"Mrs. Frere is always right, to be sure; but in this case, I think, she would be certain to know it positively, if such were the case. Frere would know it--he is so great a friend and ally of Robert--and he would tell her. No, no, Ellen; on this point I stick to my own opinion." Which was, indeed, the reverend gentleman's habit in all matters wherein he differed from his fellow-creatures.
Mr. Dutton's dislike of Katharine Streightley was only exceeded by his regard for Hester Frere. This sentiment, like all his sentiments, was entirely disinterested, and had sprung into existence long before Hester had taken any active interest in his affairs. According to her usual wise custom, Miss Gould had made herself agreeable to her friend's lover before she was in a position which enabled her to patronise him; and he had conceived a genuine liking for her, into which the element of gratitude was now introduced. Hester had brought her common-sense, her unfailing tact, and her powers of deferential persuasion to bear upon Ellen's betrothed respecting the missionary question; and as she understood the good little man's weaknesses as well as she understood his narrow sincerity and stupid zeal, she came out of the discussion with entire success. Mr. Dutton was brought to recognise the force of the reasoning which maintained that English savages are as well worth saving as Polynesian savages, and that the labour implied in the task is at least as arduous, and considerably more repulsive. Hester had her own notions as to his fitness for either task; but she kept them to herself, being supremely indifferent to the spiritual welfare of the world on either side of the Equator. "I daresay his parishioners won't swallow his doctrines," she said to herself contentedly; "but then neither will they swallow his wife." And she derived very great satisfaction from the promptitude and skill with which Mr. Thacker had executed the commission intrusted to him, before the great absorbing interest of this woman's life had arisen, to overpower every other. A living had been found in a situation which almost realised the conditions prescribed by Hester, and the marriage of Ellen and Decimus was to take place immediately.
To this, as to most other external circumstances, Robert was indifferent; he had lost his interest in such things now: his only feeling about it was regret that he could not give his sister a large dowry, as he had once hoped to do. He had been consulted in a formal way by both Decimus and Ellen, and he had agreed to all their plans; then, his duty being done, he turned away again, and fed upon his sorrow in silence,--in a silence growing submissive, full of repentance and humility. His sin had found him out, and the chastisement was heavy upon him; but Robert was discerning more and more clearly that the hand which was dealing it was God's hand, and he was learning to kiss the rod. Very, very slowly were these lessons learned: the progress of the human soul in the school of the wisdom which is not of this world, is never rapid; but neither is it ever arrested, turned aside, or ineffectual.
The long winter, the bright spring, the gay summer had twice come and gone, since that November day which had witnessed Katharine's flight, and the rich tints of autumn were upon the beautiful beechwoods of Middlemeads. The place that was to know her no more, never again to be adorned by her graceful presence or enlivened by her beauty, was, to all outward appearance, not a whit the worse for the privation. It was still splendid, still luxurious, still gay; still the home of youth and beauty, of fashion and frivolity. It was Hester Frere's home now; and Gordon was master of the house from which the woman whom he had loved and lost had turned resolutely away, to be lost in utter obscurity. He thought of this at times with keen pain; for a change had passed upon him too, and he was more serious than he had been; which seriousness his wife marked, and, assigning to it as a primary cause one which was but secondary, bitterly resented. Gordon had learned with displeasure as well as astonishment that his wife was the possessor of Middlemeads; the "profitable investment" had no charms for him to counterbalance the unpleasantness and what he felt to be the difficulty of such a position. But what could he do? His wife's friendship with the Streightleys was no reason why she should not live at Middlemeads, since it was evident that not one of those concerned had any notion that her living there was any offence to that friendship. The real reason against it was confined to his knowledge, and must not be imparted to his wife. Had he arbitrarily crossed her wishes, he would have been gratuitously unkind, and that it was not in Gordon's nature to be; and so he went to Middlemeads against his will, and remained there, deriving very moderate pleasure from the abode, and feeling that the coldness and restraint which had sprung up between him and Hester since the occasion of their conversation about Katharine were inexplicably increased by the possession of the place.
