CHAPTER XII.
It was about eleven o'clock in the day. The London thunder had not begun. There might be a few carts creeping about the streets, but they crept lazily and almost silently; the rattle of a hackney-coach might be heard here and there, but still it was but a temporary rattle; and the comparative stillness of the whole town gave a dreamy sort of quietude to the air, which was pleasant and full of repose. It harmonized well with the character of the day, too, for it was quite a summer morning.
The sun was streaming into Lady Fleetwood's drawing-room, sending oblique rays over the corner of the houses of a neighbouring street, and the motes were dancing drowsily in the long pencils of light. A droning fly, which had somehow or other got into a long-necked, deep blue carnation-glass, and could not get out again, was buzzing as if it had nearly tired itself to sleep; and the waving of the plants at the open windows, stirred by a light air, had a slumberous sound with it.
"Really, this is very pleasant!" thought Lady Fleetwood, as she sat, after breakfast, enjoying the delicious sensation of life which a fine summer day gives; "it is all so calm and tranquil that one could almost go to sleep."
Strange, strange life!--that one of thy best blessings should be to lose the consciousness of thine existence!
She soon found, however, that to go to sleep was not for her. Hardly had the thought passed through her brain when a sharp double knock at the door dispelled the stillness, and the next moment Charles Marston, the incarnation of mobility, entered.
"Well, my dear aunt," he said, "I have determined upon my course for the day; laid out everything in the most methodical and scientific manner; and having just half-an-hour to spare, came to bestow it upon you."
"You should really go and see your uncle, my dear Charles," replied Lady Fleetwood. "It would have been much better to have given it to him instead of to me; for he may well be offended if he hears you have been here twice without going near him."
"You are wrong, dearest of aunts!--you are wrong," answered Charles: "you always are sweetly wrong, you know, most excellent of women. I sent half-an-hour ago, to ask if he was at home; for, although one may have to swallow a bitter pill now and then, there is no reason why one should needlessly walk a mile and a half to take it. But he was out; and so, when I go hence, I shall diligently pursue him to his dingy hole in the city, where pray heaven there may be plenty of business stirring to cut our conference short! I am now only waiting for Winkworth, who is going to the city too."
"I cannot think, Charles, why you should feel such a distaste to your uncle's conversation," said Lady Fleetwood, meditating upon the problem; "everybody admits he is a clever man."
"Undoubtedly, my dear aunt," replied Charles; "but I will tell you why I am not very fond of his conversation. It is because that same conversation of his transforms everything into arithmetic. Now, I never had an arithmetical head in my life: I know that two and two make four, but it has not been the study of my life to discover how many blue beans make five. I cannot calculate friendships by the rules of profit and loss, nor look on love upon the principles of tare and tret, nor subject every feeling of the heart to the computations of the interest-table, nor measure poetry by the square foot, nor extract the cube root of an acquaintance's purse, in order to estimate how intimate I should become with him, nor regulate my own thoughts and wishes by quadratic equations, nor always keep my own conduct and purposes within an exact parallelogram. The sages of Laputa must have been great bores, my dear aunt; but they were nothing, depend upon it, to the men of the present day, who subject not only their understandings, but their very emotions, to the stiffest rules of calculation. Besides, the sight of poor Miss Hayley has not altogether taught me to like my uncle better--nor has what you said about him, it à propos to her."
Lady Fleetwood looked scared, and in a moment her mind ran back to all that had passed during the preceding evening, to ascertain if she could possibly by any blunder have said aught to produce mischief between uncle and nephew.
"Why, my dear Charles," she exclaimed, "I am very sure that I never uttered one word to make you believe that your uncle is at all aware of the poor thing's condition. He would be the first, I am sure----"
"I never said you did, my dear aunt," he replied, interrupting her; "but you told me he had been angry because you went to see them in their distress at Highgate. I have a strong notion he did not behave well to poor Hayley. I remember something of an unsettled account."
"Oh! but poor uncle always said, that as soon as Mr. Hayley produced certain papers he would go into that," exclaimed Lady Fleetwood. "I remember quite well that Hayley always declared there was a large sum due to him--fifteen or twenty thousand pounds; and he declared once that he would put it into chancery or some law court; but he lost heart, poor man, after the sad business of Henry's death; and, though he talked a great deal, he never did anything. But now I recollect--that was what made your uncle so angry, Charles. He said Hayley had defamed him; and you know your uncle is always reckoned a highly honourable man, though a little too fond of money, perhaps."
