"And you are to drink tea down stairs to-night. I"ll come and fetch you as soon as we"re out of the dining-room. I can a.s.sure you that your first appearance after your accident has been duly announced to the public, and that you are anxiously expected." And then Staveley left him.
So he was to meet Madeline that evening. His first feeling at the thought was one of joy, but he soon brought himself almost to wish that he could leave Noningsby without any such meeting. There would have been nothing in it,--nothing that need have called for observation or remark,--had he not told his secret to Augustus. But his secret had been told to one, and might be known to others in the house. Indeed he felt sure that it was suspected by Lady Staveley. It could not, as he said to himself, have been suspected by the judge, or the judge would not have treated him in so friendly a manner, or have insisted so urgently on his coming down among them.
And then, how should he carry himself in her presence? If he were to say nothing to her, his saying nothing would be remarked; and yet he felt that all his powers of self-control would not enable him to speak to her in the same manner that he would speak to her sister. He had to ask himself, moreover, what line of conduct he did intend to follow. If he was still resolved to marry Mary Snow, would it not be better that he should take this bull by the horns and upset it at once? In such case, Madeline Staveley must be no more to him than her sister. But then he had two intentions. In accordance with one he would make Mary Snow his wife; and in following the other he would marry Miss Staveley. It must be admitted that the two brides which he proposed to himself were very different. The one that he had moulded for his own purposes was not, as he admitted, quite equal to her of whom nature, education, and birth had had the handling.
Again he dined alone; but on this occasion Mrs. Baker was able to elicit from him no enthusiasm as to his dinner. And yet she had done her best, and placed before him a sweetbread and dish of sea-kale that ought to have made him enthusiastic. "I had to fight with the gardener for that like anything," she said, singing her own praises when he declined to sing them.
"Dear me! They"ll think that I am a dreadful person to have in the house."
"Not a bit. Only they sha"n"t think as how I"m going to be said "no"
to in that way when I"ve set my mind on a thing. I know what"s going and I know what"s proper. Why, laws, Mr. Graham, there"s heaps of things there and yet there"s no getting of "em;--unless there"s a party or the like of that. What"s the use of a garden I say,--or of a gardener neither, if you don"t have garden stuff? It"s not to look at. Do finish it now;--after all the trouble I had, standing over him in the cold while he cut it."
"Oh dear, oh dear, Mrs. Baker, why did you do that?"
"He thought to perish me, making believe it took him so long to get at it; but I"m not so easy perished; I can tell him that! I"d have stood there till now but what I had it. Miss Madeline see"d me as I was coming in, and asked me what I"d been doing."
"I hope you didn"t tell her that I couldn"t live without sea-kale?"
"I told her that I meant to give you your dinner comfortable as long as you had it up here; and she said--; but laws, Mr. Graham, you don"t care what a young lady says to an old woman like me. You"ll see her yourself this evening, and then you can tell her whether or no the sea-kale was worth the eating! It"s not so badly biled, I will say that for Hannah Cook, though she is rampagious sometimes." He longed to ask her what words Madeline had used, even in speaking on such a subject as this; but he did not dare to do so. Mrs. Baker was very fond of talking about Miss Madeline, but Graham was by no means a.s.sured that he should find an ally in Mrs. Baker if he told her all the truth.
At last the hour arrived, and Augustus came to convoy him down to the drawing-room. It was now many days since he had been out of that room, and the very fact of moving was an excitement to him. He hardly knew how he might feel in walking down stairs, and could not quite separate the nervousness arising from his shattered bones from that other nervousness which came from his--shattered heart. The word is undoubtedly a little too strong, but as it is there, there let it stay. When he reached the drawing-room, he almost felt that he had better decline to enter it. The door however was opened, and he was in the room before he could make up his mind to any such step, and he found himself being walked across the floor to some especial seat, while a dozen kindly anxious faces were crowding round him.
"Here"s an arm-chair, Mr. Graham, kept expressly for you, near the fire," said Lady Staveley. "And I am extremely glad to see you well enough to fill it."
"Welcome out of your room, sir," said the judge. "I compliment you, and Pottinger also, upon your quick recovery; but allow me to tell you that you don"t yet look a man fit to rough it alone in London."
"I feel very well, sir," said Graham.
And then Mrs. Arbuthnot greeted him, and Miss Furnival, and four or five others who were of the party, and he was introduced to one or two whom he had not seen before. Marian too came up to him,--very gently, as though he were as brittle as gla.s.s, having been warned by her mother. "Oh, Mr. Felix," she said, "I was so unhappy when your bones were broken. I do hope they won"t break again."
And then he perceived that Madeline was in the room and was coming up to him. She had in truth not been there when he first entered, having thought it better, as a matter of strategy, to follow upon his footsteps. He was getting up to meet her, when Lady Staveley spoke to him.
"Don"t move, Mr. Graham. Invalids, you know, are chartered."
"I am very glad to see you once more down stairs," said Madeline, as she frankly gave him her hand,--not merely touching his--"very, very glad. But I do hope you will get stronger before you venture to leave Noningsby. You have frightened us all very much by your terrible accident."
All this was said in her peculiarly sweet silver voice, not speaking as though she were dismayed and beside herself, or in a hurry to get through a lesson which she had taught herself. She had her secret to hide, and had schooled herself how to hide it. But in so schooling herself she had been compelled to acknowledge to herself that the secret did exist. She had told herself that she must meet him, and that in meeting him she must hide it. This she had done with absolute success. Such is the peculiar power of women; and her mother, who had listened not only to every word, but to every tone of her voice, gave her exceeding credit.