Since that memorable night Katharine's name had never been spoken between them. Hester knew that her husband and Robert Streightley were much more intimate than they had previously been; and this knowledge fed the jealous passion which devoured her. "They meet to talk of her, these two men whom she took from me," she would think; and her once-powerful and well-trained common-sense failed to come to her aid here, when her need was at its utmost. She would have been desperately angry had she known that Gordon had told Robert his objection to living at Middlemeads, and that it was Robert who had quieted his scruples.
"Don't mind about me, Frere," Robert had said. "What does it matter to me? I could never see the place again, you know; and it makes no difference to me who lives there. Hester always liked it, I remember; and I am glad to think she has it now. I am indeed, Frere; I am, upon my honour."
And he was. All this was only a trifle, a secondary point of delicacy, a nothing; it had no influence upon his fate, it did not wound his feelings; the calamity that had come upon him left him no sensitiveness to spare for minor suffering. He never saw Hester now; but that was accident, not design: he had not the remotest notion that she had any meaning in his life beyond the trifling meaning she had always had; he never thought of her at all, indeed. When she was in town Ellen was much with her, he knew; and he also knew that she had procured the living whose charms had diverted Decimus from those of black heathendom; he knew that Ellen was to pass some time with her at Middlemeads in the autumn; but that was all. It had occurred to him to wonder a little how Ellen would feel at Middlemeads without Katharine. But Robert knew his sister; and he smiled at the passing thought, and at himself.
So Hester was in possession. The dream she had dreamed had become a reality. She was mistress of Middlemeads, owner of the home of her unconscious enemy, and of the possessions which had belonged to the man who had preferred another before her. More than this, she was the wife of the man her enemy had loved--still loved, perhaps: she had no clue to Katharine's thoughts, no power to read the change which time had wrought in her. Was ever revenge so safe, so sure as hers? was ever revenge so complete? And it had not compromised her in the least: she was all the richer in money, and none the poorer in friends; she could talk of Mrs. Streightley with polite pity, and if by any extraordinary chance the fugitive should ever again come to the surface of society, she could even meet her, unsuspected, unrebuked. Truly her success had been marvellous, her good fortune and her good management unsurpassed; and her secret was so entirely her own. A little impetuousness, the least loss of self-control, and she might have betrayed herself to Thacker. (Hester was quite unconscious of the tone in which she had spoken in the church-porch on the occasion of Robert's marriage.) But she had never lost her self-control; and he knew nothing. Supposing him to suspect, what matter? she dreaded not suspicion, but knowledge.
Hester was happy, then. Happy in her wealth, her popularity, her authority, in her success and prosperity. Happy, as she sat with Lady Henmarsh, who was clad in the deepest and glossiest of widow's weeds, having been disembarrassed of Sir Timothy by the kind hand of death early in the preceding spring, and was now enjoying Hester's hospitality, which she proposed to enjoy as fully and for as long a period as possible. The scene suggested happiness. The two ladies were seated at the large French window of the room which the former mistress of Middlemeads had occupied as a dressing-room, and which was furnished in a style at once sumptuous and tasteful; yet it was not furnished as in Katharine's time. The conservatory, with the fountain and the marble floor, the aviary, and the flight of marble steps by which the Italian garden was to be reached, were there, but the "Lady-Kilmantan" hangings and furniture, the subject of Mrs. Stanbourne's remonstrance with Katharine, had disappeared. Hester, consistent even in the novel defects she was acquiring, had sent all these things to Ellen's future home. She would dissociate herself as far as possible from Katharine,--her private rooms should bear no trace of her; but she would make a judicious use of articles of property, notwithstanding Gordon noticed the alteration, and gave his wife offence by doing so.
"Didn't you like the blue-and-silver things in your dressing-room, Hester? I thought them very pretty."