Chapter VI

Stephen Fanshawe had made a mistake. It was the first real, the first great mistake he had made in his life, and the mortification of that consciousness for a time overpowered other feelings. Had he followed his own keen and clear judgment it is unlikely that he would ever have been misled; but the continual dropping of a flattering suggestion had been too much for him. It had beguiled a heart only too ready to be beguiled, and judgment had for a time slept.

The occasion which had put his judgment to sleep had arisen only two months before his disclosure. Nora and Mr. Powderham differed in opinion about the purchase of a small piece of land adjoining her property. Nora wished to have it; Mr. Powderham said the purchase was too bad a one to permit him to allow it. She appealed to Mr. Fanshawe, whom she trusted as her guardian still. He took her part; and a feud between the two advisers followed. Nora, not yet thoroughly taught to yield, would not yield, and finally implored Mr. Fanshawe to come down and help her. He promised to do so; but a fit of the gout prevented his keeping his appointment, and he sent down his son during the Easter holidays to act for him. “Though blind,” he said, in his letter to Mr. Powderham, “you will find his judgment as good as mine.”

A great deal better, Mr. Powderham found it, for Stephen Fanshawe, without any hesitation, sided with him. The bit of property, he said, would cause Nora an amount of worry, and perhaps litigation, which it was not worth, even in her view--which no friendly adviser could allow her to saddle herself with. He stated his opinion openly and unhesitatingly, and the matter was decided.

It was on this occasion that his heart, which had only been too ready to escape, fairly escaped out of his keeping; that his judgment, only too ready to be beguiled, disappeared under a cloud. The way in which she bore his interference; the candour, the gentleness, the submission to reason, not only won his admiration, but suggested a flattering hope. Mr. Powderham had spoken of a woman’s obstinacy. Where was it? Was it before _him_ that it had disappeared?

When he returned to his scholars he very shortly found that his mind was no longer as it had been; his work had lost its engrossing power; his mind was perpetually weighing and sifting hopes and fears, words and signs. His was a strong and determined mind, and feeling, like Othello, that “doubt was no fit state for man,” he resolved to be resolved. To Riddlemere, therefore, he suddenly went, and the result is known.

He had made a great mistake. He knew it before the words had left his lips, and yet persisted. He felt it bitterly afterwards. For a time, as was said, the mortification of the mistake almost swallowed up the other pain. Nor was the mortification selfish. He knew that, strong though Nora was in some senses, and blind as he was, there yet was no comparison of strength between them. He was, though blind, a strong man; and she, though formed in no soft mould, a weak woman. He had seen it from the very first; and it had been his joy to devote a part of his energies to help her. From this joy in the first instance he felt he had cut himself off.

But he was not one to be cut off from anything on which his mind was set, except impossibilities. And here, he thought, there is no impossibility. It was this idea which aroused him out of his depression.

“There are some past things which cannot be undone,” he reflected; “but this shall not be one. In its effects it _can_ be undone. I have only to forget what I said, and she will forget also. I have only to return unconcernedly to our old relations, and she will return also.”

It might be a difficult task, but he was determined; and he cast about in his mind for an opportunity of exhibiting to her his easy yet hearty friendship.

There came to him an opportunity which he had not expected.

Having occasion to go to London to speak to the father of one of his pupils, he unexpectedly heard a piece of news interesting to Nora. The gentleman to whom he went, a great merchant, had been seized on the morning of his visit with an attack of quinzy. When his visitor arrived, he was no better than a dumb man. A brother-in-law, who was at the moment in the house, went down to Stephen to apologize for the trouble that had been given him in vain.

This brother-in-law, finding Stephen a tutor of a peculiar kind, and interested by his words and ways, entered into conversation with him; and, shortly struck by his intelligence, consulted him also. He told him he had only the day before arrived from Australia; that he had on his hands a difficult business--the care of the property of a young man now in Australia, a minor, and somewhat weak in his wits. He entered a good deal into the subject, delighted at finding a kind listener to his difficulties.

Stephen was always a kind listener, on principle; and though now, as often, wearied with unimportant details, was listening on, in hopes of being of use to some of the many who looked to him for help and employment, when he was suddenly startled by this answer to a question he put.

“Yes, very true--that landed property must have an agent; I should ask you if you could name a fit person for such a charge, were it not that I have partly engaged myself to an individual who made the passage with me, a Mr. Devereux, who appears to be a shrewd, knowing man.”

A Mr. Devereux returning from Australia! Stephen started, yet the description of the person was as unlike Henry as any description well could be.

“Do you know such a person?” inquired the gentleman.

“Perhaps I do. Is it a young gentleman?”

“Young! well, yes, I suppose so,” smiling. “About thirty, perhaps; but having the air of one well accustomed to business. A grave, sober person; intelligent, but not lively.”

“Possibly I do know him; your description does not exactly coincide with my remembrance, but years make changes. If the same, he has, I should say, the very qualities for the situation you propose, though without the usual routine education. And he has undertaken the task?”

“Not yet. He is to give me his answer in a week. We had, at different times, a good deal of conversation, and I was so struck by his common sense--a quality I value beyond all others--that I made him my offer before we parted yesterday, hoping sincerely that I should prevail on him to accept it. He asked a week’s delay, and I promised to wait.”

