“My dear,” cried Mrs. Lenny, confused, “what do I know about your brother? I never heard of him before, and oh, I wish I had not heard of him now. Do you think I would harm him if I had the power to help it? Not I—not I! if there was anything in my power!”
And with this the good woman let fall upon her gloves, which were green, a few tears. Why should she cry because of Paul if she did not know him? Fortunately for Alice the ponies at that moment gave her no small trouble. She had been thinking of other things and they took the advantage. They wanted to take her home the back way into the stables. Greedy little brutes! as if they had not everything that heart of pony could desire—plenty of corn, plenty of ease, and the prettiest stable with enamelled mangers and everything handsome about them. She stopped them as they began to twist round in the wrong direction, tossing their heads aloft. If they thought to take Alice unawares they were mistaken. Thus she was obliged to withdraw her attention altogether from Mrs. Lenny and fix it upon this rebellious pair, getting them past the dangerous byway and bringing them up with a sweep and dash to the steps of the great door.
CHAPTER VIII.
Meanwhile Sir William Markham had been strangely employed. He came home to get himself brushed free of the dust of his journey; but when he got to the house he thought of that errand no more. He asked for his letters as if these were all that he was thinking of. And you may suppose that in a house which knew the importance of letters, and was aware of all the momentous issues of neglect in that particular, Sir William’s letters were carefully arranged on the table in the library. He asked for them, which was unnecessary, and looked so full of business and importance, that Brown found “a screw loose” in his master too. This was not his usual aspect when he came home. Then the busy statesman allowed himself a holiday. Even when he was in office (much more being in opposition), he had put off his burden of official cares, and had strolled up the avenue with his wife without caring for his letters. When Brown answered respectfully, “They are in the library, Sir William;” within himself that functionary shook his head and said, “There is something wrong.” Sir William went into the library, which was large and dim and cool, the very home of quiet leisure and comfort—and closed the door after him with a sense of relief. His letters were all laid out on the table, but he did not so much as look at them. He sat down in his usual chair, and leaned his head in his hands, and gazed into the blank air before him. Was this all he had come for? Certainly he did nothing more: gazed out straight before him and saw nothing; sat motionless doing nothing; paused altogether body and soul. He was not aware yet of the second visitor who had arrived; but he was in no doubt about the first. He did not require to ask himself what his old friend,—whose name had tingled through and through him, though he had professed that he scarcely remembered it—wanted of him. That early chapter of his life which he had put away entirely, which he had honestly forgotten as if it had not been, came back to him in a moment, no longer capable of being forgotten as he sat by his daughter’s side in the little pony carriage. He had not meant any harm in putting it so entirely from him. But nothing is ever lost in this tenacious world. Bury a secret in the deepest earth, and some chance digger, thinking of other things, will bring it up without intending it. Exercise even the most innocent reticence about your own affairs, matters in which you have a perfect right to judge for yourself, and some time or other even this will come up against you like a crime. What harm had he done by burying in his own heart a little inconsequent chapter of his life, an episode that had come to an end so soon, that had left so few results behind? What results had it left? The only one had been promptly and conclusively taken off his hands. He had never felt it; he had never been conscious of any responsibility in respect to it. But that which had seemed to him nothing but a broken thread at twenty-five, was it to reappear against him at sixty like a web of fate perplexing and entangling his feet? A cold dew came out upon his forehead when he thought of his wife. Were she to hear it, were she to know, how could he ever again look her in the face? And yet he had done her no wrong. There had been no harm, no evil intention in his mind. Half inadvertence, and half a dislike to return to a matter which was an irritation to his orderly mind, as well as a recollection of pain—an incident that had come to nothing, a false beginning in life—were the causes of his original silence about his own youth and all that was in it. A man who marries at forty, is it necessary that he should unfold everything that happened to him at twenty-five? and he had been done with it all; had closed the chapter altogether so very long ago. That it should be re-opened now was intolerable. But yet Sir William knew that he must bear it; he must subdue all signs of annoyance, he must receive his unwelcome visitor as if he were pleased to see him, and ascertain what he wanted, and steal, if possible, his weapons out of his hands.
These were the thoughts in his mind as he sat alone and pondered, arranging his ideas. He had known what it was to be much troubled by public business in his day, but he had experienced little trouble with his own. All was orderly and well regulated in his private affairs: no skeletons in the cupboards, nothing anywhere that could not meet the eye of day. This was the very sting of the present occurrence to him. A secret! That he should be convicted of a hidden chapter of early indiscretion, of having taken a foolish step which might have coloured all his life! Though it was no wrong to her, his wife could scarcely fail to think it a wrong, and he could not but suffer in the estimation of everybody who heard of it. Already, was he not humiliated in his own eyes? But for this pause which enabled him to rearrange his thoughts, to settle his plan of operations, he felt that he must have been overwhelmed altogether. At last, with a sigh, he got up and prepared himself to issue forth out of his sanctuary, and meet the dangers that threatened him; he to be threatened with dangers of such a sort!—It was intolerable—yet it had to be borne. He went out to meet the party which he could hear coming up the avenue. Brown looked at him with suspicious eyes as he came into the hall. Could Brown know anything? did everybody know? Even Lady Markham, he thought, looked at him strangely, almost with alarm. But it is unnecessary to say that this was all in Sir William’s imagination. No one had as yet associated any idea of mystery with him. His wife only thought he was weary with the work of the session, and looking pale. She was standing talking to Colonel Lenny, waiting till Alice should draw up at the door. Sir William, with a faint gleam of returning pleasure, stood on the top of the steps and waited too; but then he was confronted by the vision of the pink bonnet by his daughter’s side. A pink bonnet! who had been talking of a pink bonnet? He came down slowly, half afraid of this and everything else that was new.
“In good time, Markham,” said Colonel Lenny, waving his hand; “here is another old friend come to see you. She is changed more than you are. From a girl, and a pretty one, she has grown an old woman, and that’s not a thing to be permitted; but an old friend, my dear fellow, and more than an old friend. Can’t you see it’s Katey? Katey, my wife?”
“Katey!” Even Sir William’s steady nerves gave way a little. His eyes seemed to give a startled leap of alarm in their sockets. For a moment the impulse in his mind was to turn and fly. Lenny was bad, but his wife was a hundred times worse; and she looked at him, leaning out of the pony carriage and holding out her hands as if she meant to kiss him; but that was more than flesh and blood could bear. “Katey!” he said; “I cannot believe my eyes. Is it Katey Gaveston after all these years? I know I’ve grown an old man, and everything has changed, but——”
“You never thought to see the like of me such an old woman? Ah, Will, but it’s true. I am Katey Gaveston, as sure as you stand there. I came after him, to stop him from making mischief. He don’t mean it—we know that; but he’s just as simple as ever. He blurts everything out.”
This speech went through and through Sir William. The light seemed to fail from his eyes for a moment; but when he looked round all was as before—Lady Markham talking to Brown, and Alice to the groom, who had come for the pony carriage.
“Hush!” he said, instinctively, with a shudder, giving her his hand to help her to step out. “Hush!” Then, making a little effort over himself, he added, “We are to have time, I hope, to talk over old stories quietly—at our leisure—no need to go back in a moment from the present to the past.”