_ VOLUME III CHAPTER VII. THE RETURN TO HADLEY
We must now return for awhile to Hadley. Since the day on which Miss Baker had written that letter to Sir Lionel, she had expressed no wish to leave her uncle's house. Littlebath had no charms for her now. The colonel was still there, and so was the colonel's first love--Miss Todd: let them forgive and forget, and marry each other at last if they so pleased. Miss Baker's fit of ambition was over, and she was content to keep her uncle's house at Hadley, and to see Caroline whenever she could spare a day and get up to London for that purpose.
And the old gentleman was less bearish than she thought he would have been. He occasionally became rusty about shillings and sixpences, and scolded because his niece would have a second fire lighted; but by degrees he forgot even this grievance, and did not make himself more disagreeable or exacting than old age, wealth, and suffering generally are when they come together.
And then when Adela left London, Miss Baker was allowed to ask her to stop with them at Hadley--and Adela did as she was asked. She went direct from Eaton Square to Mr. Bertram's house; and was still there at the time alluded to in the last chapter.
It was on the second morning after Sir Henry's visit to his wife that the postman brought to Miss Baker a letter from Lady Harcourt. The two ladies were sitting at the time over the breakfast-table, and old Mr. Bertram, propped up with pillows, with his crutches close to his hand, was sitting over the fire in his accustomed arm-chair. He did not often get out of it now, except when he was taken away to bed; but yet both his eye and his voice were as sharp as ever when he so pleased; and though he sat there paralyzed and all but motionless, he was still master of his house, and master also of his money.
"Good heavens!" exclaimed Miss Baker, with startled voice before her letter had been half read through.
"What's the matter?" demanded Mr. Bertram sharply.
"Oh, Miss Baker! what is it?" asked Adela.
"Goodness gracious! Oh, dear! oh, dear! oh, dear!" And Miss Baker, with her handkerchief to her eyes, began to weep most bitterly.
"What ails you? Who is the letter from?" said Mr. Bertram.
"Oh, dear! oh, dear! Read it, Adela. Oh, Mr. Bertram, here is such a misfortune!"
"What is it, Miss Gauntlet? That fool will never tell me."
Adela took the letter, and read it through.
"Oh, sir," she said, "it is indeed a misfortune."
"Devil take it! what misfortune?"
"Caroline has quarrelled with Sir Henry," said Miss Baker.
"Oh, is that all?" said Mr. Bertram.
"Ah, sir; I fear this quarrel will prove serious," said Adela.
"Serious; nonsense; how serious? You never thought, did you, that he and she would live together like turtle doves? He married for money, and she for ambition; of course they'll quarrel." Such was the wisdom of Mr. Bertram, and at any rate he had experience on his side.
"But, uncle; she wishes to leave him, and hopes that you'll let her come here."
"Come here--fiddlestick! What should I do here with the wife of such a man as him?"
"She declares most positively that nothing shall induce her to live with him again."
"Fiddlestick!"
"But, uncle--"
"Why, what on earth did she expect? She didn't think to have it all sunshine, did she? When she married the man, she knew she didn't care for him; and now she determines to leave him because he won't pick up her pocket-handkerchief! If she wanted that kind of thing, why did not she marry my nephew?"
This was the first time that Mr. Bertram had been heard to speak of George in a tone of affection, and both Miss Baker and Miss Gauntlet were not a little surprised. They had never heard him speak of Caroline as his granddaughter.
During the whole of that day, Mr. Bertram was obdurate; and he positively refused to receive Lady Harcourt at his house unless she came there with the full permission of her husband. Miss Baker, therefore, was obliged to write by the first post, asking for a day's delay before she sent her final answer. But on the next morning a letter reached the old gentleman himself, from Sir Henry. Sir Henry suggested that the loving grandchild should take the occasion of the season being so nearly over to pay a much-desired visit to her loving grandsire. He did not drop the quarrel altogether; but just alluded to it as a passing cloud--an unfortunate cloud certainly, but one that, without doubt, would soon pass away, and leave the horizon more bright than ever.
The matter was at last arranged by Mr. Bertram giving the desired permission. He took no notice himself of Sir Henry's letter, but desired his niece to tell Caroline that she might come there if she liked. So Caroline did come; and Sir Henry gave it out that the London season had been too much for her, and that she, to her deep regret, had been forced to leave town before it was over.
