CHAPTER XLIV.—AN APPLE OF DISCORD.
It did not occur to either of these young people that there was anything at all remarkable or irregular in the circumstance of a lady visiting the chambers of her betrothed alone. But as this was her first visit, Madge felt a little awkward, and would have been much more at ease if Wrentham had not been present.
That gentleman, however, as soon as he perceived who the visitor was, took up his glossy hat, made his salutations to Miss Heathcote, and informed Philip that he was obliged to hurry along to the office before it closed, but would probably return later.
When he had departed, Madge glanced with curiosity round the apartment, and her first comment was:
‘You ought to have curtains over that doorway, Philip’ (she alluded to the uncovered entrance to a small recess which was a storeroom); ‘and I must come in soon and dust the place thoroughly. I wonder you have not been choked. See here; it is positively disgraceful.’
She ran her finger over the ledge of a bookcase, making a line in the dust. And with half-timid but wholly curious interest, she continued to scrutinise the place, making mental notes of what she would have to do to insure his comfort.
He was astounded. She had been with Mr Shield. She must have been made acquainted with the terrible nature of his position; and yet she could placidly criticise the furniture of his room and interest herself in a question of dusting! He had often admired her cool firmness in moments of accident, illness, or difficulty; but he could find nothing to admire in this absolute indifference to the crisis in his affairs. In his bitterness he was unjust, and his reflections were to this effect: ‘How blessed are those who can be callously calm in the presence of suffering—of the suffering even of those they are supposed to love! How many pangs they must be spared; how easy it must be for them to pass comfortably through the world, where every step we take leads us by some scene of misery. Ay, they are the happy ones who can pass with eyes closed, and therefore, nerves unshaken.’
But even whilst these uneasy thoughts were flashing through his brain, he felt ashamed of himself for allowing them to be suggested by Madge, whose calmness he knew was not due to want of feeling, but to a delicate shrinking from the display of it.
She appeared to become suddenly aware of his singular silence, and looked quickly towards him. His face was in shadow, and she could not see the ravages which anxiety and sleepless nights had made upon it; and he did not observe that under her apparent composure there was suppressed much agitation. The tender eyes looked at him wistfully, as if afraid that she had done something to offend him, and that he was about to chide her.
‘Why do you not speak, Philip?’
‘I was wondering if it can be possible that you have not heard how things stand with me. I was at Willowmere this forenoon, seeking you, and was told that you had gone to see Mr Shield, intending also to call on me. Has he said nothing to you about the letter I sent to him last night? I was obliged to write, because he persists in refusing to listen to any explanations from me in person. Has he said nothing about it?’
Madge hesitated. She was in a most unpleasant position. She had hoped to be able to come gleefully to him with the good news that the reconciliation between his father and uncle had been effected, and she was disappointed. Her proofs of Mr Hadleigh’s innocence of all complicity in Austin Shield’s misfortunes had not been accepted in the way she had expected. As regarded Philip, she had been assured that he was safe so long as she kept her promise to Mr Beecham. So she could neither give him the good news she had been so confident of bringing to him, nor sympathise fully with his anticipations of absolute ruin. That was what rendered her manner peculiar, and in his present vision, ungracious.
‘I have been told that you are harassed by the way things have been going, and that there have been mistakes somewhere. But I heard nothing about your letter.’
‘And yet you have been with him and Mr Beecham all day!’
She did change colour at the mention of Beecham’s name, the blood flushing her cheeks, and then as suddenly fading from them. His over-wrought nerves rendered him sensitive to the slightest change of voice, look, or manner.
‘Yes,’ she replied at length steadily; ‘I have been with them a long time to-day, and they spoke a great deal about you, for they are both your friends.’
‘No doubt, no doubt. Beecham has no reason to be otherwise; and Mr Shield has acted as my friend until now, when he leaves me in this horrible suspense.’
‘But it must be because he is considering what is best to be done for you.’
‘Did he tell you that?’
‘He did not say it exactly in those words; but I understood it from what he did say and from his whole manner in speaking of you.’
‘I suppose I ought to find satisfaction in that.... But how was it you came to visit Mr Shield? You have not met him before.’ (This abruptly.)
Her eyelids drooped, and her head was bowed a little.
‘He wrote to me. I have met him before.’
‘And you never told me! Where did you become acquainted with him?’
‘At Willowmere.’
‘Why, when was he there? Aunt Hessy does not know of it, or she would have told me. You did not, although you should have known how pleasant it would have been to me to find that he had seen you and liked you.’
That she had not previously told him of her acquaintance with Mr Shield, was a disagreeable sign of want of confidence; but his surprise was greater than his displeasure. He had never been able to obtain more than ten or fifteen minutes’ audience of him; and yet here was Madge, without giving the slightest hint that she had ever seen him, accepted by him as a friend, and allowed to spend hours with him. If this was not deception on her part, it bore such a strong resemblance to conduct of that kind as to make him feel cold. A new pain entered his distracted mind. If she were capable of deceiving him in one way, how was he to trust her in other ways? She knew how he hated all mysteries and underhand work. She knew how he insisted on the simple rule, that as it was so much more easy and comfortable to be plain and above-board in everything, than to adopt subterfuge, only fools chose the crooked course. Yet here he found that, for some unknown reason, she had been concealing most interesting facts from him.
