CHAPTER LV.—SWEET ARE THE USES OF ADVERSITY.
Soon after reading Mr Shield’s letter, Madge walked to Ringsford with Pansy. There had been a thaw during the night, and the meadows and the ploughed lands were transformed into sheets of dirty gray, dirty blue, and reddish slush, according to the character of the soil, dotted with patches of snow like the ghosts of islets in a lake of puddle. But the red sun had a frosty veil on his face; by-and-by this puddle would be glazed with ice, and the heavy drops of melting snow which were falling slowly from the trees would become glittering crystal pendants to their branches.
The two girls, their cheeks tingling with the bite of the east wind, tramped bravely through the slush, with no greater sense of inconvenience than was caused by the fact that they would be obliged to perform the journey by the road instead of taking the short-cut through the Forest.
They spoke little, for each was occupied with her own troublous thoughts; Pansy did not know much of the sources of her friend’s anxieties, and Madge had already exhausted the consolation she could offer to her companion. On arriving at Ringsford they found Sam Culver attending to his plants and greenhouses as methodically as if the mansion stood as sound as ever it had done and the daily supply of fruit and flowers would be required as usual.
Madge left Pansy with her father, and went on to the cottage. In the kitchen she found Miss Hadleigh fast asleep in the gardener’s big armchair. She would have left the room without disturbing her, but at that moment Miss Hadleigh yawned and awakened.
‘Don’t go away; I am not sleeping.—Oh, it’s you, Madge. Isn’t this a dreadful state of things? I haven’t had a wink of sleep for two nights, and feel as if I should drop on the floor in hysterics or go off into a fever.’
Miss Hadleigh had been relieved by a good many ‘winks’ during the period specified, although, like many other nurses, she was convinced that she had not closed her eyes all the time. Madge accepted the assertion literally, and was instantly all eagerness to relieve her.
‘You must get away to Willowmere at once, and take a proper rest. You are not to refuse, for I will take your place here and do whatever may be required. You are looking so ill, Beatrice, that I am sure Philip and—somebody else would consider me an unfeeling creature if I allowed you to stay any longer.’
‘But it is my duty to stay, dear,’ said Miss Hadleigh a little faintly, for she did not like to hear that she was looking ill.
‘And it is my duty to relieve you. Besides, Dr Joy has given us some hope that it may be safe to remove your father to our house to-day; and then you will be there, refreshed and ready to receive him.’
‘I suppose you are right—I am not fit for much at present,’ said Miss Hadleigh languidly; ‘and you can do everything for him a great deal better than I can. But I must wait till Philip comes—he promised to be here early.’
‘You have heard from him, then?’
‘Heard from him!—he was here last night as soon as he could get away from that nasty business he has been swindled into by our nice Uncle Shield. He ought to have taken poor papa’s advice at the beginning, and have had nothing to do with him.’
This was uttered so spitefully, that it seemed as if there were an undercurrent of satisfaction in the young lady’s mind at finding that the rich uncle who would only acknowledge one member of the family, had turned out a deceiver.
Madge was astonished and chagrined by the information that Philip had been out on the previous evening and had made no sign to her; but in the prospect of seeing him soon, she put the chagrin aside, remembering how harassed he was at this juncture in his affairs. There should be no silly lovers’ quarrel between them, if she could help it. She would take the plain, commonplace view of the position, and make every allowance for any eccentricity he might display. She would help him in spite of himself, by showing that no alteration of circumstances could alter her love, and that she was ready to wait for him all her life if she could not serve him in any other way. To be sure, he had said the engagement was at an end; and Uncle Dick had not yet said that it was to stand good. But she loved Philip: her life was his, and misfortune ought to draw them nearer to one another than all the glories of success—than all the riches in the world.
When he came, there was no sign of astonishment at her presence in the temporary refuge of his father: he seemed to accept it as a matter of course that she should be there. Neither was there any sign that he remembered the manner in which they had last parted. To her anxious eyes he seemed to have grown suddenly very old. The frank joyous voice was hushed into a low grave whisper; the cheeks and eyes were sunken; and there was in his manner a cold self-possession that chilled her. Yet something in the touch of his hand reassured her: love was still in his heart, although the careless youth, full of bright dreams and fancies, was changed into the man, who, through loss and suffering, had come to realise the stern realities of life.
They were for a time prevented from speaking together in private because the doctors had arrived only a few minutes before Philip, and he waited to hear their report. Dr Joy came out of the invalid’s room with an expression which was serious but confident.
‘Our patient goes on admirably,’ he said. ‘You need have no fear of any immediate danger; and in six months there will be only a few scars to show the danger he has passed through. I am to stay here for a couple of hours, and then I shall know whether or not we can move him to Willowmere. By that time, too, I expect the ambulance we wrote for last night will be here.—And you, Miss Hadleigh, you really must take rest. I insist upon it. You will not make your father better by making yourself ill. Go and get to bed. Philip and Miss Heathcote will do everything that is necessary, and I shall be their overseer.’
