margaret, had I been vindictive instead of patient — I might have caused the most dire injury and tribulation, and what would have been my condition now, my dreadful remorse through life] When the thought comes over me, I shiver as I did in that old ague fever.”
A fit of shivering took her actually. Miss Sumnor saw how the matter had laid hold upon her.
“Lucy, my dear, it seems to me that you may put away these thoughts now. God has been merciful and cleared it to you, you say; and you ought to be happy.”
“Oh, so merciful!” she sobbed. “So happy! But it might have been otherwise, and I cannot forget, or forgive myself.”
“Do you remember, Lucy, what I said? That some day when the cloud was removed your heart would go up with a bound of joyous thankfulness?”
“Yes. Because I did — and have done — as Margaret told me; and endured.”
The affair had indeed laid no slight hold of Lucy. She could not forget what might have been the result, and quite an exaggerated remorse set in.
A few nights afterwards Karl was startled out of his sleep by her. She had awakened, it appeared, in a state of terror, and had turned to him with a nervous grasp as of one who is drowning. Shaking, sobbing, moaning, she frightened her husband. He would have risen for a light, but she clung to him too tightly.
“But what
has alarmed you, Lucy? — what is it?” he reiterated.
“A dream, Karl; a dream,” she sobbed, in her bitter distress. “I am always thinking of it by day, but this time I dreamt it; and I awoke believing it was true.”
“Dreamt what?” he asked.
“I thought that cruel time was back again. I thought that I had not been quiet and patient, as Margaret enjoined, leaving vengeance to God, but had taken it into my own hands, and so had caused the Maze’s secret to be discovered. You and Adam had both died through it; and I was left all alone to my dreadful repentance, on some barren place surrounded by turbid water.”
“Lucy, you will assuredly make yourself ill.”
“But, oh Karl, if it had been true! If God had not saved me from it!”
CHAPTER XXIII.
Only a Man like other Men.
THEY stood together in the north parlour: Sir Karl Andinnian and Miss Blake. In the least severe terms he knew how to employ, Sir Karl was telling her of her abuse of his hospitality — the setting his wife against him — and intimating that her visit to them had better for the present terminate.
It took Miss Blake by surprise. She had remarked a difference in their behaviour to one another, in the past day or two. Lucy scarcely left Sir Karl alone a minute: she was with him in his parlour; she clung to his arm in unmistakable fondness in the garden; her eyes were for ever seeking his with a look of pleading, deprecating love. “They could not have been two greater simpletons in their honeymoon,” severely thought Miss Blake.
Something else had rather surprised her. Walking past the Maze on this same morning, she saw the gate propped open, and a notice, that the house was to let, erected on a board. The place was empty; the late tenants of it, the lady and her maid, had departed. Turning to ask Mr. Smith the meaning of this, she saw a similar board at his house: Mr. Smith was packing up, and Clematis Cottage was in the market.
“Good gracious! Are you going to leave us, Mr. Smith?” she asked, as that gentleman showed himself for a moment at the open window, with an armful of books and papers.
“Sorry to say that I am, madam. Business is calling me to London.”
“I hear that Mrs. Grey has left, too. What can have taken her away?”
“Don’t know,” said Mr. Smith. “Does not care to stop in the house, perhaps, after a death has taken place in it Servants must die as well as other people though.”
Without another word to her, he went to the back of the room with his load, and began stuffing it into a trunk with his one arm. Miss Blake summed up the conclusion in her mind.
“Sir Karl must have summarily dismissed him.”
Little did she foresee that Sir Karl was about, so to say, summarily to dismiss herself. On this same day it was that he sought the interview. When the past was touched upon by Karl, and her part in it, Miss Blake, for once in her life, showed signs that she had a temper, and her face turned white.
“You might have done me incalculable mischief, Miss Blake: mischief that could never be repaired in this world,” he said, standing to face her. “I do not allude to the estrangement that might have been caused between myself and my wife, but evil of a different nature. What could possibly have induced you to take up so outrageous a notion in regard to me?”
Miss Blake, in rather a shrill tone — for she was one of those unfortunate individuals whose voices grow harsh with annoyance — ventured upon a disparaging word of Mrs. Grey, but evaded the true question. Karl did not allow her to go on.
“That lady, madam,” he said, raising his hand with a kind of solemnity, “was good and pure, and honourable as is my own wife; and my dear wife knows it now. She was sacred to me as a sister. Her husband was my dear and long-tried friend; and he was for some months in great trouble and distress. I wished to do what I could to alleviate it: my visits there were paid to him,”
“But he was not living there,” rejoined Miss Blake, partly in hardy contest, partly in surprise.
“Indeed he was living there. He had his reasons for not wishing to make any acquaintance in the place, and so kept himself in retirement; reasons in which I fully acquiesced. However, his troubles are at an end now; and — and the family have ceased to be my tenants.”
Whether Miss Blake felt more angry or more vexed, she was not collected enough at the moment to know. It was a very annoying termination to her long and seemingly well-grounded suspicions. She always wished to do right, and had the grace to feel somewhat ashamed of the past.