To Madge the conversation was becoming more and more awkward and even distressing. She could feel the suspicions which were hovering around him, and she made an effort to dispel them by assuming a hopeful and, as far as possible, a cheerful tone.
‘Well, Philip, he asked me to hold my tongue because he wanted to give you a surprise; and I do not see any harm in it. Will you not let me have a little freedom of action, when I think I am doing what is to your advantage?’
‘There never can be any advantage gained for me by your hiding things from me.’
‘But you must not look upon it so seriously, Philip,’ she said with a mingling of earnestness and playfulness. ‘Come now; let us talk about what is of most importance to us both. Tell me how it is your affairs have come to such a crisis so soon, and how you mean to proceed.’
‘I shall do so; but first I must ask you how long Beecham has known Mr Shield?’
‘A long time,’ she replied, averting her eyes.
‘And has the secret he confided to you anything to do with me or my business?’
She would have liked to answer at once, and she was obliged to hesitate. She saw that he was vexed, and her natural impulse was to remove every source of vexation between them by telling him all she knew. The impulse was restrained on his account.
‘It has to do with you; but I wish you would not press me on the subject—at least not for a little while.’
‘So be it. I have always respected your wishes,’ he rejoined coldly, and there was even a distant note of bitterness in the tone. ‘I can now easily give you the information you require about myself. Should my uncle decline to assist me, I shall to-morrow resign everything I possess to my creditors, and seek some employment by which I may be able in course of time to make up to them whatever deficit there may be in my accounts.’
‘But Mr Shield will assist you—he will not allow you to give up everything!’
‘As you will not permit me to know the grounds of your confidence in the continuance of his generosity, and as I have bitter reason to know that he would be justified in refusing to give further help to a fool who has in such a short time made away with the capital he placed at my disposal, I cannot share your expectations or hope.’
‘I am sure he will carry you safely over this difficulty.’
‘In any case, I am his debtor, and the necessity to repay him’——
‘But he does not expect you to repay him,’ she interrupted, watching him with rapidly increasing anxiety, and now observing how haggard he looked.
‘I will repay him,’ was the answer, emphasised by passion that was suppressed with difficulty. ‘I know it will take a long time—maybe all my life. Knowing that, I am compelled to regard as inevitable and just the view which Mr Crawshay will take of our position. He will insist on the same arrangement which he insisted on when I intended to go abroad.’
Wonder was in her eyes, strange pain in her breast. She could scarcely remember the time when, except in the presence of strangers, Philip had spoken of Uncle Dick as Mr Crawshay. This simple change affected her more than his words or his manner, for he maintained a degree of the bitter calmness of despair. There must be some evil at hand greater than she could imagine, since it forced him to refer to his friend at Willowmere in that way.
‘What arrangement are you speaking about, Philip?’
‘I agreed to it then with a light heart; I agree to it now with a hopeless one. Then it was a jest—now, it is earnest. But it was wise, and it is wiser now. He required me to consider our engagement at an end, and to leave you free to choose’——
‘Oh, Philip, Philip!’
The cry came in such piteous accents, that despite his frenzy he stopped. For a moment he was conscious of the cruelty he was perpetrating in making such an announcement so abruptly. The golden visions of the future they had so often conjured up together flashed through his mind, and he was dazed with pain like her own.
For Madge, she had covered her face with trembling hands, as if in that way she could shut out the thoughts his words suggested. ‘Free to choose some one else,’ was what he had been going to say, she knew. Free! Could love be ever freed when once given? He might die before her; then she would live on his memory. He might go away from her and never return; what difference could that make? Men change; women change; but the being once realised in the idealism of love never changes to the lover. Else how could love survive, when the mortal form becomes plain and ugly, old and petulant?
Her thoughts did not run precisely in this form, but they were to the same purport. She could never care for any man but Philip; and to suggest the possibility of it would have been hard to bear if made by any one, but hardest of all when made by Philip. Then a little spring of mingled indignation and pride started, and the hands dropped from her face.
‘And can you think that any one at Willowmere would turn from you at a time of trouble?’
‘No, no; I do not mean that,’ he answered, and his voice had become feeble, whilst his body swayed slightly, as if he were struggling with diverse emotions. ‘But if it was fair that you should not be bound down to a man who was only going away for a year, it cannot be fair to bind you to one who may have to contend with poverty all his life.’
‘Mr Shield—your father will see that it is not so.’
These names roused him, and his thoughts became collected again. He spoke almost calmly.
‘My father has distributed his fortune amongst his other children. Mr Shield has given me a fortune which I, by my careless folly, have squandered or allowed myself to be cheated out of, as a fool in a betting-ring might have done. I must pay the penalty of my folly alone. Therefore I say, you are free.’
She took the lamp and held it up so that the full light fell on his face. There was a wildness in his eyes, but his lips were compressed, as if he had come to an unalterable resolution.
‘Do you wish me to think myself free?’—the voice steady, although the lips trembled.
‘I wish it!’
A pause; and presently through the silence came the low sad words:
‘Then we must say Good-bye.’
‘Good-bye’ was the husky response, and that was all.
(To be continued.)