CHAPTER XXXIII.—HER PROBLEM.
Madge in her own room; but it was evening and almost quite dark, so that it was not at all like the pretty chamber which it appeared to be in the bright sunshine of an autumn morning. Can there be any sympathy between the atmosphere and our feelings? There must be. A bright day helps us to meet sorrow bravely; a dull, dark day makes sorrow our master: we bow our heads and groan because nature seems to have entered into a conspiracy against us. The strong will may fling aside this atmospherical depression, but the effort is needed: whereas when the sun shines, even the weak can lift their heads and say without faltering: ‘Let me know the worst.’
Madge held in her hand a letter—the same which Wrentham had seen on Beecham’s desk, and of which he made due report to Mr Hadleigh. She knew well where to find the matches and candle, and yet she stood in that deep gloom looking at the window, as if she were interested in the invisible prospect on which it opened.
It is not instinct, but a telegraphic association of ideas which makes us hesitate to open particular letters. That was her case. And yet, if her face could have been seen in that gloom, no sign of fear would have been found upon it; only a wistful sadness—the expression of one who feels that some revelation of the inevitable is near.
After the pause, she quietly lit the candle, and, without drawing down the blind, seated herself by the window. Then, as methodically as if it had been only one of Uncle Dick’s business letters, she cut the envelope and spread the paper on her lap. She was very pale just then, for there was no message from Beecham; only this inclosure of an old letter, which seemed to have been much handled, and of which the writing had become indistinct.
There were only a few lines on the paper. She looked at the name at the foot of them, and raised it to her lips, reverently.
‘Poor mother!’ was her sigh, and she laid the letter gently on her lap again, whilst she looked dreamily into the gloom outside.
Should she read it? He had left her to answer that question for herself. Yes; she would read, for there were so few words, that there could be no breach of faith in scanning them. Moreover, the letter had been sent to her for that purpose by the man who had received it, and who, therefore, had the right to submit it to her.
There was no need to raise any great question of conscience in the matter; the words were so simple that they might have been written by a mother to a child. No passion, no forced sentiment, no ‘make-believe’ of any kind. Only this pathetic cry:
‘Dear Austin, do not go away. I am filled with fear by what thou hast said to me about the vessel. I know it is wrong, since God is with us everywhere, and I am ashamed of this weakness. But thou art so dear, and—— I pray thee, Austin, do not go away.’
Then followed in the middle of the page the simple name:
‘Lucy.’
This was what she might have written to Philip, and had not. It was all so simple and so like her own experience, with the difference that the lover had not gone away. Few daughters are allowed to know the history of their mothers’ love affairs, and there are fewer still who, when they hear them, can regard them as anything more than commonplace sketches of life, which they pass aside as they turn over the leaves of a portfolio.
But to Madge!——
What did all this mean? That, with the best intentions, she was entering into a conspiracy against the man she loved, and her mother was invoked as the inspiration of the conspiracy!
Sitting there, the candle flickering in the strange draughts which came from nowhere, the gloom outside growing quite black, and the shadows in the little room growing huge and threatening, Madge was trying to read the riddle of her very awkward position.
A sharp knock at the door, one of those knocks which impudent and inconsiderate females give when they have no particular message to convey, and resent the necessity of carrying it.
‘A man in the oak parlour wants to see you, if you ben’t too busy.’
Madge passed her fingers over the aching head. She could not guess who the man might be, but presumed that he was one of Uncle Dick’s customers.
She found Mr Beecham in the oak parlour. This was the first time he had been under the roof of Willowmere. He and Madge were conscious of the singularity of the meeting-place.
‘I trust, Miss Heathcote, you are not annoyed with me for coming here,’ he said softly. ‘I did not mean to do so; but it occurred to me, after despatching that letter, you might require a few words of explanation. At first, my intention was to say nothing; but on consideration, it seemed to me unfair to leave you without help in answering the disagreeable questions which the situation suggests.’
Madge still had the letter in her hand; the tears were still in her eyes. She tried to wipe them away, but still they would force their presence on the lids. That was the real Madge—tender, considerate to others beyond measure.
‘Oh, if’——
Here the superficial Madge claimed supremacy, and took the management of the whole interview in hand. Calm almost to coldness, clear in speech and vision almost to the degree of severity, she spoke:
‘I have considered all that you have said to me, and I do not like the position in which you have placed me. I gave you my word that I should be silent, believing that no harm could follow, and believing that my mother would have wished me to obey you. You have satisfied me by this letter that I have not done wrong so far. Take it back.’
She folded the letter, carefully replaced it in the envelope, and gave it to him.
‘Thank you,’ he said, with the shadow of that sad smile which had so often crossed his face.
‘You cannot tell how much that letter has affected me. You cannot know what thoughts and impulses it has aroused. But you can believe that in my mother’s blunder I read my own fate.... I know you are my friend: be the friend of those I love. Help him, for he needs help very much.’
Mr Beecham had quietly taken the letter and placed it in a small pocket-case, to which it seemed to belong.
‘I feared you would not understand me, and the desire to save you from uneasiness has brought me here. You have promised to be silent: I again beg you to keep that promise for a little while.’
