Part 45 (1/2)

'Thank you, dear. And now we will not talk any more about it; now you know why I wanted you to be her friend. I am glad to think she is so fond of you.' But I would not let him change the subject just yet.

'Max,' I said, detaining him, for he rose to go, 'all this is dreadfully hard for you. Shall you go away--if--if--this happens?'

'No,' he returned quietly; 'it is they who will go away. Captain Hamilton cannot leave his regiment: he is far too fond of an active life. It will be dreary enough, G.o.d knows, but it will not be harder than the life I have led these twelve months, trying to win her back to her work and to put myself in the background. It has worn me out, Ursula. I could not stand that sort of thing much longer. It is a relief to me that she is away.'

'Yes, I can understand this.'

'It makes one think, after all, that the extreme party have something in their argument in favour of the celibacy of the clergy. Not that I hold with them, for all that; but all this sort of thing takes the heart out of a man, and comes between him and his work. I should be a better priest if I were a happier man, Ursula.'

'I doubt that, Max.' And the tears rose to my eyes, for I knew how good he was, and what a friend to his people.

'My dear, I differ from you. I believe there is no work like happy work,--work done by a heart at leisure from itself; but of course we clergy and laity must take what heaven sends us.' And then he held out his hands to me, and I suppose he saw how unhappy I was for his sake.

'Don't fret about me, my dear little Ursula,' he said kindly. 'The back gets fitted for the burden, and by this time I have grown accustomed to my pain; it will all be right some day: I shall not be blamed up there for loving her.' And he left me with a smile.

I pa.s.sed a miserable evening thinking of Max. Next to Charlie, he had been my closest friend from girlhood; I had been accustomed to look to him for advice in all my difficulties, to rely upon his counsel. I knew that people who were comparatively strangers to him thought he was almost too easy-going, and a little weak from excess of good-nature. He was too tolerant of other folk's failings; they said he preached mercy where severity would be more bracing and wholesome; and no doubt they thought that he judged himself as leniently; but they did not know Max.

I never knew a man harder to himself. Charitable to others, he had no self-pity; selfish aims were impossible to him. He who could not endure to witness even a child or an animal suffer, would have plucked out his right eye or parted with his right hand, in gospel phrase, if by doing so he could witness to the truth or spare pain to a weaker human being. It was this knowledge of his inner life that made Max so priestly in my eyes. I knew he was pure enough and strong enough to meet even Gladys's demands. Nothing but a modern Bayard would ever satisfy her fastidious taste; she would not look on a man's stature, or on his outward beauty; such things would seem paltry to her; but he who aspired to be her lord and master must be worthy of all reverence and must have won his spurs: so much had I learnt from my friends.h.i.+p with Gladys.

I pondered over Max's words, and tried to piece the fragments of our conversation with recollections of my talks with Gladys. I recalled much that had pa.s.sed. I endeavoured to find the clue to her downcast, troubled looks, her quenched and listless manner. I felt dimly that some strange misunderstanding wrapped these two in a close fog. What had brought about this chill, murky atmosphere, in which they failed to recognise each other's meaning? This was the mystery: lives had often been s.h.i.+pwrecked from these miserable misunderstandings, for want of a word. I felt completely baffled, and before the evening was over I could have cried with the sense of utter failure and bewilderment. If Max's chivalrous scruples had not tied my hands, I would have gone to Gladys boldly and asked her what it all meant; I would have challenged her truth; I would have compelled her to answer me; but I dared not break my promise. By letter and in the spirit I would respect Max's wishes.

But I resolved to watch: no eyes should be so vigilant as mine. I was determined, that nothing should escape my scrutiny; at least I was in possession of certain facts that would help me in finding the clue I wanted. I knew now that Max loved Gladys and had tried to win her: that he had nearly done so was also evident. What had wrought that sudden change? Had Captain Hamilton's brilliant successes really dazzled her fancy and blinded her to Max's quiet un.o.btrusive virtues? Did she really and truly prefer her cousin? This was what I had to find out, and here Max could not help me.

There was one thing I was glad to know,--that Mr. Hamilton favoured Max's suit. At least I should not be working against him. I do not know why, but the thought of doing so would have pained me: I no longer wished to array myself for war against Mr. Hamilton; my enmity had died a natural death for want of fuel.