"There"s more in her than I thought there was," said Sophia Furnival to herself, who had also listened and watched.
"It has not gone very deep, with her," said the judge, who on this matter was not so good a judge as Miss Furnival.
"She cares about me just as Mrs. Baker does," said Graham to himself, who was the worst judge of them all. He muttered something quite unintelligible in answer to the kindness of her words; and then Madeline, having gone through her task, retired to the further side of the round table, and went to work among the teacups.
And then the conversation became general, turning altogether on the affairs of Lady Mason. It was declared as a fact by Lady Staveley that there was to be a marriage between Sir Peregrine Orme and his guest, and all in the room expressed their sorrow. The women were especially indignant. "I have no patience with her," said Mrs.
Arbuthnot. "She must know that such a marriage at his time of life must be ridiculous, and injurious to the whole family."
The women were very indignant,--all except Miss Furnival, who did not say much, but endeavoured to palliate the crimes of Lady Mason in that which she did say. "I do not know that she is more to blame than any other lady who marries a gentleman thirty years older than herself."
"I do then," said Lady Staveley, who delighted in contradicting Miss Furnival. "And so would you too, my dear, if you had known Sir Peregrine as long as I have. And if--if--if--but it does not matter.
I am very sorry for Lady Mason,--very. I think she is a woman cruelly used by her own connections; but my sympathies with her would be warmer if she had refrained from using her power over an old gentleman like Sir Peregrine, in the way she has done." In all which expression of sentiment the reader will know that poor dear Lady Staveley was wrong from the beginning to the end.
"For my part," said the judge, "I don"t see what else she was to do.
If Sir Peregrine asked her, how could she refuse?"
"My dear!" said Lady Staveley.
"According to that, papa, every lady must marry any gentleman that asks her," said Mrs. Arbuthnot.
"When a lady is under so deep a weight of obligation I don"t know how she is to refuse. My idea is that Sir Peregrine should not have asked her."
"And mine too," said Felix. "Unless indeed he did it under an impression that he could fight for her better as her husband than simply as a friend."
"And I feel sure that that is what he did think," said Madeline, from the further side of the table. And her voice sounded in Graham"s ears as the voice of Eve may have sounded to Adam. No; let him do what he might in the world;--whatever might be the form in which his future career should be fashioned, one thing was clearly impossible to him.
He could not marry Mary Snow. Had he never learned to know what were the true charms of feminine grace and loveliness, it might have been possible for him to do so, and to have enjoyed afterwards a fair amount of contentment. But now even contentment would be impossible to him under such a lot as that. Not only would he be miserable, but the woman whom he married would be wretched also. It may be said that he made up his mind definitely, while sitting in that arm-chair, that he would not marry Mary Snow. Poor Mary Snow! Her fault in the matter had not been great.
When Graham was again in his room, and the servant who was obliged to undress him had left him, he sat over his fire, wrapped in his dressing-gown, bethinking himself what he would do. "I will tell the judge everything," he said at last. "Then, if he will let me into his house after that, I must fight my own battle." And so he betook himself to bed.
CHAPTER XLIX.
MRS. FURNIVAL CAN"T PUT UP WITH IT.
When Lady Mason last left the chambers of her lawyer in Lincoln"s Inn, she was watched by a stout lady as she pa.s.sed through the narrow pa.s.sage leading from the Old to the New Square. That fact will I trust be remembered, and I need hardly say that the stout lady was Mrs. Furnival. She had heard betimes of the arrival of that letter with the Hamworth post-mark, had felt a.s.sured that it was written by the hands of her hated rival, and had at once prepared for action.
"I shall leave this house to-day,--immediately after breakfast," she said to Miss Biggs, as they sat disconsolately at the table with the urn between them.
"And I think you will be quite right, my dear," replied Miss Biggs.
"It is your bounden duty to put down such wicked iniquity as this;--not only for your own sake, but for that of morals in general.
What in the world is there so beautiful and so lovely as a high tone of moral sentiment?" To this somewhat transcendental question Mrs.
Furnival made no reply. That a high tone of moral sentiment as a thing in general, for the world"s use, is very good, she was no doubt aware; but her mind at the present moment was fixed exclusively on her own peculiar case. That Tom Furnival should be made to give up seeing that nasty woman who lived at Hamworth, and to give up also having letters from her,--that at present was the extent of her moral sentiment. His wicked iniquity she could forgive with a facility not at all gratifying to Miss Biggs, if only she could bring about such a result as that. So she merely grunted in answer to the above proposition.
"And will you sleep away from this?" asked Miss Biggs.
"Certainly I will. I will neither eat here, nor sleep here, nor stay here till I know that all this is at an end. I have made up my mind what I will do."
"Well?" asked the anxious Martha.
"Oh, never mind. I am not exactly prepared to talk about it. There are things one can"t talk about,--not to anybody. One feels as though one would burst in mentioning it. I do, I know."
Martha Biggs could not but feel that this was hard, but she knew that friendship is nothing if it be not long enduring. "Dearest Kitty!"
she exclaimed. "If true sympathy can be of service to you--"
"I wonder whether I could get respectable lodgings in the neighbourhood of Red Lion Square for a week?" said Mrs. Furnival, once more bringing the conversation back from the abstract to the concrete.