“Perhaps I do.”
“Well, if she had not a husband, if you will have it, she could marry you, couldn’t she?”
“But if I don’t want to marry her — what then?” Charlotte coloured with vexation. “Of course you don’t,” she said pettishly. “Or ought not to — because she is married. But you know very well what I mean. I wish I had not spoken.”
“But you don’t know what I mean,” he rejoined. “I did wish to marry her — a year ago. No one knows that better than you do. But I don’t want to marry her now. On the contrary, I want to marry someone else.”
Charlotte laughed, though her face was hotter than she could have wished. “Oh dear, I wish you had not told me!” she said. “I did think you so faithful! Now you have dispelled another dream — of men’s constancy and all that, you know.” She tried to speak with her usual flippancy, but she was not very successful.
“And all that, Charlotte?”
“To be sure!”
“It has given you a low opinion of me?” He stepped in front of her and penned her up against the low wall. He was looking at her, too, in such a way that she did not know where to look, and she knew that her face was hot, and she would have given the world for her usual manner. Why, why in the world had she been so foolish as to broach the matter?
But he was determined to have an answer. “It has given you a low opinion of me?” he persisted.
She longed to face him, but she could not. She turned away and picked a bit of mortar from the wall and tossed it over the edge. “I didn’t say so,” she said.
“And you haven’t asked me whom I am going to marry.”
Charlotte turned at bay — was he just tormenting her?— “No,” she said, “and you ought not to tell me. You ought to tell her first.”
“I have told her.”
Charlotte took another scrap of mortar and flung it over the wall. Then she turned to him, and apparently she had thrown with it the colour from her face. But her voice was steady. “Then tell me, please, who it is. I think she is a very lucky girl, whoever it is.”
“You think so?”
“Yes, I do,” she said.
“I am glad of that,” he replied, “because, Charlotte, you are the girl. And if you will take me, I think I can promise you that I shall not — shift again. There is no man worth calling a man who has known you as I have known you and watched you as I have watched you, these last months — who has seen your unselfishness and your devotion, my dear, who could help loving you if he loved truth and goodness. Who would not say, here is my friend, here is the woman with whom I desire to pass my life, whom I want to sit at my table, who will never fail me—”
“Oh, but,” she stammered, looking anywhere but at him, “it’s — it’s impossible! You are playing with me. I’m — I’m sure you haven’t thought!” Then, “I’m only plain Charlotte,” she added wildly.
“Never plain to me,” he said; “but the woman I love and desire, Charlotte; the woman I want to be my companion, my wife and the mother of my children. Never plain to me, since the day that you stopped me on the road in the kindness of your heart — and I had the first inkling of what you were.”
“It wasn’t out of the kindness of my heart,” Charlotte said doggedly. “I won’t wear borrowed plumes.”
“Then why was it?”
Charlotte looked every way save at him, but there was a shy light in her eyes that for the moment did make her almost beautiful. She had sat down on the wall, as if she could not help herself, and with a hand on each side of her she plucked at it. “Well,”
she said, “if you must know, it was — it was—” And there she stopped, unable to get the words out. Yet she knew that if she did speak them she was safe.
“Then why was it?” he repeated. “Come, you must tell me.”
Well, then, it was because I was fond of you — then, she confessed. “Now you can laugh at me!”
“Many times, I hope,” he said. And he did laugh.
CHAPTER XXXVI
LIFE and death jostle one another. The day, and sometimes the news, that bears joy to some brings grief to their fellows. It was so in Beremouth. The first vague reports had exaggerated the loss of the Lively Peggy, and there were homes besides the Cottage to which Wyke went with his news — and we may be sure that he lost no time — and brought rejoicing with him. But from eleven hearths the bread-winners had passed, never to return, and in lane and court there were wailing and sorrow, and about a door here and there a cluster of whispering women. So it had always been, and so it was now. And now, as in the past, old age humped its shoulders and bore the blow with seeming apathy, while the young met it with piteous protests against fate. Sea-boots stiff with the spray of many storms were set apart, to be held henceforth hallowed things; and eyes that had often gleamed with wrath at the goodman’s shortcomings, now dwelt pitifully on the darned jersey or the patched overalls.
