Part 37 (1/2)
He came in as the Squire was sitting with Lord Sedbergh's letter in his hand.
”Well, my dear Edward,” he said, ”it is such a lovely morning that I was tempted out of my study. It is my sermon morning, and I shall have a good one to preach to you on Sunday. I was in the vein. I shall go back to it with renewed interest.”
”I've had a letter that may interest you,” said the Squire. ”In a way it seems to shed a gleam of light. But I don't know. Things are black enough. It's this waiting for the blow to fall that is so wretched. I had rather, almost, that everyone knew.”
The Rector read through the letter carefully and handed it back.
”If nothing but the truth is to be told...!” he said.
”You mean that won't be so bad for us. It does look as if there might be a chance of her not telling more than the truth, for her own sake.
If she is going to marry that creature! Colne! Bah! What mud we're mixed up with! To think it rests with a man like that to keep her quiet!”
”Is he so bad?” enquired the Rector.
”Bad! The sort of man that makes his order a by-word, for all the world to spit upon. I should think even you must have some knowledge of him. His first wife divorced him; his second died because he ill-treated her.”
”Is that known?”
”Yes. In the way these things _are_ known.”
”He was Hubert Legrange, wasn't he? He was in my tutor's house at Eton--after your time. He wasn't bad then--high-spirited, troublesome, perhaps--that was all. But warm-hearted--merry. I liked him.”
”Ah, my dear Tom! That's the sad thing, when you get to our age. To see the men you've known as boys--how some of them turn out! I've sometimes thought lately that I ought to have been more grateful to G.o.d Almighty for keeping me free from a good many temptations I might have had. I married young; I settled down here; it was what suited me. But I see now that those tastes were given to me for my good. If it hadn't been for that I might have gone wrong just as well as another. I had money from the moment I came of age. I could have done what I liked.
Money's a great temptation to a young fellow.”
The Rector hardly knew whether to be pleased or sorry at this vein of moralising that had lately come over his brother. It showed his mind working as he might have wished to see it work, towards humility and a more lively faith; but it also showed him deeply affected by the waves that were pa.s.sing over his head; and the waves were black and heavy.
”What you say is very true,” he said. ”G.o.d keep us all faithful, as He kept you, Edward. You were tempted, and you were upheld. You see that now, I think.”
”I thought,” said the poor Squire after a pause, ”that G.o.d was working to avert this disgrace from me. Everything seemed to have been ordered, in a way that was almost miraculous, to that end. It was just when I was shaking off the last uncomfortable thoughts about it, when everything seemed most bright for the future, that the blow fell.
Well, I suppose it was to be, and it will come right for us all in the end; though I don't think I shall know a happy moment again as long as I live. I was living in a fool's paradise. I don't quite understand it, Tom.”
The Rector thought he did. A fool's paradise is a paradise that the fool makes for himself, and when he is driven out of it blames a higher power. He was not inclined to think his brother the worse off, in all that really mattered, for having been driven out of his paradise. But it was a little difficult to tell him so.
The necessity was spared him for the moment. d.i.c.k came in, and was shown the letter.
”I think that is the way things will work,” he said. ”She will be repulsed by decent people, and she will come to see that whatever mud she stirs up, more than half of it will stick to her. If she marries Colne--or even if she only clings on to him as her champion--he'll come to see, if he has any sense, that the less she talks the better.”
”He would want to see her cleared,” said the Rector.
”Yes, and that's our difficulty. Sedbergh is very good; but I don't like it, all the same.”
”Don't like what?” asked the Squire.
”I wish to G.o.d we could come out into the open.” He spoke with strong impatience. ”She's in the wrong. Yes. Scandalously in the wrong--a blackmailer, everything you like to say of her. But she's also in the right, and that's just where she can hurt us--where she _is_ hurting us.”
”Has anything happened?” asked the Squire anxiously.
”Yes. It's reached us at last. It's creeping like a blight all over the country--above ground, underground. It will crop up where you never could have expected. And what satisfactory answer can we give, without telling the truth, and the whole truth?”