"Sir Omicron was quite imperative," said Sir Henry, speaking confidentially to his intimate parliamentary friend Mr. Madden; "and as she was to go, it was as well to do the civil to grandpapa Croesus. I have no time myself; so I must do it by deputy."
Now Sir Omicron in those days was a great physician.
And so Caroline returned to Hadley; but no bells rang now to greet her coming. Little more than six months had passed since those breakfast speeches had been spoken, in which so much golden prosperity had been promised to bride and bridegroom; and now that vision of gold was at an end; that solid, substantial prosperity had melted away. The bridal dresses of the maids had hardly lost their gloss, and yet all that well-grounded happiness was gone.
"So, you are come back," said Mr. Bertram.
"Yes, sir," said Caroline, in a low voice. "I have made a mistake in life, and I must hope that you will forgive me."
"Such mistakes are very foolish. The sooner you unmake it the better."
"There will be no unmaking this mistake, sir, never--never--never. But I blame no one but myself."
"Nonsense! you will of course go back to your husband."
"Never, Mr. Bertram--never! I will obey him, or you, or both, if that be possible, in all things but in that. But in that I can obey no one."
"Psha!" said Mr. Bertram. Such was Lady Harcourt's first greeting on her return to Hadley.
Neither Miss Baker nor Adela said much to her on the matter on the first day of her arrival. Her aunt, indeed, never spoke openly to her on the subject. It seemed to be understood between them that it should be dropped. And there was occasionally a weight of melancholy about Lady Harcourt, amounting in appearance almost to savage sternness, which kept all inquiry aloof. Even her grandfather hesitated to speak to her about her husband, and allowed her to live unmolested in the quiet, still, self-controlling mood which she seemed to have adopted with a determined purpose.
For the first fortnight she did not leave the house. At the expiration of that time, on one fine sunny Sunday morning she came down dressed for church. Miss Baker remarked that the very clothes she wore were things that had belonged to her before her marriage, and were all of them of the simplest that a woman can wear without making herself conspicuous before the world. All her jewelry she had laid aside, and every brooch, and every ring that had come to her as a married woman, or as a girl about to be married--except that one ring from which an iron fate would not allow her to be parted. Ah, if she could but have laid aside that also!
And then she went to church. There were the same persons there to stare at her now, in her quiet wretchedness, who were there before staring at her in her--triumph may I say? No, there had been no triumph; little even then, except wretchedness; but that misery had not been so open to the public eye.
She went through it very well; and seemed to suffer even less than did her aunt. She had done nothing to spread abroad among the public of Hadley that fiction as to Sir Omicron's opinion which her lord had been sedulous to disseminate in London. She had said very little about herself, but she had at any rate said nothing false. Nor had she acted falsely; or so as to give false impressions. All that little world now around her knew that she had separated herself from her grand husband; and most of them had heard that she had no intention of returning to him.
She had something, therefore, to bear as she sat out that service; and she bore it well. She said her prayers, or seemed to say them, as though unconscious that she were in any way a mark for other women's eyes. And when the sermon was over, she walked home with a steady, even step; whereas Miss Baker trembled at every greeting she received, and at every step she heard.
On that afternoon, Caroline opened her heart to Adela. Hitherto little had passed between them, but those pressings of the hand, those mute marks of sympathy which we all know so well how to give when we long to lighten the sorrows which are too deep to be probed by words. But on this evening after their dinner, Caroline called Adela into her room, and then there was once more confidence between them.
"No, no, Adela, I will never go back to him." Caroline went on protesting; "you will not ask me to do that?"
"Those whom God has joined together, let not man put asunder," said Adela, solemnly.
"Ah, yes; those whom God _has_ joined. But did God join us?"
"Oh, Caroline; do not speak so."
"But, Adela, do not misunderstand me. Do not think that I want to excuse what I have done; or even to escape the penalty. I have destroyed myself as regards this world. All is over for me here. When I brought myself to stand at that altar with a man I never loved; whom I knew I never could love--whom I never tried, and never would try to love--when I did that, I put myself beyond the pale of all happines. Do not think that I hope for any release." And Lady Harcourt looked stern enough in her resolution to bear all that fate could bring on her.
"Caroline, God will temper the wind to the shorn lamb, now as always if you will ask him."
"I hope so; I hope so, Adela."
"Say that you trust so."
"I do trust. I trust in this--that He will do what is best. Oh, Adela! if you could know what the last month has been; since he came to the house!"
"Ah! why did he ever come?"