Yet it was something even to those who took their loss most hardly, that that loss was public, was marked and recognized. That when the old slunk for a little comfort into the Keppel’s Head the room fell silent about them, and that when the women went to church on the next Sunday their neighbours gathered to go with them. It was something, too, that the Squire moved tirelessly from house to house with grave eyes and assurances of help — of a place for Dan when he should be old enough, and the like. The kindly hand-grip, the feeling words, “He was a good man, Jenny, and will not be forgotten. He died in his duty, and the lads may be proud of him!” were not wasted, nor the “God bless you, sir,” that came from a full heart when he left. In a little community there is fellowship.
Yet it was probable that the Rector’s visits went for more, for they were less expected. Women told with pride how he had sat down with them on that very chair! So many could say it, indeed, that his stately passage from house to house was watched with wonder by awestruck eyes. He was amazing changed they agreed; the curate could not have said more nor done more! He did not seem like the same man, they whispered, looking after him. Or, to be sure, they had never known the man before, and it needed right-down trouble to bring him out.
But in fact he was changed. So changed that no woman of them all, much as they marvelled, was more perplexed by the alteration or less able to account for it than the woman who knew him best, and fancied that she knew him au fond. Not that Augusta had been blind to the change in its earlier stages. She had seen it take now one form and then another. She had seen it show itself in a settled gloom, the secret of which she could not penetrate, later in an irritation as puzzling and more vexatious. But the form it had finally taken, of a benevolence less at one with the man she knew and on whom she had formed herself than either, chafed her to the verge of impoliteness. And when, on the afternoon of Bligh’s return, her father entered the drawing-room and with a beaming face poured out the news, which she had heard an hour or two earlier, and he showed in every feature a satisfaction which she could neither share nor understand, it was as much as even Augusta could do to hold her feelings in check.
“Well, as you are so pleased, sir, I am glad,” she forced herself to say, as she bent over her frame. “But — do you really think that it is for the best?”
“My dear! Surely! surely!” he protested. “God forbid that we should think otherwise! Besides, you know your sister, and were it only for her sake—”
“Yes, I know, father.” Augusta left her needle in the canvas, and looked at him with a puzzled brow as if she might still read the riddle. “Of course, we are glad that the man is alive — were that the end, sir. But she was recovering, and is it so certain that it is for the best? After all, things are as they were, and — and I thought that you agreed with me, indeed, I thought it was your own opinion — that they could hardly be worse.”
His rising colour betrayed his annoyance. “But I don’t agree,” he said testily, “that things are as they were, Augusta.”
She examined her work with an air of detachment, a f
aint smile curving her lips. “Perhaps it is,” she suggested softly, “that you do not look at them as you did, sir!”
He paused before he answered her. “Perhaps it is,” he admitted at last. “Yes, Augusta, I think that that is so. The truth is, since I formed that opinion I have been face to face with worse things. With worse things,” he repeated, with an uneasy gesture. “And I can see that I was wrong. The thing is done, and for the future I intend to make the best of it.” Augusta submitted gracefully. “You know best, sir,” she said. “If that is your view, there is no more to be said.”
“No.” Then more lightly, and as if he was glad to get away from the topic, “I have another piece of news for you. I shall be very much surprised if we do not hear that there is something between Wyke and your friend Charlotte.”
Augusta’s needle stopped half-way through the canvas. She laughed. “I can believe it of one side, sir,” she said, “I have seen it for some time. Charlotte? Yes. But it will take a good deal to make me believe it of the other.” Augusta bent her neck gracefully and smiled. “I have known her look passable — by some lights. But Sir Albery has eyes — and after Peggy! Think of it. No, sir, Charlotte is a dear girl, but I am afraid that her best friends cannot call her a beauty!”
