Although the statement thus presented implied a weakness in Mrs Vanstone’s character which Miss Garth, after many years of intimate experience, had never detected, she accepted the explanation as a matter of course; receiving it all the more readily, inasmuch as it might, without impropriety, be communicated in substance to appease the irritated curiosity of the two young ladies. For this reason especially, she perused the first half of the letter with an agreeable sense of relief. Far different was the impression produced on her, when she advanced to the second half, and when she had read it to the end.
The second part of the letter was devoted to the subject of the journey to London.
Mrs Vanstone began by referring to the long and intimate friendship which had existed between Miss Garth and herself. She now felt it due to that friendship to explain confidentially the motive which had induced her to leave home with her husband. Miss Garth had delicately refrained from showing it, but she must naturally have felt, and must still be feeling, great surprise at the mystery in which their departure had been involved; and she must doubtless have asked.herself why Mrs Vanstone should have been associated with family affairs which (in her independent position as to relatives) must necessarily concern Mr Vanstone alone.
Without touching on those affairs, which it was neither desirable nor necessary to do, Mrs Vanstone then proceeded to say that she would at once set all Miss Garth’s doubts at rest, so far as they related to herself, by one plain acknowledgment. Her object in accompanying her husband to London was to see a certain celebrated physician, and to consult him privately on a very delicate and anxious matter connected with the state of her health. In plainer terms still, this anxious matter meant nothing less than the possibility that she might again become a mother.
When the doubt had first suggested itself, she had treated it as a mere delusion. The long interval that had elapsed since the birth of her last child; the serious illness which had afflicted her after the death of that child in infancy; the time of life at which she had now arrived – all inclined her to dismiss the idea as soon as it arose in her mind. It had returned again and again in spite of her. She had felt the necessity of consulting the highest medical authority; and had shrunk, at the same time, from alarming her daughters, by summoning a London physician to the house. The medical opinion, sought under the circumstances already mentioned, had now been obtained. Her doubt was confirmed as a certainty; and the result, which might be expected to take place towards the end of the summer, was, at her age and with her constitutional peculiarities, a subject for serious future anxiety, to say the least of it. The physician had done his best to encourage her; but she had understood the drift of his questions more clearly than he supposed, and she knew that he looked to the future with more than ordinary doubt.
Having disclosed these particulars, Mrs Vanstone requested that they might be kept a secret between her correspondent and herself. She had felt unwilling to mention her suspicions to Miss Garth, until those suspicions had been confirmed – and she now recoiled, with even greater reluctance, from allowing her daughters to be in any way alarmed about her. It would be best to dismiss the subject for the present, and to wait hopefully till the summer came. In the mean time they would all, she trusted, be happily reunited on the twenty-third of the month, which Mr Vanstone had fixed on as the day for their return. With this intimation, and with the customary messages, the letter, abruptly and confusedly, came to an end.
For the first few minutes, a natural sympathy for Mrs Vanstone was the only feeling of which Miss Garth was conscious after she had laid the letter down. Ere long, however, there rose obscurely on her mind a doubt which perplexed and distressed her. Was the explanation which she had just read, really as satisfactory and as complete as it professed to be? Testing it plainly by facts, surely not.
On the morning of her departure, Mrs Vanstone had unquestionably left the house in good spirits. At her age, and in her state of health, were good spirits compatible with such an errand to a physician as the errand on which she was bent? Then, again, had that letter from New Orleans, which had necessitated Mr Vanstone’s departure, no share in occasioning his wife’s departure as well? Why, otherwise, had she looked up so eagerly the moment her daughter mentioned the post-mark? Granting the avowed motive for her journey – did not her manner, on the morning when the letter was opened, and again on the morning of departure, suggest the existence of some other motive which her letter kept concealed?