"Rich men are always honourable men," replied Charles, in a graver tone than was customary with him, "and poor and unfortunate men are great rascals--in the world's opinion, my dear aunt. In this good country of ours, wealth does find ways, if not to corrupt justice, at least to fix the balance and the sword immoveable. Law is too expensive a luxury for poor men to treat themselves to much of it; and many an honest cause is lost for fear of the inseparable punishment, in this land, of seeking right by law--I mean expense, if not ruin. I remember hearing a clerk give a message to Hayley, exactly to the purport you mention: that Mr. Scriven had no time to write, but that he would go into the account whenever Mr. Hayley was prepared to produce the papers. Do you know what Hayley replied, my dear aunt? He was then in a shabby black coat, and his face looked as if he had been drinking, I must confess; but he spoke distinctly and bitterly. 'Be so good as to ask Mr. Scriven,' he said, 'how I am to do that, when all those papers were left here, and I have never been able to get them out of this house?'--and with a fierce imprecation upon my uncle's head, he walked away without waiting for an answer. I was witness to the whole, and a sad scene it was?"
"Oh, dear! that is very terrible!" said Lady Fleetwood; "but do you think it could be true, Charles?"
"I really do not know, my dear aunt," answered her nephew; "but I have a sort of feeling that the Hayleys have suffered by our family; and consequently, as I am quite sure this poor thing whom I saw upon Frimley Common is one of them, I have resolved to go down again this very day and see what can be done for her. Winkworth will go with me, and as he is one upon whose advice I can fully rely, I shall consult him in regard to all I do for her."--"But, dear me, then you will not see Maria to-day!" said Lady Fleetwood: "she will be here by two o'clock."
"Oh, yes, I shall," answered Charles; "we do not set out till three, and I shall be back from the city by two."
Lady Fleetwood's arrangements were all deranged. She had planned a pleasant little dinner-party for Charles, Mr. Winkworth, and Maria, at which she proposed to engage Mr. Winkworth in conversation with herself, while Charles and Maria would be thrown upon each other's hands entirely; and she did not in the least doubt--being a fine politician in her way--that what between Maria's natural charms, a sudden meeting after a long absence, and a great many other advantages of the same kind, love and matrimony would as naturally rise up as the flame of a spirit-lamp when a match is applied to it. We must remark that Lady Fleetwood never doubted for a moment that any of her plans would succeed; nor did the experience of more than twenty years, during which period every one that she had ever formed had broken to pieces, convince her that there was always, somehow or another, some element wanting in her calculations which ensured their failure. She laid defeat upon the back of accident--one of the three or four broad-shouldered accessories to human infirmities which bear all the sins and misadventures of the world--the scapegoats of conscience and self-reproach. Accident, ill-luck, the devil, and adverse circumstances, are the favourite deputies to whom we transfer the burden of our faults in the present day, since Zeus and his Olympian household are no longer chargeable, as in the days of Homer.
Perverse mankind! whose wills, created free,
Charge all their woes on absolute decree;
All to the dooming gods their guilt translate,
And follies are miscalled the crimes of Fate.
Accident was Lady Fleetwood's pack-horse; and she thought it a most unfortunate accident indeed that Charles had arranged to go with Mr. Winkworth into the country that evening, rather than stay and fall in love with his cousin upon her plan.
While she was thinking, however, of how she could induce him to give up his journey for the day, and balancing with nice casuistry whether she ought or ought not to try, kindly feeling for poor Miss Hayley pulling her one way, and a natural hankering for her own schemes tugging her the other, the knocker was again heard doing its function; and her servant, a moment after, announced that Mr. Winkworth was below, waiting for Mr. Marston.
"Oh! ask him up, by all means," said Lady Fleetwood; "I shall be delighted to see him."
"I asked him, my lady," replied the man: "but he said he had no time at the present moment."
Lady Fleetwood would have pressed the point; but Charles represented that, if they did not set out for the city at once, he should not be back in time to see his cousin, and ran down-stairs without delay.