“Well, I may be mistaken,” the Rector admitted, thinking that his daughter must know. Women saw things, no doubt. “But they were very long in following her mother and me just now, and when they came up the young lady looked odd, and Wyke seemed to be uncommonly pleased with himself.”
“He would have to look like that,” Augusta said, cryptically. She was not disturbed. She understood, she fancied, both why Sir Albery had frequented the Cottage and why Charlotte had shared his assiduity. He had had his hopes, or he had not acted as he had or gone to so much trouble. Disappointed in the upshot he had no option but to hide his feelings.
The Rector was not greatly interested; he had things on his mind that touched him more nearly and he left the room. He took his hat and went out. In charity with all men, to one of whom he had long thought too hardly, he was eager to do justice. “I’ve wronged the man,” he told himself, “and I will go to him before I sleep. The news will be as welcome to him as to me, and the least I can do is to give him joy of it.”
He went by the road, and was well on his way to the Cove when he met the doctor in his gig. His first thought was that the news had been too much for the old Captain, who after the scene at the Cottage had returned to his lodging. He stopped the doctor.
Nothing wrong, I hope, Hawkins?”
The doctor shook his head. “You haven’t heard?
About Budgen, sir? He has had a stroke. And I fear a bad one.”
The Rector stared. “Good gracious!” he said. He was more moved than the other had anticipated. “You don’t mean it? How did it happen?”
“Well, that young Fewster — Joe, you know, confound him! — went straight down to the Cove, came on Budgen suddenly, and the man threw up his arms and fell as if he had seen a ghost! Never spoke again.”
The Rector’s face was serious. “Perhaps he thought that he saw a ghost,” he said.
“Upon my honour I should not be surprised. He had given the lad up for lost I’m told. But he ought to have had more sense, a man of his age!”
“Can he speak?”
The other shook his head. “No, and I doubt if he ever will. He may rally and linger for a few months, but I fear that will be the best of it. Hang that young cub!” the doctor added viciously. “I never knew any good of him, first or last.”
The Rector asked another question or two, his tone betraying a feeling that surprised the other. Like the women the doctor had not thought that he had it in him to feel. Finally, “I will go on and see Budgen,” he said, “if there is no objection.”
The doctor had nothing to say against it, and the Rector went on. He stood beside the bed, and he was moved to the depths of his soul, as he looked down at the wreck of the man whom he had hated so deeply, and to whose account he had set down so much of his own suffering. There was no longer anything to hate or to fear in that helpless form, in which, setting aside the laboured breathing, the eyes alone lived. And presently, the woman in attendance having gone out, the Rector knelt beside the bed and prayed as he might have prayed for himself, with contrition and self-abasement; using the words of the Confession, “according to Thy promise, spare those that are penitent”! He repeated the words thrice and fervently. When he rose from his knees he took Budgen’s nerveless hand in his, and held it for some moments, looking pitifully down at him. And before he let the hand go, he pressed it. When he had assured him more than once — though he doubted if there were any who heard — that he should return, he left him.
But as with a heavier step he climbed the path his mind was troubled and his face reflected his trouble. He did not know. He could not be sure; and the uncertainty oppressed him. It hung over him like a cloud in a fair sky, darkening the prospect. And possibly it was as well that this was so. The habits of years cannot be cut down in a day or a month, nor the attitude of a mind long warped be lightly amended. The change wrought in the Rector by the pangs of a conscience — that of itself argued a man spoiled by prosperity but far from evil — might have proved but a passing and transient phase if in his pensive moments he had not had that uncertainty, that doubt to trouble him.
Even as he climbed the path it influenced his actions. When he reached the Cottage, that Cottage which had been his bugbear, which he had so long and so wrathfully shunned, he turned in at the gate and knocked at the door. Bligh opened it, and seeing who it was, stood, uncertain in what spirit his visitor came. But over his shoulder the Rector saw his daughter’s face, no longer haggard and woebegone, and his purpose held.
