He had schooled his heart we know. He had married from a sense of duty and grateful compassion. He was a faithful husband to a true wife, and when he lost her he mourned her as a valued friend. But though all the early love of his being had been kept alive and in a ferment by the sufferings of Augusta, as an honourable man he suffered no word or look to betray more than a friend’s sympathy. And still he kept as strong a guard over himself, though the tragic end of Laurence had set her free once more.
That last fatal act struck a sensitive chord in Augusta’s nature. There was no exultation at release. For a time she lost sight of his profligacy and cruelty, and accused herself of having hastened the catastrophe by leaving him to his own unbridled will and the temptress by his side. She wept for the handsome lover who had captivated her young fancy; she mourned for the besotted soul gone to its account with all its imperfections rampant.
“Let her alone,” said Mrs. Ashton to her sister; “the sharpest shower wears itself out soonest; she will come to her senses long before her crape is worn out.”
Mrs. Ashton was a true prophetess. For a long time the Fallowfield tragedy cast a shadow over the house at Ardwick, and they led very retired lives. Then harp and piano were heard once more, visitors were admitted, and the mansion that Kezia and Cicily united in declaring “worse than a nunnery,” grew bright and cheerful, though the widow’s weeds were not cast aside. (Kitty had been laid under the mould whilst Augusta was yet a bride).
Almost two years had elapsed. Suitors in plenty had been attracted by the wealthy young widow’s many charms, her old admirer, Mr. Marsland, among the rest, yet Mrs. Aspinall showed no disposition to change her state; and the one man who had loved her longest and best was not of the number at her feet. He scorned to importune now in his widowerhood for the love withheld when they were both young. He counted age by events, not years.
It was for Augusta now, she who had been taught by her very husband’s taunts and sneers to think upon the true man she had set aside, to think of him daily and hourly with rapidly strengthening attachment, and think of him as one who had dropped her from the book of his life for ever. Her whole thought was how could she become worthy the love of such a man; yet every day and hour the fear pressed heavily upon her that the quiet virtues of Ellen had driven her out of his heart altogether. Of all her guests he was the one most welcome, most desired, but he was the one she received with most reserve, the one whose stay was briefest, whose visits fewest. “Business” appeared to have more imperative claims on him than when he had his way to make; and Augusta, whose sables had long since been cast aside, seemed to wear them on her heart. The vivacity which had never wholly forsaken her in all her trials, forsook her now—she grew listless and melancholy.
Meanwhile Captain Richard Chadwick had come home on half-pay to brighten up the somewhat dull house in George Street, and comfort the old folk—to say nothing of astonishing Sim and Nelly, with his long yarns and adventures. Sim always spent part of his vacations with Mr. Clegg, who well paid back to Bess all her early care of him. He indulged the boy’s craving for books and pencils, first implanted by himself and in which he saw the dawn of his future career. That which in his own case had been repressed and subordinated to trade and money-making, should not be so checked in that boy; and old Simon, to whom the lad appeared a marvel, never ceased to pride himself on his forecast in pronouncing Jabez a “Godsend.”
It was during the second summer of her widowhood, when Augusta accompanied her mother (not a whit the less stately than of yore) to Carr Cottage for the first time since her attempted elopement, that the feeling of all she had cast from her, and all that she had brought upon herself, all that might have been, and now never would be, pressed heaviest upon her. She had gone thoughtfully over the old ground, had trod the nettle-grown Lovers’ Walk, and sat down on the open window-ledge at the stair-foot as once before, and wept tears of penitent bitterness. How long she sat there she could not tell; she was weeping for a life lost and a love rejected. As once before, the voice of Jabez (whom she imagined eighteen miles away) broke upon her solitude, but now it thrilled through her.
There was a light touch upon her shoulder.
“Mrs. Aspinall?”