Weighed and Wanting by George MacDonald (fiction book recommendations TXT) 📕

mind of Hester, but she banished it like an evil spectre.

Miss Vavasor continued the most pleasant and unexacting of guests. Her perfect breeding, sustained by a quiet temper and kindly disposition, was easily, by simple hearts, taken for the sweetness it only simulated. To people like Miss Vavasor does the thought never occur-what if the thing they find it so necessary to simulate should actually in itself be indispensable? What if their necessity of simulating it comes of its absolute necessity!

She found the company of the major agreeable in the slow time she had for her nephew's sake to pass with such primitive people, and was glad of what she might otherwise have counted barely endurable. For Mr. Raymount, he would not leave what he counted his work for any goddess in creation: Hester had got her fixedness of purpose through him, and its direction through her mother. But it was well he did not give Miss Vavasor much of his company: if they had been alone together for a quarter of an hour, they would have parted sworn foes, hating each other almost as much as is possible without having loved. So the major, instead of putting a stop to the unworthy alliance, found himself actually furthering the affair, doing his part with the lady on whom the success of the enemy depended. He was still now and then tempted to break through and have a hideous revenge; but, with no great sense of personal dignity to restrain him, he was really a man of honour and behaved like one, curbing himself with no little severity.

So the time went on till after the twelfth night, when Miss Vavasor took her leave for a round of visits, and lord Gartley went up to town, with intention thereafter to pay a visit to his property, such as it was. He would return to Yrndale in three weeks or a month, when the final arrangements for the marriage would be made.

A correspondence naturally commenced, and Hester, unwarned by former experience, received his first letter joyfully. But, the letter read, lo, there was the same disappointment as of old! And as the first letter, so the last and all between. In Hester's presence, she suggesting and leading, he would utter what seemed to indicate the presence of what she would have in him; but alone in his room, without guide to his thoughts, without the stimulus of her presence or the sense of her moral atmosphere, the best things he could write were poor enough; they had no bones in them, and no other fire than that which the thought of Hester's loveliness could supply. So his letters were not inspiriting. They absorbed her atmosphere and after each followed a period of mental asphyxy. Had they been those of a person indifferent to her, she would have called them stupid, thrown them down, and thought no more of them. As it was, I doubt if she read many of them twice over. But all would be well, she said to herself, when they met again. It was her absence that oppressed him, poor fellow! He was out of spirits, and could not write! He had not the faculty for writing that some had! Her father had told her of men that were excellent talkers, but set them down pen in hand and not a thought would come! Was it not to his praise rather than blame? Was not the presence of a man's own kind the best inspirer of his speech? It was his loving human nature-she would have persuaded herself, but never quite succeeded-that made utterance in a letter impossible to him. Yet she would have liked a little genuine, definite response to the things she wrote! He seemed to have nothing to say from himself! He would assent and echo, but any response was always such as to make her doubt whether she had written plainly, invariably suggesting things of this world and not of the unseen, the world of thought and being. And when she mentioned work he always replied as if she meant an undefined something called doing good . He never doubted the failure of that foolish concert of ladies and gentlemen given to the riff-raff of London, had taught her that whether man be equal in the sight of God or not, any attempt on the part of their natural superiors to treat them as such could not but be disastrous.


CHAPTER XXXIV.

CALAMITY.


One afternoon the post brought side by side with a letter from lord Gartley, one in a strange-looking cramped hand, which Mrs. Raymount recognized.

"What can Sarah be writing about?" she said, a sudden foreboding of evil crossing her mind.

"The water-rate perhaps," answered Hester, opening her own letter as she withdrew to read it. For she did not like to read Gartley's letters before her mother-not from shyness, but from shame: she would have liked ill to have her learn how poor her Gartley's utterances were upon paper. But ere she was six slow steps away, she turned at a cry from her mother.

"Good heavens, what can it be? Something has happened to him!" said Mrs. Raymount.

Her face was white almost as the paper she held. Hester put her arms round her.

"Mother! mother! what is it?" she cried. "Anything about Corney?"

"I thought something would come to stop it all. We were too happy!" she moaned, and began to tremble.

