A Country Gentleman and his Family Part 14

"Markland?" said d.i.c.k. "Oh yes, I remember. Lord Markland, who---- He died, didn't he? It may not be a satisfactory household, but still he might have gone there without any harm."

"Oh, I don't suppose there was any harm, except the love of bad company; that seems a fascination which some men cannot resist. I don't care two straws myself whether there was harm or not; but it is a bitter sort of recollection for _her_."

"They were both quite young, were they not?"

"Markland was over thirty," said the young man, who was but twenty-two; "and she is--oh, she is, I suppose, about my age."

He knew, indeed, exactly what was her age; but what did that matter to a stranger? She was superior to him, it was true, in that as in all other things.

"I have heard they were not very happy," d.i.c.k said. He cared no more for the Marklands than he did for the domestic concerns of the guard who had looked at his ticket two minutes ago; but anything answered for conversation, which in the present state of his mind he could not exert himself to make brilliant.

"Oh, happy!" cried Warrender. "How could they be happy? She a woman with the finest perceptions, and a mind--such as you seldom find in a woman; and he the sort of person who could find pleasure in the conversation that goes on in a house like that."

d.i.c.k did not say anything for some time; he felt as though all the people he met in these parts must go on like this, in absolute unconsciousness, giving him blow after blow. "I don't mean to take up the cudgels for that sort of people," he said at last; "but they are--not always stupid, you know." But to this semi-defence his companion gave no heed.

"She was no more than a child when she was married," said Warrender, with excitement, "a little girl out of the nursery. How was she to know?

She had never seen anybody, and to expect her to be able to judge at sixteen----"

"That is always bad," said d.i.c.k, musing. He was like the other, full of his own thoughts. "Yet some girls are very much developed at sixteen. I knew a fellow once who---- And she went entirely to the bad."

"What are you talking of?" cried Warrender, almost roughly. "She was like a little angel herself, and knew nothing different--and when that fellow--who had been a handsome fellow they say--fell in love with her, and would not leave her alone for a moment, I, for one, forgive her for being deceived. I admire her for it," he went on. "She was as innocent as a flower. Was it possible she could suspect what sort of a man he was? It has given her such a blow in her ideal that I doubt if she will ever recover. It seems as if she could not believe again in genuine, unselfish love."

"Perhaps it is too early to talk to her about such subjects."

"Too early! Do you think I talk to her about such subjects? But one cannot talk of the greatest subjects as we do without touching on them.

Lady Markland is very fond of conversation. She lets me talk to her, which is great condescension, for she is--much more thoughtful, and has far more insight and mental power, than I."

"And more experience," said d.i.c.k.

"What do you mean? Well, yes; no doubt her marriage has given her a sort of dolorous experience. She is acquainted with actual life. When it so happens that in the course of conversation we touch on such subjects I find she always leans to the darker side." He paused for a moment, adding abruptly, "And then there is her boy."

"Oh," said d.i.c.k, "has she a boy?"

"That's what I'm going to town about. She is very anxious for a tutor for this boy. My opinion is that he is a great deal too much for her.

And who can tell what he may turn out? I have brought her to see that he wants a man to look after him."

"She should send him to school. With a child who has been a pet at home that is the best way."

"Did I say he had been a pet at home? She is a great deal too wise for that. Still, the boy is too much for her, and if I could hear of a tutor---- Cavendish, you are just the sort of fellow to know. I have not told her what I am going to do, but I think if I could find some one who would answer I have influence enough----" Warrender said this with a sudden glow of colour to his face, and a conscious glance; a glance which dared the other to form any conclusions from what he said, yet in a moment avowed and justified them. d.i.c.k was very full of his own thoughts, and yet at sight of this he could not help but smile. His heart was touched by the sight of the young pa.s.sion, which had no intention of disclosing itself, yet could think of nothing and talk of nothing but the person beloved.

"I don't know how you feel about it, Warrender," he said, "but if I had a--friend whom I prized so much, I should not introduce another fellow to be near her constantly, and probably to--win her confidence, you know; for a lady in these circ.u.mstances must stand greatly in need of some one to--to consult with, and to take little things off her hands, and save her trouble, and--and all that."

"That is just what I am trying to do," said Warrender. "As for her grief, you know--which isn't so much grief as a dreadful shock to her nerves, and the const.i.tution of her mind, and many things we needn't mention--as for that, no one can meddle. But just to make her feel that there is some one to whom nothing is a trouble, who will go anywhere, or do anything----"

"Well: that's what the tutor will get into doing, if you don't mind.

