“George, George! I don’t understand. What’s to be divided? What do we get?” cried Mrs. George, standing up, the tears only half dried in her eyes, her rose tints coming back to her face.
George was so startled and overwhelmed by information which entered but slowly into an intelligence confused by ill-fortune, that for the moment he made his wife no reply; but Tom did, who had already fully savoured all the sweets and bitters of this astounding change of affairs.
“Mrs. Chester,” he said, with an ironical bow, “you get Bedloe, my father’s place, that he never would have let you set foot in, if he could have helped it, poor old governor. And the rest of us get—our due; oh yes, we get our due. I know I was a fool and didn’t keep his favour when I had got it; and you, Winnie, you traitor, oh, you traitor! There isn’t a female for the word, is there? it should be female altogether. You that he put his last trust in, poor old governor! you’ve served him out the best of any of us,” said Tom, with a burst of violent laughter, “and there’s an end of him and all his schemes!” he cried.
Winifred rose up tremulous. There was perhaps in her heart too an echo of Tom’s rage and sense of wrong. This woman, the reverse of all that her father’s ambition (vulgar ambition, yet so strong) had hoped for, to be the mistress of the house! And Bedloe, which Winnie loved, to pass away to a family which had rubbed off and forgotten even the little gloss of artificial polish which Mr. Chester had procured for his sons. She would have given it to them had the power been in her hands, she had always intended it, never from the first moment meant anything else. And yet when all was thus arranged according to her wish, above her hopes, Winifred felt, to the bottom of her heart, that to give up her home to Mrs. George was a thing not to be accomplished without a thrill of indignation, a sense of wrong. And the very relief which filled her soul brought back to her those individual miseries which this blessed decision (for it was a blessed decision though cruel) could not take away. She made Tom no reply. She scarcely returned the pressure of Mr. Babington’s kind hand. She said not a word to the agitated, triumphant, yet astonished pair, who could not yet understand what good fortune had happened to them. She went straight out of the library to Miss Farrell’s room. She still wore her hat and outdoor dress. She took her old friend’s hand, and drew her out of the chair in which she had been seated, watching for every opening of the door. “Come,” she said, “come away.”
“What has happened, Winnie? What has happened?”
“Everything that is best. George has got Bedloe. It is all right, all right, better than any one could have hoped. And I shall not sleep another night under this roof. Dear Miss Farrell, if you love me, come away, come away!”
CHAPTER XX
EDWARD LANGTON had never meant to forsake his love. He intended no more to give her up because she did not agree with him, because he thought her mistaken, or even because she had rejected his guidance and wounded his pride, than he meant to give up his life. But he had been very deeply wounded by her acceptance of his withdrawal at that critical moment. She had not chosen to put him, her natural defender, between her brothers and herself. She had refused, so his thoughts went on to say, his intervention. She had preferred to keep her interests separate from his, to give him no share in what might be the most important act of her life. He would not believe it possible when he left her. As he crossed the hall and hurried down the avenue, he thought every moment that he heard some one, a messenger hastening after him to bring him back. But there was no such messenger. He expected next morning a letter of explanation, of apology, at least of invitation imploring him not to forsake her—but there was none. While Winifred’s heart sank lower and lower at the absence of any communication from him, he was waiting with a mingled sense of dismay, astonishment, and indignation for something from her. It seemed incredible to him that she should not write to soothe away his offence, to explain herself. His first sensation indeed had been that the offence given to him was deadly and not to be explained, and that she who would not have him to help her in her trouble, could not want him in her life; but before the next morning came he had reasoned himself into a certainty that he should have as full an explanation as it was possible to make, that she would excuse herself by means of a hundred arguments which his own reason suggested to him, and call him to her with every persuasion of love. But nothing of the kind took place— Winifred, sick and miserable, awaited on her side the letter, the inquiry which never came, and felt herself forsaken at the moment when every generous heart, she thought, must have felt how much she needed support and sympathy. She did not want his interference; she had been able to manage her family business—to do without him; he had been de trop between her brothers and herself. Then let it be so! he said at last to himself, and plunged into his work, riding hither and thither, visiting even patients who needed him no longer, to prove to himself that he was too much and too seriously offended to care. To be sure, he was not the man to stand cap in hand and plead for her favour.
He went over all the district in those three days, dashing along the roads, hurrying from one hamlet to another. It was not the life he had been so foolish as to imagine to himself, the life—he felt himself blush hotly at the recollection—of the master of Bedloe, restoring the prestige of the old name, changing the aspect of the district, ameliorating everything as only (he thought) a man who was born the friend and master of the place could do. It had been an ideal life which he had imagined for himself, not one of selfishness. He had meant to brighten the very face of the country, to mend everything that needed mending, to do good to the poor people, who were his own people. He remembered now that there were those who thought it humiliating and base for a man to be enriched by his wife, and the subtle contempt of women embodied in that popular prejudice rose up in hot and painful shame to his heart and his face. A man is never so sure that women are inferior, as when a woman has neglected or played him false. Edward Langton’s heart was very sore, but he began to say to himself that it served him right for his meanness in depending on a woman, and that a man ought to be indebted to his own exertions and not look for advancement in so humiliating a way. These thoughts grew more and more bitter as the days went on. He flung himself into his work: an epidemic would have pleased him better than the mild little ailments or lingering chronic diseases which were the only visitations known among those healthy country folk; but such as they were he made the most of them, frightening the sick people by the unnecessary energy of his attendance, and saying to himself that this, and not a fiction of the imagination or anything so degrading as a wife’s fortune, was his true life. That he flew about the country without many a lingering unwilling look towards Bedloe, it would be false to say. His way wherever he went led him past the park gates, which he found always closed, silent, giving no sign. On the one occasion when Winifred perceived him descending the hill, by one of those hazards which continually arise to confuse human affairs, he, for the moment half-happy in the entrancement of a case which presented dangerous complications, did not see or recognise the little pony carriage lingering under the russet trees, and thus missed the only chance of a meeting and explanation; but he did meet, when that chance was over, next day, in the afternoon, Mr. Babington driving his heavy old phaeton from the gates of Bedloe. Langton’s heart gave a leap even at this means of hearing something of Winnie; but perhaps his pride would still have prevented any clearing up, had not the old lawyer taken it into his own hands. He stopped his horse and waited till Edward, who was walking home from the house of a patient in the village, came up.
“I want to speak to you,” Mr. Babington said. “Will you jump up and come with me along the road, or will you offer me your hospitality and a bit of dinner? There is full moon to-night and I don’t mind being late. Oh, if it’s not convenient, never mind.”