Philip went to the stables to tell Toomey to bring the carriage round for his sister. As he was crossing the little green on his way back to the cottage, Madge met him. Although he had not observed her approaching, his head being bowed and eyes fixed on the ground, he took the outstretched hands without any sign of surprise, without any indication that he understood the cruel significance of the ‘good-bye’ which had caused them both so much pain. Whatever hesitation she might have felt as to the course she was to pursue was removed by his first words.
‘You want to speak to me, Madge,’ he said in a tone of gentle gravity; and then with a faint smile: ‘I am better than when you saw me last, for I am free from suspense. My position is clear to me now, and I feel that a man is more at ease when the final blow falls and strikes him down, than he can be whilst he is struggling vainly for the goal he has not strength enough to reach. It is a great relief to know that we are beaten and to be able to own it. Then there is a possibility of plodding on to the end without much pain.’
She was as much alarmed by this absolute surrender to adversity as she had been by the strange humour which had prompted him to say that she was free.
‘Yes, Philip, I want to speak to you,’ she said tenderly, and a spasmodic movement of the hand which grasped hers, signified that the electric current of affection was not yet broken. She went on the more earnestly: ‘I am not going to think about the foolish things you have said to me: I am going to ask you to give me your confidence—to tell me everything that has happened during the last two days. Tell it to me, if you like, as to your friend.’
‘Always my friend,’ he muttered, bending forward as if to kiss her brow, and then drawing slowly back, like one who checks himself in the commission of some error.
‘Always your friend,’ she echoed with emphasis, ‘and therefore you should be able to speak freely.’
‘There is not much to tell you. The ruin is more complete than even I imagined it to be, and the fault is mine. Your friend—I ought to say our friend—Mr Beecham has made a generous offer for the business, and, with certain modifications, will allow it to be carried on under my management. This relieves us from immediate difficulties; and in a short time Mr Shield expects to have recovered sufficiently from his recent losses to be able to assist me in redeeming all that has been lost.’
‘What gladder news could there be than this?’ she exclaimed with cheeks aglow and brightening eyes; ‘and yet you tell it as if it gave you no pleasure. Philip, Philip! this is not like you—it is not right to be so melancholy when the future is so bright.’
‘Is it so bright? Are you forgetting how long it must be before I can repay Mr Shield? before’——
He was going to say, ‘before I can ask you to risk your future in mine, and what changes may take place meanwhile!’
The earnest tender eyes were fixed upon him, and they were reading his thoughts, whilst she appeared to be waiting for him to complete the interrupted sentence. She saw the colour slowly rising on his brow, and knew that he was feeling ashamed of the doubt implied in his thought.
‘I want to tell you something,’ she said in her quiet brave way, ‘and I hope—no, I believe that it will take one disagreeable fancy out of your head. I know that you did not mean what you said to me on that dreadful evening.’
‘What else could a ruined man say?’ (This huskily and turning his face aside.)
‘He could say that he trusted his friends. Even Uncle Dick is angry with you for imagining that your misfortune could make any difference in his feelings towards you. And for me, you ought to say ... but there, I am not going to speak about what you ought to say to me; I am only going to tell you what I shall do.’
He looked quickly at her, and the eager inquiry on his pale face rendered the words ‘What is that?’ superfluous.
‘I shall wait until you come for me; and when you come, I shall be ready to go with you where you will, whether you are poor or rich. No matter what anybody says—no matter what you say, I shall wait.’
‘O Madge!’
He could say nothing more; the man’s soul was in that whisper. Their hands were clasped: they were looking into each other’s eyes: the world seemed to sink away from them; and the woman’s devotion changed the winter into summer, changed the man’s ruin into success.
He drew her arm within his; and they walked past the blackened walls of the Manor, and along the paths where they had spent so many pleasant hours during his recovery from the accident with the horse, to the place where he had thrown off the doctor’s control and got out of the wheel-chair.
‘I am not so sorry now for what has happened,’ were his first words. ‘It is worth losing everything to gain so much.’
‘But you have not lost everything, Philip.’
‘No; I should say that I have won everything. I am glad to have saved Wrentham from penal servitude, for his frauds have enabled me to realise the greatest of all blessings—the knowledge that come what may you can make me happy.’
‘And I am happy too,’ she said softly, their arms tightening as they walked on again in silence.
By-and-by he lifted his head, and seemed to shake the frost from his hair.
‘The doctor said I ought to have rest. I have got it from you, Madge. I can look straight again at the whole botheration—thank you, my darling.’ (A gentle pressure on his arm was the answer, and he went on.) ‘The arrangement offered by Beecham is a very good and kind one, which will enable me in course of time to clear myself whilst carrying out my scheme; we can take a small house; Mr Shield will live with us, and we must try to make him comfortable. Then we need not wait for the end of next harvest, unless you still insist’——
‘No, Philip; when you bid me come to you, I am ready.’