Henry’s common sense! That quality in which he had been to general appearance so singularly deficient. But Stephen perfectly understood the description. He had it, and he had it not. He had it in his nature, but it was too often swept from the surface by the blasts of passion.

After a few inquiries he hurried away, not only interested in Henry himself, but eager to use the opportunity for renewing his intercourse with Nora.

Unable, on that occasion, to remain in London, and hunt out the interesting stranger, yet by some inquiries satisfied of the truth of his suspicion, he hurried to Windsor, and there, before post-time, indited one of those letters to Nora which gave him so much trouble.

The trouble was simply in the manual labour; he felt none in re-opening the correspondence. He made no allusion to the past episode, but in his usual easy style told her of what had occurred in the morning. It was concisely told. He added that she would probably hear from Henry himself--perhaps receive a visit; but if it should not be so, and she would let him know, he would give a special holiday to his boys, and go to London himself to see him.

Nora blushed as she took up Stephen’s letter. He might have resolved to forget, but she had not forgotten. Her tender regrets were ever pursuing _him_; a sense of shame in having so misled him was ever pursuing _her_; a pity for herself in having thus lost one of her few friends, was ever present to her imagination. She blushed as she touched the letter, and glanced timidly at Miss Willis, dreading that she might be observed while thus perusing his first--not love-letter--but the reverse.

Miss Willis would probably have been conscious that there was a letter from Stephen Fanshawe in the room had she been as blind as he was. She knew such things by instinct, and was quite aware of the fact now. But, or rather in consequence, she was poring over a paper of her own; and Nora read her letter under the happy impression that it was unseen. Miss Willis had been very unhappy about Stephen. She blamed herself, not Nora; and yet Nora felt guilty when she saw how unhappy she was. His name, therefore, had passed out of their intercourse.

It was a different blush that dyed Nora’s cheeks, as she read, from the soft blush that had flitted over them when she began. It was a blush that rose from the depths of an agitated heart; and when it left her, it left her sick with ardent hope, and cold with deadly fear.

For about five minutes there was a silence. Poor Miss Willis, painfully conscious that there was something going on, read and re-read again her paper, and was proceeding to a fourth perusal, when the silence was broken. Nora had resumed her self-possession and composure.

“What do you think I have heard, Miss Willis?” she said, with a smile.

Miss Willis, full of Stephen, looked up with a wondering face. What could Nora have heard of such cheerful import?

“This letter is from Mr. Stephen Fanshawe;” and for the moment, the little episode being entirely forgotten, Nora said the name with easy fluency, “and what do you think he tells me? My cousin is come back.”

“Oh!” said Miss Willis. Expecting some important revelation regarding Stephen, this news fell flatly on her ear.

“He arrived the day before yesterday from Australia; and Mr. Fanshawe, who certainly has the gift of hearing pleasant things, found it out, and writes to tell me of it. Where are Simon and Bella? They must be told;” and she rose and called.

The two children were good children, and were opening, warming, and improving under her kind care; but they were not like children. The dreariness of their early home had left a shadow on them; and, though they had a good soil to be worked on, they had no childish bloom and radiancy.

Nora, who dared not herself give vent to the joyful feelings of her heart, was hoping for a burst from them. But she was disappointed. They loved the remembrance of Henry; but the remembrance of their dreary home was strongly upon them, and they could not, in the first instance, separate the different parts of the subject.

“Are you not glad?” Nora said, half reproachfully as they hung their heads.

“Of course we are glad,” the boy said bluntly. “Only we don’t know much about it. Will Henry come here?”

She turned her face away for a moment; then replied that she did not know.

“I think you should write to him, Simon,” she said. “You can send your letter to Letitia. She will be sure to know where he is.”

“And I will send my love,” said Annabella, perceiving, as she thought, in Nora’s eye, that a polite message would be proper.

“Poor things!” said Miss Willis, as they left the room, “they have been happier with you than in all their lives before; you must not expect romance from them.”

When Nora took Stephen’s letter to answer, she was, for the first time, struck by it. The absorbing contents of the letter had banished all tender regrets for him from her mind; but when she re-read it, its absence of sentiment struck her. If, in her tender regrets for him, there had been a shadow of relenting, this absence of sentiment would, as it has often happened, have caused a sensation of pique, or actual disappointment, as the case might have been; but Nora was too terribly conscious of the secrets of her own heart, to have room for any such feelings regarding a lover. She noticed the absence of sentiment with gratitude and emotion, understanding the motive, and touched by it.

Something of this gratitude, something of her sorrowful regrets, she now longed to pour forth to him; but after writing on and destroying one sheet of paper, an unusual wisdom came to her rescue. Let the past be past, since he was willing to have it so, and her answer was written in a tone copied from his. The word “grateful,” added to her usual signature, was the only sign of more than common feeling allowed to escape.

Stephen had not expected any relenting, and the answer, though it did not gratify, satisfied him.

In this answer she expressed a confident expectation that her cousin would visit, or otherwise communicate with his brother and sister. If her expectation should prove false she would then, she said, trouble him again.

Of this she had no need. She did otherwise hear of Henry.