"Come to papa, mamma dear," said Hester, frightened, but quiet. She stood as if fixed to the ground. Mr. Raymount's letters had been carried to him in the study, and one of them had put him into like perturbation. He was pacing up and down the room almost as white as his wife, but his pallor was that of rage.

"The scoundrel!" he groaned, and seizing a chair hurled it against the wall. "I had the suspicion he was a mean dog! Now all the world will know it-and that he is my son! What have I done-what has my wife done, that we should give being to a vile hound like this? What is there in her or in me-?"

There he paused, for he remembered: far back in the family some five generations or so, one had been hanged for forgery.

He threw himself in a chair, and wept with rage and shame. He had for years been writing of family and social duties; here was his illustration! His books were his words; here was his deed! How should he ever show himself again! He would leave the country! Damn the property! The rascal should never succeed to it! Mark should have it-if he lived! But he hoped he would die! He would like to poison them all, and go with them out of the disgrace-all but the dog that had brought it on them! Hester marry an earl! Not if the truth would prevent it! Her engagement must at once be broken! Lord Gartley marry the sister of a thief!

While he was thus raging a knock came to the door, and a maid entered.

"Please, sir," she said, "Miss Raymount says will you come to mis'ess: she's taken bad!"

This brought him to himself. The horrible fate was hers too! He must go to her. How could she have heard the vile news? She must have heard it! what else could make her ill! He followed the maid to the lawn. It was a cold morning of January sunshine. There stood his wife in his daughter's arms, trembling from head to foot, and apparently without power of motion! He asked no question, took her in his arms, bore her to her room, laid her on the bed, and sat down beside her, hardly caring if she died, for the sooner they were all dead the better! She lay like one dead, and do what she could Hester was unable to bring her to herself. But by and by the doctor came.

She had caught up the letter and as her father sat there, she handed it to him. The substance and manner of it were these:

"Dear mistress, it is time to let you know of the goings on here. I never held with bearing of tales against my fellow-servants, and perhaps it's worse to bring tales against Master Cornelius, as is your own flesh and blood, but what am I to do as was left in charge, and to keep the house respectable? He's not been home this three nights; and you ought to know as there is a young lady, his cousin from New Zealand, as is come to the house a three or four times since you went away, and stayed a long time with him, though it is some time now that I ain't seen her. She is a pretty, modest-looking young lady; though I must say I was ill-pleased when Mr. Cornelius would have her stay all night; and I up and told him if she was his cousin it wasn't as if she was his sister, and it wouldn't do, and I would walk out of the house if he insisted on me making up a bed for her. Then he laughed in my face, and told me I was an old fool, and he was only making game of me. But that was after he done his best to persuade me, and I wouldn't be persuaded. I told him if neither he nor the young lady had a character to keep, I had one to lose, and I wouldn't. But I don't think he said anything to her about staying all night; for she come down the stair as innocent-like as any dove, and bid me good night smiling, and they walked away together. And I wouldn't by no means have took upon me to be a spy, nor I wouldn't have mentioned the thing, for it's none of my business so long as nobody doesn't abuse the house as is my charge; but he ain't been home for three nights, and there is the feelings of a mother! and it's my part to let her know as her son ain't slept in his own bed for three nights, and that's a fact. So no more at present, and I hope dear mis'ess it won't kill you to hear on it. O why did his father leave him alone in London, with none but an old woman like me, as he always did look down upon, to look after him! Your humble servant for twenty years to command, S. H."

* * * * *

Mrs. Raymount had not read the half of this. It was enough to learn he had not been home for three nights. How is it? Parents with no reasonable ground for believing their children good, nay with considerable ground for believing them worse than many, are yet seized as by the awfully incredible when they hear they are going wrong. Helen Raymount concluded her boy had turned into bad ways because left in London, although she knew he had never taken to good ways while they were all with him. If he had never gone right why should she wonder he had gone wrong?

The doctor was sitting by the bedside, watching the effect of something he had given her. Mr. Raymount rose and led Hester from the room-sternly almost, as if she had been to blame for it all.

Some people when they are angry, speak as if they were angry with the person to whom