Chapter XXXI

The ancient postboy drove out to Westrea next morning, and conveyed me and my impedimenta back to Cambridge.

The journey was a silent one, I being as little disposed for conversation as he. My thoughts were not very cheerful. Yet what had I, after all, to make a poor mouth about? I had asked to know my own mind, and arrive at a definite decision concerning certain matters closely affecting my future. Now I knew it very thoroughly; and, as to those matters, had decided once and for all. It only remained for me to acquaint my kind old friend, the Master, with that decision as tactfully and delicately as might be. But how should I acquit myself? And how would he take it? And how far should I be compelled to speak of Hartover and Nellie, and of my own relation to both, to make my meaning clear? For what a tangle it all was--a tangle almost humorous, though almost tragic too, as such human tangles mostly are! Well, I supposed I must stick to my old method of blunt truth-telling, leaving the event to my Maker, who, having created that strange anomaly, the human heart, must surely know how best to deal with its manifold needs and vagaries!

So far then, it was, after all, fairly plain sailing. But, unfortunately, these thoughts were not the only thing which troubled me.

For I felt as well as thought; and feeling is more dangerous than thought because at once more intimate and more intangible. A great emptiness filled--for emptiness can fill, just as silence can shout, and that hideously--not only my own soul but, as it seemed, all Nature around me. The land was empty, the sky empty. An east-wind blight spread abroad, taking all colour out of the landscape and warmth out of the sunshine. Just so had my parting with Nellie cast a blight over me, taking the colour and warmth out of my life. For I had been with her long enough for her presence, the sound of her voice, and constant sight of her to become a habit. How terribly I missed, and should continue to miss, her--not only in great matters but in small, in all the pleasant, trivial, friendly incidents of every day!

After the freshness and spotless cleanliness of Westrea, my college rooms--fond though I was of them--looked dingy and uncared for, as is too often the way of an exclusively masculine dwelling-place. The men had not come up yet, which spared me the annoyance of Halidane’s neighbourhood for the moment. Still I felt the depressing lack of life and movement throughout the college buildings and quadrangles. Cambridge was asleep--a dull and dismal sleep, as it struck me. The Master, I found, was back and at the Lodge once more; but, since only a portion of the house was ready for habitation, Mrs. Dynevor and her daughters would remain at Bath for some weeks longer. This I was glad to hear, as it promised to simplify my rather awkward task.

I called at the Lodge the same evening, to be received by the Master with his usual cordiality. He invited me to stay and dine, admitting he felt somewhat lonely without his ladies in the still partially dismantled house.

‘Unlike the three children in the Babylonian furnace, the smell of fire is very much upon it still,’ he said. ‘Signs and odours of destruction meet me at every turn. I dare say in the end--for I have an excellent architect--we shall make a more comfortable and certainly more sanitary place of it than ever before; but the continuity is broken, much history and many a tradition lost for good. I am only heartily glad you are not among the latter, Brownlow. It was a very near thing.’

Whether this was intended to give me an opening for explanation, I could not say. In any case I did not choose to take advantage of it, preferring to explain at my own time and in my own way.

We talked on general subjects for a while. But at the end of dinner, when the butler left the room, he said, eyeing me with a twinkle--

‘It was a pity you could not manage to meet us at Bath, Brownlow, for you would have found some old friends there. One of whom, a very splendid personage by the same token, made many gracious inquiries after you--put me through the longer catechism in respect of you, and put my sister and nieces through it also, I understand.’

‘Old friends?’ I asked, considerably puzzled both by his words and manner.

‘You had not heard, then, any more than I, that Lord Longmoor has settled permanently at Bath?’

I assured him I had not.

‘Yes--and under sad enough circumstances,’ he went on, with a change of tone. ‘Poor gentleman, he and those about him have cried wolf for so many years that I, for one, had grown sceptical regarding his ailments. But what of constitution he ever possessed has been undermined by coddling and dosing. I was admitted once or twice, and was, I own, most painfully impressed by his appearance and by his state of mind--religious mania, or something alarmingly akin to it, and that of at once the most abject and arrogant sort.’

I was greatly shocked by this news, and said so.

‘What is being done?’ I asked.

‘Everything that common sense would forbid, in my opinion. He is surrounded by an army of obsequious servants and rapacious medical and religious quacks, all and each busy to secure their private advantage while fooling him, poor soul, to the top of his bent. Our hopeful convert and gownsman Halidane had joined the throng, so I heard, but fled at my approach. Where the carcass is, there the vultures are gathered together--a repulsive and odious sight, showing the case of Dives may after all be hardly less miserable than that of Lazarus.’

The Master paused.

‘Lady Longmoor is there too; and heaven forgive me, Brownlow,’ he added, ‘I could not but wonder what sentiments that remarkably fair lady really entertains towards her lord. She confided in me in the most charming manner; yet, honestly, I knew less what to think and believe, knew less how the land really lay, after receiving those confidences than before.’

