Long after they had parted and gone their separate ways, Gilbert was silent, revolving this problem in his mind; and the more he thought about it, the bigger and uglier it grew.
‘Michael cares for nothing but to gratify his own wishes and impulses,’ Gilbert thought, darkly, feeling that this tendency of Michael’s interfered disagreeably with certain plans and projects of his own, which he did not recognise as proceeding from the same source.
After that, the conversations between them on such matters grew ever rarer and less expansive. Michael did not dwell on the matter, and, if he had thought about it, would have been too proud to allude to it after Gilbert had asked him whether he trusted him; and something, whether pride or another feeling, hindered Gilbert from opening out. Every day he grew more sedate, and his brow became grayer and more covered with its network of little fine wrinkles.
CHAPTER VI
GILBERT’S ‘COUP DE THEATRE’
Towards the end of every hunting season, those men in Bradstane and its vicinity who belonged to the institution known as the Tees Valley Hunt, were in the habit of meeting at the King’s Arms in Bradstane, and there partaking together of a luncheon, at which Sir Thomas Winthrop, the master, presided, and after which he read out the statistics of the past season, and laid before the assembled company any proposed new arrangements for the following year. Nothing was decided then; a regular meeting was called, to be held a week later, in which the affairs were discussed in earnest, and real business was done. It had come to pass with the lapse of years, that the gathering had become a very sociable one, dear to the hearts of those who partook in it; and they would not have given it up on any account.
This luncheon usually took place in the beginning of March, and was often a good deal talked about before it came off. It had been December when the meeting took place between Magdalen and Gilbert, during which each had silently given credit to the other for much keenness and acuteness of observation. It had been cold and inclement then, and a long bleak winter had followed, during which the interview had not been repeated—at least, no such interview as that. It may be that Gilbert had many a time ridden over the wild road leading from Bradstane to Middleton-in-Teesdale, for it was his habit daily to take a long walk or a long ride. He may have travelled over this road, solitary and sedate, as his wont and humour were, his lips moving now and then, when he felt himself to be quite alone on the silent roads, as if he whispered to himself endless calculations, but never too absorbed to recognise an acquaintance and acknowledge him if he met him—never too abstracted to know his own whereabouts amidst the moors and commons, or intricate cross country roads.
And it is more than probable that Magdalen, on her part, had many a dozen times paced that woodland path on which Gilbert had found her, trying, by the regular mechanical motion which, in her own mind, she compared with that of a treadmill, to grind down or pace out some of the suppressed savageness and discontent which gnawed her soul. This walking to and fro was almost her only mode of taking outdoor exercise. With all her veiled eagerness, her bitter sense of the consuming dulness of her life, she never left the Balder Hall grounds on foot, never sought any companionship with outside things or people. For her there were no long rambles, no casual, friendly greeting with farm or cottage folk whom she might see on the way.
This seclusion on her part was a subject on which she and Michael had occasional differences of opinion, which could hardly be called disputes, since Magdalen was in the habit of yielding the field at once to Michael in the matter of argument, merely telling him that no doubt he was quite right, and simply refusing to change her ways because she did not choose to do so.
‘It is too bad of you,’ said he, ‘when there is so much work crying out to be done. I could find you plenty of employment in Bridge Street, and one or two other slums.’
‘I haven’t a doubt of it. I feel not the slightest vocation for anything of the kind.’