I felt grateful to him for his kindness to Max; no doubt he had a fellow-feeling with him. That dear old gossip, Mrs. Maberley, had told me something about Mr. Hamilton on my second visit that had made me feel very sorry for him. Max knew about it, of course; he had said a word to me once on the subject, but it was not Max's way to gossip about his neighbours; he once said, laughing, that he left all the choice bits of scandal to his good old friend at Maplehurst.

It was from Mrs. Maberley that I heard all about Mr. Hamilton's disappointment, and why he had not married. When he was about eight-and-twenty he had been engaged to a young widow.

'She was a beautiful creature, my dear,' observed the old lady; 'the colonel said he had never seen a handsomer woman. She was an Irish beauty, and had those wonderful gray eyes and dark eyelashes that make you wonder what colour they are, and she had the sweetest smile possible; any man would have been bewitched by it. I never saw a young man more in love than Giles: when he came here he could talk of nothing but Mrs.

Carrick: her name was Ella, I remember. Well, it went on for some months, and he was preparing for the wedding,--there was to be a nursery got ready, for she had one little boy, and Giles already doted on the child,--when all at once there came a letter from his lady-love; and a very pretty letter it was. Giles must forgive her, it said, she was utterly wretched at the thought of the pain she was giving him, but she was mistaken in the strength of her attachment. She had come to the conclusion that they would not be happy together, that in fact she preferred some one else.

'She did not mention that this other lover was richer than Giles and had a t.i.tle, but of course he found out that this was the case. The fickle Irish beauty had caught the fancy of an elderly English n.o.bleman with a large family of grown-up sons and daughters. My dear, it was a very heartless piece of work: it changed Giles completely. He never spoke about it to any one, but if ever a man was heart-broken, Giles was: he was never the same after that; it made him hard and bitter; he is always railing against women, or saying disagreeable home-truths about them. And of course Mrs. Carrick, or rather Lady Howe, is to blame for that. Oh, my dear, she may deck herself with diamonds, as they say she does, and call herself happy,--which she is not, with a gouty, ill-tempered old husband who is jealous of her,--but I'll be bound she thinks of Giles sometimes with regret, and scorns herself for her folly.'

Poor Mr. Hamilton! And this had all happened about six or seven years ago. No wonder he looked stern and said bitter things. He was not naturally sweet-tempered, like Max; such a misfortune would sour him.

'All well,' I said to myself, as I went up to bed, 'it is perfectly true what Longfellow says, ”Into each life some rain must fall, some days must be dark and dreary”; but it is strange that they both have suffered. It is a good thing, perhaps, that such an experience is never likely to happen to me. There is some consolation to be deduced even from my want of beauty: no man will fall in love with me and then play me false.' And with that a curious feeling came over me, a sudden inexplicable sense of want and loneliness, something I could not define, that took no definite shape and had no similitude, and yet haunted me with a sense of ill; but the next moment I was struggling fiercely with the unknown and unwelcome guest.

'For shame!' I said to myself; 'this is weakness and pure selfishness, mere sentimental feverishness; this is not like the strong-minded young person Miss Darrell calls me. What if loneliness be appointed me?--we must each have our cross. Perhaps, as life goes on and I grow older, it may be a little hard to bear at times, but my loneliness would be better than the sort of pain Mr. Hamilton and Max have endured.' And as I thought this, a sudden conviction came to me that I could not have borne a like fate, a dim instinct that told me that I should suffer keenly and long,--that it would be better, far better, that the deepest instincts of my woman's nature should never be roused than be kindled only to die away into ashes, as many women's affections have been suffered to die.

'Anything but that,' I said to myself, with a sudden thrill of pain that surprised me with its intensity.

All this time through the long cold weeks Elspeth had been slowly dying.

Quietly and gradually the blind woman's strength had ebbed and lessened, until early in March we knew she could not last much longer.

She suffered no pain, and uttered no complaint. She lay peacefully propped up with pillows on the bed where Mary Marshall had breathed her last, and her pale wrinkled face grew almost as white as the cap-border that encircled it.

At the commencement of her illness I was unable to be much with her.

Susan and Phoebe Locke had thoroughly engrossed me, and a hurried visit morning and evening to give Peggy orders was all that was possible under the circ.u.mstances; but I saw that she was well cared for and comfortable, and Peggy was very good to her and kept the children out of the room.