In spite of myself I was amused. For could I not picture her Magnificence and my good kind old Master in solemn conclave? Picture the arts and graces let loose on him, the touching appeals, admissions, protests; the disarming innocence of glance and gesture, along with flashes of naughty laughter, beneath the black-fringed eyelids, in the demurely downcast eyes.

‘Her ladyship’s communications are not always easy to interpret. They are not always intended to enlighten--perhaps,’ I ventured.

‘Then you, too, have been honoured?’

‘I have.’

He chuckled.

But, in my case, amusement speedily gave place to sober reflection. For if Lord Longmoor was in so critical a condition, dying possibly, what an immense change in Hartover’s position this entailed! All my fears for the dear boy reawakened. What means might not be taken to embroil him with his father, at this critical moment, to injure and dispossess him! Particularly did I dislike the fact that Halidane had been in attendance. I questioned the Master anxiously.

‘Ah! there you have me, Brownlow,’ he replied. ‘Lord Hartover is a point upon which my lady’s confidences proved peculiarly obscure. She spoke of her “dear George” with a great show of affection, deploring that the festivities in celebration of his coming of age next month must be postponed. She had so counted on seeing both you and me at Hover then, she declared. Deploring, also’--and he looked rather hard at me, I thought, across the corner of the dinner table over the row of decanters, as he spoke--‘deploring also an unfortunate disposition in her stepson to become enamoured of young women very much beneath him in the social scale. She gave me to understand both she and his father had been caused much annoyance and trouble by more than one affair of this sort. Yet I could not help fancying she sought information, just then, rather than offered it. I had a notion--I may have been mistaken--she was doing her best to pump me and find out whether I had heard anything from you upon the subject of these amatory escapades. Come, Brownlow--for my instruction, not for hers--can you fill in the gaps?’

I hesitated. Had the right moment come for explanation? I believed that it had. And so, as plainly and briefly as I could, I told him the whole story. I kept back nothing--why should I? There was nothing to be ashamed of, though somewhat to grieve over, and much to regret. I told him of Nellie, of Fédore; of Hartover’s love, Hartover’s marriage. I told him of my own love.

For a while he remained silent. Then, laying his hand on my shoulder, as I sat, my elbows upon the table, my face buried in my hands--

‘My poor fellow, my poor fellow--I had no notion of all this,’ he said. ‘So this is the upshot of your two years at Hover. I sent you out to make your fortune, and you found your fate. Well--well--things are as they are; but I do not deny that recently I had formed very different plans for you.’

‘Do not think me presumptuous, sir, if I answer I feared as much. And that is my reason for telling you what I have told no other human being--what, indeed, I had hoped to keep locked inviolably in my own breast as long as I live.’

Something in my tone or in my narrative must have stirred him deeply, for he rose and took a turn up and down the room, as though with difficulty retaining his composure. For my part, I own, I felt broken, carried out of myself. It had been searching work, dislocating work, to lay bare my innermost heart thus. But only so, as I judged, could the mention of Alice Dynevor’s name be avoided between us. It was better to sacrifice myself, if by so doing I could at once spare her and arrive at a clear understanding. Of this I was glad. I think the Master was glad too; for, his rather agitated walk ended, he stood beside me and spoke most kindly.

‘Your secret is perfectly safe with me, Brownlow, rest assured. I give you my word I will never reveal it. You have behaved honourably and high-mindedly throughout. Your conduct commands my respect and admiration,--though I could wish some matters had turned out otherwise. But now as to this marriage--real or supposed--of poor Hartover’s and all the ugly plotting of which, I fear with you, he is the victim. I do not think I can find it in my conscience to stand by, or encourage you to stand by, with folded hands.’

‘That is exactly what I was coming to, sir,’ I said, choking down alike my thanks and my emotion. ‘If, as you inform me, Lord Longmoor’s health is so precarious, the poor dear boy’s future must not be left to chance.’

‘No, no,’ he answered warmly. ‘His foes, I fear, are very literally of his own household. If this woman is legally his wife, we, as his friends, are called upon to stand by the marriage and, on grounds of public policy, make the best of what, I admit, strikes me as a very bad business. If she is not legally his wife, if there is any flaw in the marriage, we must take means to establish the fact of that flaw and set him free. Whether he is grateful to us for our self-imposed labours affects our duty neither one way nor the other at this stage of the proceedings. But, should she prove the unscrupulous person I take her to be, he will very certainly thank us in the end. And now, Brownlow, it occurs to me the sooner we move in all this the better. There is no time to be lost.’

He gave me reasons for his opinion, in which I fully agreed; and we sat talking far into the night, with the result that within a fortnight I travelled, first to Yorkshire, and then up to town.