I'll tell you, Warrender, what I would do if I were you. I'd be the tutor myself."

"I am glad I spoke to you," said the young man. "It is very pleasant to meet with a mind that is sympathetic. You perceive what I mean. I must think it all over. I do not know if I can do what you say, but if it could be managed, certainly---- Anyhow, I am very much obliged to you for the advice."

"Oh, that is nothing," said d.i.c.k; "but I think I can enter into your feelings."

"And so few do," said Warrender; "either it is made the subject of injurious remarks--remarks which, if they came to her ears, would--or a succession of feeble jokes more odious still, or suggestions that it would be better for me to look after my own business. I am not neglecting my own business that I am aware of; a few trees to cut down, a few farms to look after, are not so important. I hope now," he added, "you are no longer astonished that the small interests of the University don't tell for very much in comparison."

"I beg you a thousand pardons, Warrender. I had forgotten all about the University."

"It does not matter," he said, waving his hand; "it does not make the least difference to me. It would not change my determination in any way, whatever might depend upon it; and nothing really depends upon it. I can't tell you how much obliged I am to you for your sympathy, Cavendish."

He added, after a moment, "It is doubly good of you to enter into my difficulties, everything being so easy-going in your own life."

Cavendish looked at his companion with eyes that twinkled with a sort of tragic laughter. It was natural for the young one to feel himself in a grand and unique position, as a very young man seized by a _grande pa.s.sion_ is so apt to do; but the fine superiority and conviction that he was not as other men gave a grim amus.e.m.e.nt to the man who was so easy-going, whose life was all plain sailing in the other's sight. "All the more reason," he said, with a laugh, "being safe myself, that I should take an interest in you." He laughed again, so that for the moment Warrender, with momentary rage, believed himself the object of his friend's derision. But a glance at Cavendish dispelled this fear, and presently each retired into his corner, and they sat opposite to each other saying nothing, while the long levels of the green country flew past them, and the clang of the going swept every other sound away.

They were alone in their compartment, each buried in his thoughts: the one in all the absorption of a sudden and overwhelming pa.s.sion, not without a certain pride in it and in himself, although consciously thinking of nothing but of _her_, going over and over their last interviews, and forming visions to himself of the future; while the other, he who was so easy-going, the cheerful companion, unexpectedly found to be so sympathetic, but otherwise somewhat compa.s.sionately regarded as superficial and commonplace by the youth newly plunged into life,--the other went back into those recollections which were his, which had been confided to none, which he had thought laid to rest and half forgotten, but which had suddenly surged up again with so extraordinary a revival of pain. The presence of Warrender opposite to him, and the unconscious revelation he had made of the condition of his own mind and thoughts, had transported d.i.c.k back again for a moment into what seemed an age, a century past, the time when he had been as his friend was, in the ecstasy of a youthful pa.s.sion. He remembered that; then with quick scorn and disdain turned from the thought, and plunged into the deep abysses of possibility which he now saw opening at his feet. He had said to himself that the past was altogether past, and that he could begin in his own country, far from the a.s.sociations of his brief and unhappy meddling with fate, a new existence, one natural to him, among his own people, in the occupations he understood. He had not understood either himself or life in that strange, extravagant essay at living which he had made and ended, as he had thought, and of which n.o.body knew anything. How could he tell, he asked himself now, how much or how little was known? Was anything ever ended until death had put the finis to mortal history?

These young men sat opposite to each other, two excellent examples of the well-born, well-bred young Englishman, admirably dressed, with that indifference to and ease in their well-fitting garments, that easy and careful simplicity, which only the Anglo-Saxon seems able to attain to in such apparel; Warrender, indeed, with something of that dreamy look about the eyes which betrays the abstraction of the mind in a realm of imagination, but nothing besides which could have suggested to any spectator the presence of either mystery in the past or danger in the future, beyond the dangers of flood or field. They were both above the reach of need, but both with that wholesome necessity for doing which is in English blood, and all the world before them--public duty and private happiness, the inheritance of the cla.s.s to which they belonged.

Yet to one care had come in the guise of pa.s.sion; and the other was setting out upon a second beginning, no one knew how heavily laden and handicapped in the struggle of life.

CHAPTER XVI.

By this time London was on the eve of its periodical moment of desertion; the fashionable people all gone or going; legislators weary and worn, blaspheming the hot late July days, and everything grown shabby with dust and sunshine; the trees and the gra.s.s no longer green, but brown in the parks; the flowers in the balconies overgrown; the atmosphere all used up and exhausted; and the great town, on the eve of holiday, grown impatient of itself. Although fashion is but so small a part of the myriads of London, it is astonishing how its habits affect the general living, and how many, diversely and afar off, form a certain law to themselves of its dictates, though untouched by its tide.