“Bligh,” he said, and he offered his hand, “we will let bygones be bygones. We have both been to blame, but we will let the past bury its dead.”
And Bligh, the instinct to revolt disarmed by the other’s address, was able to meet him. He clasped the offered hand. “I, at any rate, am to blame, sir,” he said frankly. “But if you will suffer Peggy to plead for me?”
“We will say no more,” the Rector rejoined. And with Peggy’s clinging arms about him, and her faithful heart beating against his breast, he had his reward. The father and daughter had met before; he had sat beside her bed, he had prayed with her, he had done his best to comfort her. But there had been unspoken things between them, a fence raised by old grievances, by wrongs and resentment. Now the fence had fallen and they were at one.
He sat with them, her hand in his, and while he listened to Bligh’s story and Peggy hung with parted lips upon the tale, he began to know the man and to own him to be other than he had imagined. More, as he let his eyes travel round the room, neat and orderly and possessed of a dignity of its own, he confessed that his horror of it had had as little foundation as his contempt of the man.
When he rose he was moved to own it, albeit with a tinge of his old manner. “My dear,” he said, “you are more comfortable here than I supposed. But — we must make other arrangements. You must let me see to that, Bligh.”
Bligh winced, and might have protested. But Peggy’s hand lay in his, and he accepted the words with a good grace. “We will do whatever you think fit, sir,” he said.
On the threshold, “God bless you, my dear,” the Rector murmured as he kissed his daughter. “May you and your husband see many happy years!”
It was his final eirenicon. His heart as he climbed the path and crossed the churchyard was lighter than it had been for many months.
His generosity, as things shaped themselves, was not taxed to the extent that he contemplated. For a week later the bells of Beremouth broke into a merry peal and the countryside, startled at work or play, presently learned that Lieutenant Charles Bligh, late of the Royal Navy, had in consideration of special services performed as commander of the private ship of war, the Lively Peggy, been restored to his rank, and placed on half-pay. Nor
was the pride of the neighbourhood lessened — while the old man wept for joy — when a month later the same Lieutenant Charles Bligh, R.N., was gazetted to a post in connection with the Government Service at Falmouth. Thither, with a handsome allowance from his father-in-law, he and his wife by and by removed. Among the earliest guests whom they entertained in their snug house at Flushing, looking upon the Ferry and the Penryn River, were Sir Albery and Lady Wyke, between whom and their host and hostess a very special friendship was understood to exist.
To probe into Augusta’s feelings when the certainty of Charlotte’s engagement dawned upon her would be unkind. That her opinion of Sir Albery both as a man and as a match was lessened is certain. But no one gave the happy couple joy with more sweetness and composure, nor did Charlotte cease to be one of her dearest friends. And as acknowledged merit seldom misses its reward, and the deserts of Augusta’s classic features and graceful figure could not be denied, less than a year elapsed before she was sought by a fitting partner and removed to grace the house of a neighbouring pluralist. In a sphere so peculiarly her own, her manners and her smile had their full value, nor did her performance of her duties fall below the standard that was expected of her. Augusta in truth had but one failing. She lacked a heart.
Old Captain Bligh did not forget the lesson that he had learned. He put his weakness behind him, and with it the days when he had rolled in the gutter and been viewed with an indulgent eye by the company at the Keppel Head. He found it easy in the sunshine of his son’s prosperity to turn over a new leaf, but he never succeeded in holding up his head — the iron of adversity had gone over him. He continued to live in the Cottage, and if proof were needed of the Rector’s changed views it was to be found in the tolerance with which he regarded his neighbour’s presence. This went so far in time, that it was no uncommon thing to see him on a sunny morning pacing the churchyard walk by the side of the mild old man whose stumping tread was no stranger on the Rectory floors.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 775