"Why, indeed! Did a man ever behave so madly?"
The man she here alluded was Sir Henry Harcourt, not Mr. Bertram.
"But I am glad of it, dearest; very glad. Is it not better so? The truth has been spoken now. I have told him all."
"You mean Sir Henry?"
"Yes, I told him all before I left. But it was nothing new, Adela. He knew it before. He never dreamed that I loved him. He knew, he must have known that I hated him."
"Oh, Caroline, Caroline! do not speak like that."
"And would not you have hated him had you been tied to him? Now that sin will be over. I shall hate him no longer now."
"Such hatred is a crime. Say what you will, he is still your husband."
"I deny it. What! when he called me by that name, was he my husband then? Was that a husband's usage? I must carry his name, and wearily walk with that burden to the grave. Such is my penalty for that day's sin. I must abandon all hope of living as other women live. I shall have no shoulder on which to lean, hear no words of love when I am sick, have no child to comfort me. I shall be alone, and yet not master of myself. This I must bear because I was false to my own heart. But yet he is not my husband. Listen to me, Adela; sooner than return to him again, I would put an end to all this world's misery at once. That would be sinful, but the sin would be lighter than that other sin."
When she spoke in this way, Adela no longer dared to suggest to her that she and Sir Henry might even yet again live together. In Adela's own mind, that course, and that alone, would have been the right one. She looked on such unions as being literally for better or for worse; and failing to reach the better, she would have done her best, with God's assistance, to bear the worst. But then Adela Gauntlet could never have placed herself in the position which Lady Harcourt now filled.
But greatly as they differed, still there was confidence between them. Caroline could talk to her, and to her only. To her grandfather she was all submission; to her aunt she was gentle and affectionate; but she never spoke of her fate with either of them. And so they went on till Adela left them in July; and then the three that were left behind lived together as quiet a household as might have been found in the parish of Hadley, or perhaps in the county of Middlesex.
During this time Lady Harcourt had received two letters from her husband, in both of which he urged her to return to him. In answer to the first, she assured him, in the civilest words which she knew how to use, that such a step was impossible; but, at the same time, she signified her willingness to obey him in any other particular, and suggested that as they must live apart, her present home with her grandfather would probably be thought to be the one most suitable for her. In answer to the second, she had simply told him that she must decline any further correspondence with him as to the possibility of her return.
His next letter was addressed to Mr. Bertram. In this he did not go into the matter of their difference at all, but merely suggested that he should be allowed to call at Hadley--with the object of having an interview with Mr. Bertram himself.
"There," said the old man, when he found himself alone with his granddaughter; "read that." And Caroline did read it. "What am I to say to that?"
"What do you think you ought to say, sir?"
"I suppose I must see him. He'll bring an action against me else, for keeping his wife from him. Mind, I tell you, you'll have to go back to him."
"No, sir! I shall not do that," said Caroline, very quietly, with something almost like a smile on her face. And then she left him, and he wrote his answer to Sir Henry.
And then Sir Henry came down to Hadley. A day had been named, and Caroline was sore put to it to know how she might best keep out of the way. At last she persuaded her aunt to go up to London with her for the day. This they did, both of them fearing, as they got out of the train and returned to it, that they might unfortunately meet the man they so much dreaded. But fortune was not so malicious to them; and when they returned to Hadley they found that Sir Henry had also returned to London.
"He speaks very fair," said Mr. Bertram, who sent for Caroline to come to him alone in the dining-room.
"Does he, sir?"
"He is very anxious that you should go back."
"Ah, sir, I cannot do that."
"He says you shall have the house in Eaton Square to yourself for the next three months."
"I shall never go back to Eaton Square, sir."
"Or he will take a small place for you anywhere at the sea-side that you may choose."
"I shall want no place if you will allow me to remain here."
"But he has all your money, you know--your fortune is now his."
"Well, sir!"
"And what do you mean to do?"
"I will do what you bid me--except going back to him."
The old man sat silent for awhile, and then again he spoke.
"Well, I don't suppose you know your own mind, as yet."
"Oh, sir! indeed I do."
"I say I suppose you don't. Don't interrupt me--I have suggested this: that you should remain here six months, and that then he should come again and see--"
"You, sir."
"Well--see me, if I'm alive: at the end of that time you'll have to go back to him. Now, good-night."
And so it was settled; and for the next six months the same dull, dreary life went on in the old house at Hadley. _