Warrender had never known anything about London. His habits were entirely distinct from those of the young men, both high and low, who find their paradise in its haunts and crowds. When he left Cavendish on their arrival, not without a suggestion on d.i.c.k's part of an after meeting which the other did not accept, for no reason but because in his present condition it was more pleasant to him to be alone, Warrender, who did not know where to go or what to do in order to carry out the commission which he had so vaguely taken upon him, walked vaguely along, carrying about him the same mist of dreams which made other scenes dim. Where was he to find a tutor in the streets of London? He turned to the Park by habit, as that was the direction in which, half mechanically, he was in the habit of finding himself when he went to town. But he was still less likely to find a tutor for Lady Markland's boy in the lessened ranks of the loungers in Rotten Row than he was in the streets. He walked among them with his head in the clouds, thinking of what she had said when last he saw her; inquiring into every word she had uttered; finding, with a sudden flash of delight, a new meaning which might perchance lurk in a phrase of hers, and which could be construed into the intoxicating belief that she had thought of him in his absence. This was far more interesting than any of the vague processional effects that glided half seen before his eyes, the streams of people with no apparent meaning in them, who were going and coming, flowing this way and the other, on their commonplace business. The phantasmagoria of moving forms and faces went past and past, as he thought, altogether insignificant, meaning nothing.

She had said, "I wondered if you remarked"--something that had happened when they were apart from each other; a sunset it was, now he remembered, of remarkable splendour, which she had spoken of next day. "I wondered if you remarked," not I wonder, which would have meant that at that moment she was in the act of wondering, but I wonder_ed_, in the past, as if, when the glorious crimsons and purples struck her imagination, and gave her that high delight which nature can give to the lofty mind (the adjectives too were his, poor boy), she had thought of him, perhaps, as the one of all her friends who was most likely to feel as she was feeling. Poor Warrender was conscious, with bitter shame and indignation against himself, that at that moment he was buried in his father's gloomy library, deep in the shadow of those trees which he had no longer leisure to think of cutting, and was not so much as aware that there was a sunset at all; and this he had been obliged to confess, with pa.s.sionate regret (since she had seen it, and given it thus an interest beyond sunsettings): but afterwards recalled, with the tempestuous sudden joy and misery that seized upon him all at once now.

In the middle of Rotten Row! with still so many pretty creatures on so many fine horses cantering past, and even what was more wonderful, Brunson, that inevitable compet.i.tor, the substance of solid success to Warrender's romance of shadowy glory, walking along with his arm in that of another scholar, and pointing to the man of dreams who saw them not.

"He is working out that pa.s.sage in the Politics that your tutor makes such a pother about," said the other. "Not a bit of it," cried Brunson, "for that would pay." But they gave him credit, at all events, for some cla.s.sic theme, and not for the discoveries he was making in that other subject which is not cla.s.sic, though universal; whereas the only text that entered into his dreams was that past tense, opening up so many vistas of thought which he had not realised before. Was there ever a broken sentence of Aristotle that moved so much the scholar to whom a new reading has suddenly appeared? There is no limiting the power of human emotion which can flow in almost any channel, but enthusiastic indeed must be the son of learning in whose bosom the difference of the past and the present tense would raise so great a ferment. "I wondered if you remarked." It lit up heaven and earth with new lights to Warrender. He wanted no more to raise his musings into ecstasy. He pictured her standing looking out upon the changing sky, feeling perhaps a loneliness about her, wanting to say her word, but with no one near whose ear was fit to receive it. "I wondered"--and he all the while unconscious, like a dolt, like a clod, with his dim windows already full of twilight, his mossy old trees hanging over him, his back turned, even, could it have penetrated through dead walls and heavy shade, to the glow in the west! While he thought of it his countenance too glowed with shame. He said to himself that never, should he live a hundred years, would he again be thus insensible to that great and splendid ceremonial which ends the day. For that moment she had wanted him, she had need of him: and not even in spirit had he been at hand, as her knight and servant ought to be.

And all this, as we have said, in the middle of Rotten Row! He remembered the spot afterwards, the very place where that revelation had been made to him: but never was aware that he had met Brunson, who was pa.s.sing through London on his way to join a reading party, and was in the meantime, in pa.s.sing, making use of all the diversions that came in his way, in the end of the season, as so reasonable and practical a person naturally would do.