“What I said to Lucy I believed I had perfectly good grounds for, Sir Karl. I had the interests of religion at heart when I spoke.”
“Religion!” repeated Sir Karl, his lips involuntarily curling. “Religion is as religion does, Miss Blake.”
“After all, she did not heed me; so, if it did no good, it did no harm. Lucy is so very weak-minded—”
“Weak-minded!” interposed Sir Karl. “If to act as she did — to bear patiently and make no stir under extreme provocation, trusting to the future to right the wrong — if this is to be weak-minded, why I thank God that she is so. Had she been strong-minded as you, Miss Blake, the result might have been terribly different.”
Miss Blake was nettled. Her manner froze.
“I see what it is, Sir Karl; you and your wife are so displeased with me that I feel my presence in your house is no longer welcome. As soon as I can make arrangements I will quit it — thanking you both for your hospitality.”
She paused. Sir Karl paused too. Perhaps she had a faint expectation that he would hasten to refute the decision, and request her to stay on. But he did nothing of the kind. On the contrary, he, in a word or two of politeness, acquiesced in the proposal of departure, as though it admitted of no question.
“I should not have trespassed on you so long — in fact, I should not have stayed at all after your first return here with Lady Andinnian, but for St. Jerome’s,” she rejoined, her temper getting up again, while there ran in her mind an undercurrent of thought, as to whether she could find suitable lodgings in Foxwood.
“You will not have to regret that, in leaving,” he observed. “I am about to do away with St. Jerome’s.”
“To do away with St Jerome’s!”
“In a week’s time from this it will be shut up, and all the nonsense within its walls cleared away.”
“The nonsense!” shrieked Miss Blake.
“Why you cannot call it sense — or religion either. To tell you the truth, Miss Blake, the place has been an offence to me for some time. It has caused a scandal—”
“For shame, Sir Karl Andinnian! Scandal, indeed!”
“And this little bit of fresh scandal that has arisen now, people don’t like at all,” quietly persisted Sir Karl. “Neither do I. So, to prevent the bishop coming down upon us here, Miss Blake, I close the place.”
Miss Blake compressed her lips. She could have struck him as he stood.
“What do you mean by a ‘fresh’ scandal, pray?”
“Well, the story runs that Mr. Cattacomb was seen to kiss one of the young ladies in the vestry.”
Miss Blake started, Miss Blake shrieked, Miss Blake wondered that the very ceiling did not drop down upon the bold false tongue. To do her justice, she believed St. Jerome’s pastor was by far too holy a man for any wickedness of the sort. Not to speak of restraining prudence.
“Sir Karl, may you be forgiven! Where do you expect to go to when you die?”
“To the heaven, I hope, that our merciful God has provided for us,” he answered, meeting the query solemnly and with some emotion. “Some of those dearer to me than life have gone on thither to wait for me.”
At which Miss Blake drew up her pious head, and intimated that she feared it might be another kind of place, unless he should mend his manners. And Sir Karl closed the interview, leaving her to understand that she had received her congé.
The circumstance to which he alluded was this. A day or two before, some prying boys, comrades of Tom Pepp’s, were about St. Je
rome’s as usual. For, ever since its establishment, the place had been quite a point of attraction to these young reptiles; and keep off they would not. On the morning in question, hovering around the vestry window and the walls generally, a slight inlet of view was discovered, in consequence of the blinds being accidentally drawn somewhat aside. Of course as many eyes were applied to the chink as could find space; and they had the pleasure of seeing the parson steal a kiss or two from the blushing cheek of Miss Jemima Moore. Rare nuts for the boys to crack! Before the day had closed, it was being talked of in Foxwood, and reached the ears of Miss Diana. She handed the case over to the doctor.
Down he went to St Jerome’s on the following morning, and caught Mr. Cattacomb alone in the vestry, just getting into his sheep-skin. Mr. Moore wasted no time in circumlocution or superfluous greeting.
“You were seen to kiss my daughter, yesterday, young man.”
To be pounced upon in this unprepared manner is enough to try the nerves of almost any hero; what must it have been then for a modest young clergyman, with a character for holiness, like Guy Cattacomb? He stammered and stuttered, and blushed to the very roots of his scanty hair. The tippet itself turned of a rosy hue.
“No equivocation, sir. Do you acknowledge it, or do you not?”
Gathering up his scared wits, and a modicum of courage, in the best way he could, the Reverend Guy virtually acknowledged it to be true. He added that he and Miss Jemima were seriously attached to each other; that he hoped sometime to win her for his wife; and that a sense of his utter want of means had alone prevented his speaking to the doctor.
“Now, look here,” said the surgeon, after a pause of consideration, perceiving from the young man’s earnest manner that this was the actual state of the case, “I say No to you at present It lies with yourself whether I ever say yes. If you and she care for one another, I should be the last to stand in your way, once you have proved yourself worthy of her. Get rid of all the rubbish that’s filling up your foolish brain;” — and he gave his hand a sweep around— “become a faithful, honest clergyman of the Church of England, serving your Master to the best of your power; and then you may ask for her. A daughter of mine shall never tie herself to a vain fop. No; though I had to banish her to the wilds of Kamschatka.”