Under any ordinary circumstances, the solitary meditations of a lady on the sear side of fifty can be of no great interest to the general reader. There is something in youth--in its freshness, its vigour, its excitability, its world of emotions--which renders the young mind, as well as the young frame, in its bloom and perfection, a pleasant object of contemplation; but with age, alas! it is seldom so. I will, therefore, only say that good Lady Fleetwood sat and thought, for full five minutes, of how unfortunate it was that Charles should have spoiled her evening plan for his benefit; and having no other scheme for making people happy in her own way ready-made at the moment, she might have gone on for five, or even ten minutes more, had she not been interrupted by a visit from her brother.
"Well, that is the most unfortunate thing in the world!" exclaimed the poor lady, as soon as she saw Mr. Scriven's face. "Charles has just this moment gone into the city to call upon you."
"Humph!" said Mr. Scriven; "I wonder he did not call upon me last night."
"I dare say he was tired, poor fellow," replied Lady Fleetwood, who had almost always an excuse ready for everybody; "but he sent, the first thing this morning, to see if you were at home."
"It would have been better to have come himself," rejoined Mr. Scriven, drily; "then he might have discovered that I was not ten doors off, and would return directly. Now, I suppose, he will call at the counting-house, and, finding I have not arrived, walk away again. I must see him to-day, Margaret: I have some important matters to tell him. If he comes back, then, keep him to dinner, and I will come in and join you."
"I cannot do that," answered Lady Fleetwood; "for he has just told me that he is going down to Frimley Common at three o'clock."
"What for?" asked Mr. Scriven with a look of surprise.
Lady Fleetwood hesitated, and her brother's face assumed a stern look.
"Is he going to fight a duel?" asked Mr. Scriven.
And his poor sister, in a fright lest she should produce a wrong impression, poured forth the whole story of Miss Hayley, and Charles Marston's intentions, and Mr. Winkworth's kindness in going with him. Moreover, one part of the tale requiring, in her estimation, explanation by another, she went on to give sundry portions of her conversation with her nephew, to account for his determination to take care of poor Miss Hayley, which she well knew, in its bald state, Mr. Scriven would think very absurd, romantic, and extravagant; and she added various hints with regard to what she and Charles judged he, Mr. Scriven, ought to do for the poor lady; adding that some people thought the Hayleys had not been altogether well treated.
There was a sort of consciousness in her heart all the time that she was blundering, which only made her flounder more and more amongst the shallows into which she had plunged; and the deep, imperturbable silence with which her brother sat and listened to a long story--a thing he was rarely inclined to do--only added to her embarrassment.
When she had done, he asked no questions, but only raised his eyes to the timepiece; and with a last convulsion to get right again, or at least to cast the weight from her own shoulders, she added--
"Well, Henry--I do not understand all these matters, as you well know."
"Perfectly well," rejoined Mr. Scriven.
"And so," she continued, "you had better talk with Charles about them yourself."
"I will," said Mr. Scriven.
"He will be back from the city before two," added Lady Fleetwood, "and he sets out for Frimley at three."
"Ha!" said Mr. Scriven. "And now, Margaret, I will go; for I do not see anything further that can be gained by staying here."
Now, Lady Fleetwood would have given a great deal to have unloosed his taciturn tongue and discovered what he was going to do next; but Mr. Scriven was not inclined that it should be so, and took his departure.
He had a brown cabriolet at the door--that was an age of cabriolets; and when he had got into the vehicle, he first turned his horse's head, as if he would have driven, as usual, to his house of business in the city; but by the time he had got to the other side of the square he had altered his mind, and sweeping round with a whirl, he directed his course back to his private residence.
It was very strange that he should do so, for Mr. Scriven was the most methodical of men. He arranged in the morning all that he intended to do during the day, and on all ordinary occasions he did it. But there was something stranger still; for, notwithstanding his having told Lady Fleetwood that he must and would see his nephew Charles that day, he took a very good way of preventing himself from so doing.
He first looked into a posting-hook, then ordered one of his servants to go to the counting-house and say that he should not be there till the next morning, and then directed another servant to order a pair of post-horses.
As soon as they arrived he went out of town.