She bowed her head, but did not speak.
‘In doing so,’ he added, anxious to reassure her, ‘you have my pledge that no harm will come to any one who does not seek it.’
‘You cannot think,’ she said coldly, and yet with a touch of bitterness that she seemed unable to repress—‘you cannot think any one purposely seeks harm! It came to you and to my mother.’
For an instant he was silent. He was thinking that no harm would have come to them if both had been faithful.
‘That is a hard hit, and not easily answered,’ he said quietly. ‘Let me say, then, that even if there had been no other motive to influence me, I should be his friend on your account. But I am your friend above and before all. For your sake alone I came back to England. For your sake I am acting as I am doing, strange as it may seem. If he is honest and faithful to you’——
‘There is no doubt of that,’ she interrupted, her face brightening with confidence.
Beecham inclined his head, as if in worship. He smiled at her unhesitating assertion of faith, but the smile was one of respect and admiration touched with a shade of regret. What might his life have been if he had found a mate like her! The man she loved might prove false, and all the world might call him false: she would still believe him to be true.
‘A man finds such faith rarely,’ he said in his gentlest tone; ‘I hope he will prove worthy of it. But let him take his own way for the present; and should trouble come to him, I shall do my best to help him out of it.’
She made a quick movement, as if she would have clasped his hands in thankfulness, but checked herself.
‘Then I am content.’
‘I am glad you can say so, for it shows you have some confidence in me, and every proof of kindly thought towards me helps me.’
He stopped, and seemed to be smiling at the weakness which had made his voice a little husky. Looking back, and realising in this girl an old dream, she had grown so dear to him, that he knew if she had persisted, his wisest judgment would have yielded to her wish.
She wondered: why was this man so gentle and yet so cruel, as it seemed, in his doubts of Philip?
‘Let me take your hand,’ he resumed. ‘Thanks. Have you any notion how much it cost me to allow this piece of paper’ (he touched the pocket in which her mother’s letter lay) ‘to be out of my possession even for a few hours? Only you could have won that from me. It was the last token of ... well, we shall say, of her caring about me that came direct from her own hand. She was deceived. We cannot help that, you know—accidents will happen, and so on’ (like a brave man, he was smiling at his own pain). ‘The message came to me too late. I think—no, I am sure, that if she had said this to me with her own lips, there would have been no parting ... and everything would have been so different to us!’
Madge withdrew one hand from his and timidly placed it on his shoulder.
‘I am sorry for your past, and should be glad if it were in my power to help you to a happy future.’
His disengaged hand was placed upon her head lightly, as if he were giving her a paternal blessing.
‘The only way in which you can help me, my child, is by finding a happy future for yourself. I am anxious about that—selfishly anxious, for it seems that my life can gain its real goal only by making you happy, since I missed the chance of making your mother so. I know that she was not happy; and my career, which has been one of strange good fortune, as men reckon fortune by the money you make, has been one of misery. Do you not think that droll?’
‘You are not like other men, I think; others would have forgotten the past, and forgiven.’
She was thinking of Philip’s wish that his father should be reconciled to Austin Shield.
‘I can forgive,’ he said softly; ‘I cannot forget.—Now, let us look at the position quietly as it is. The only thing which has given me an interest in life is the hope that I may be useful to you. When my sorrow came upon me, it seemed as if the whole world had gone wrong.’ (That was spoken with a kind of bitter sense of the humorous side of his sorrow.) ‘Doctors would have called it indigestion. You see, however, it does not matter much to the patient whether it is merely indigestion or organic disease, so long as he suffers from the pangs of whatever it may be. Well, I did not die, and the doctor is entitled to his credit. I live, eat my dinner, and am in fair health. But there is a difference: life lost its flavour when the blunder was made. When your mother believed the false report which reached her, the man who loved her was murdered.’
‘She could not act otherwise than she did,’ said Madge bravely in defence.
‘She should have trusted to me,’ he retorted, shaking his head sadly. ‘But that is unkind, and I do not mean to say one word of her that could be called unkind. She would forgive it.’
‘How she must have suffered!’ murmured Madge, her hand passing absently over the aching brow.
‘Ay, she must have suffered as I did—poor lass, poor lass!’
He turned abruptly to the hearth, as if he had become suddenly conscious of the ordinary duties of life, and aware that the fire required attention.
‘I want you to try to understand me,’ he said as he stirred the embers, and the oak-log on the top of the coal started a bright flame.
‘I wish to understand you—but that is not easy,’ she replied.
He did not look round; he answered as if the subject were one of the most commonplace kind; but there was a certain emphasis in his tone as he seemed to take up her sentence and continue it.
‘Because you stand on the sunny side of life, and know nothing of its shadows. Pity that they will force themselves upon you soon enough.’
‘If you see them coming, why not give me warning?’
He turned round suddenly, his hands clasped behind him so tightly that he seemed to be striving to subdue the outcry of some physical pain.
‘It is not warning that I wish to give you, but protection,’ he said, and there was a harshness in his voice quite unusual to him.
The change of tone was so remarkable, that she drew back. There were in it bitterness, hatred, and almost something that was like malignity.
‘You must know it all—then judge for yourself,’ he said at length.