Warrender went long and far in the strength of this marvellous supply of spiritual food, and wanted no other; but at last, a long time after, when it was nearly time to go back to his train, bethought himself that it would be better to lunch somewhere, for the sake of the questions which would be certainly put to him when he got home on this point. In the meantime he had occupied himself by looking out and buying certain new books, which he had either heard her inquire about or thought she would like to see--and remembered one or two trifles she had mentioned which she wanted from town, and even laid in a stock of amus.e.m.e.nts for little Geoff,--boys' books, suited rather to his years than to his precocity. About the other and more serious part of his self-const.i.tuted mission Warrender, however, had done nothing. He had pa.s.sed one of those "Scholastic Agencies," which it had been his (vague) intention to inquire at, had paused and pa.s.sed it by. There was truth, he reflected, in what Cavendish said. How could he tell who might be recommended to him as tutor for Geoff? Perhaps some man who would be his own superior, to whom she might talk of the sunset or even of other matters, who might worm his way into the place which had already begun to become Warrender's place,--that of referee and executor of troublesome trifles, adviser at least in small affairs.

He then began to reflect that in all probability a tutor in the house would be a trouble and embarra.s.sment to Lady Markland: one who could come for a few hours every day (and was there not one who would be too happy of the excuse to wait upon his mistress daily?) one who could engage Geoff with work to be done, so that the mother might be free; one, indeed, who would thus supplement the offices already held, and become indispensable where now he was only precariously necessary, capable of being superseded. It is very possible that in any case, even had he not asked the valuable advice of d.i.c.k Cavendish, his journey to London would have come to nothing; for he was in the condition to which a practical proceeding of such a kind is inharmonious, and in which all action is somewhat against the grain. But with the support of d.i.c.k's advice his reluctance was justified to himself, and he returned to Underwood with a consciousness of having given up his first plan for a better one, and of having found by much thought an expedient better calculated to answer all needs. Meanwhile he carried with him everywhere the delight of that discovery which he had made. To say over the words was enough,--I wondered if you remarked. Had Cavendish been with him on the return journey, or had any stranger addressed him on the way, this was the phrase which he would have used in reply. He watched the sunset eagerly as he walked home from the station, laden with his parcel of books. It was not this time a remarkable sunset. It was even a little pale, as if it might possibly rain to-morrow, but still he watched, with an eye to all the changes of colour. Perhaps nature had not hitherto called him with a very strong voice; but there came a great many sc.r.a.ps of poetry floating in his head which might have given an interest to sunsets even before Lady Markland. There was something about that very golden greenness which was before his eyes, "beginning to fade in the light he loves on a bed of daffodil sky." He identified that and all the rims of colours that marked the shining horizon. Perhaps she would ask him if he had remarked; and he would be able to reply.

"Books?" cried Minnie--"are all those books? Don't you know we have a great many books already, more than we have shelves for? The library is quite full, and even the little bookcase in the drawing-room. You should get rid of some of the old ones if you bring in so many new."

"And who did you see in town, Theo?" said his mother. He had no club, being so young and so little accustomed to London; but yet a young man brought up as he had been can scarcely fail to have many friends.

"Most people seem to have gone away," he said. "I saw n.o.body. Yes, there were people riding in the Row, and people walking too, I suppose, but n.o.body I knew."

"And did you go up all that way only to buy books? You might have written to the bookseller for them, and saved your fare."

Theo made his sister no reply, but when Chatty asked, rather shyly, if he had seen much of Mr. Cavendish, answered warmly that Cavendish was a very good fellow; that he took the greatest interest in his friends'

concerns, and was always ready to do anything he could for you. "I had no idea what a man he was," he said, with fervour. Mrs. Warrender looked up at this with a little anxiety, for according to the ordinary rules which govern the reasoning of women she was led from it to the deduction, not immediately visible to the unconcerned spectator, that her son had got into some sc.r.a.pe, and had found it necessary to have recourse to his friend's advice. Theo in a sc.r.a.pe! It seemed impossible: but yet there are few women who are not prepared for something happening of this character even to the best of men.

"I hope," she said, "that he is a prudent adviser, Theo; but he is still quite a young man."

"Not so young; he must be six or seven and twenty," said the young man; and then he paused, remembering that this was the perfect age,--the age which she had attained, which he had described to Cavendish as "about my own,"--and he blushed a little and contradicted himself. "Yes, to be sure, he is young: but that makes him only the more sympathetic; and it was not his advice I was thinking of so much as his sympathy. He is full of sympathy."