If it was so, the conclusion that followed was a very distressing one. Mrs Vanstone, feeling what was due to her long friendship with Miss Garth, had apparently placed the fullest confidence in her, on one subject, by way of unsuspiciously maintaining the strictest reserve towards her on another. Naturally frank and straightforward in all her own dealings, Miss Garth shrank from plainly pursuing her doubts to this result: a want of loyalty towards her tried and valued friend seemed implied in the mere dawning of it on her mind.
She locked up the letter in her desk; roused herself resolutely to attend to the passing interests of the day; and went downstairs again to the breakfast-room. Amid many uncertainties, this at least was clear: Mr and Mrs Vanstone were coming back on the twenty-third of the month. Who could say what new revelations might not come back with them?
Chapter Four
No new revelations came back with them: no anticipations associated with their return were realized. On the one forbidden subject of their errand in London, there was no moving either the master or the mistress of the house. Whatever their object might have been, they had to all appearance successfully accomplished it – for they both returned in perfect possession of their every-day looks and manners. Mrs Vanstone’s spirits had subsided to their natural quiet level; Mr Vanstone’s imperturbable cheerfulness sat as easily and indolently on him as usual. This was the one noticeable result of their journey – this, and no more. Had the household revolution run its course already? Was the secret, thus far hidden impenetrably, hidden for ever?
Nothing in this world is hidden for ever. The gold which has lain for centuries unsuspected in the ground, reveals itself, one day on the surface. Sand turns traitor, and betrays the footstep that has passed over it; water gives back to the tell-tale surface the body that has been drowned. Fire itself leaves the confession, in ashes, of the substance consumed in it. Hate breaks its prison-secrecy in the thoughts, through the doorway of the eyes; and Love finds the Judas who betrays it by a kiss. Look where we will, the inevitable law of revelation is one of the laws of Nature: the lasting preservation of a secret is a miracle which the world has never yet seen.
How was the secret now hidden in the household at Combe-Raven doomed to disclose itself? Through what coming event in the daily lives of the father, the mother and the daughters, was the law of revelation destined to break the fatal way to discovery? The way opened (unseen by the parents, and unsuspected by the children) through the first event that happened after Mr and Mrs Vanstone’s return – an event which presented, on the surface of it, no interest of greater importance than the trivial social ceremony of a morning call.
Three days after the master and mistress of Combe-Raven had come back, the female members of the family happened to be assembled together in the morning-room. The view from the windows looked over the flower-garden and shrubbery; this last being protected at its outward extremity by a fence, and approached from the lane beyond by a wicket-gate. During an interval in the conversation, the attention of the ladies was suddenly attracted to this gate, by the sharp sound of the iron latch falling in its socket. Some one had entered the shrubbery from the lane; and Magdalen at once placed herself at the window to catch the first sight of the visitor through the trees.
After a few minutes, the figure of a gentleman became visible, at the point where the shrubbery path joined the winding garden-walk which led to the house. Magdalen looked at him attentively, without appearing, at first, to know who he was. As he came nearer, however, she started in astonishment;
and turning quickly to her mother and sister, proclaimed the gentleman in the garden to be no other than ‘Mr Francis Clare’.
The visitor thus announced, was the son of Mr Vanstone’s oldest associate and nearest neighbour.
Mr Clare the elder inhabited an unpretending little cottage, situated just outside the shrubbery-fence which marked the limit of the Combe-Raven grounds. Belonging to the younger branch of a family of great antiquity, the one inheritance of importance that he had derived from his ancestors, was the possession of a magnificent library, which not only filled all the rooms in his modest little dwelling, but lined the staircases and passages as well. Mr Clare’s books represented the one important interest of Mr Clare’s life. He had been a widower for many years past, and made no secret of his philosophical resignation to the loss of his wife. As a father, he regarded his family of three sons in the light of a necessary domestic evil, which perpetually threatened the sanctity of his study and the safety of his books. When the boys went to school, Mr Clare said ‘good-bye’ to them – and ‘thank God’ to himself. As for his small income, and his still smaller domestic establishment, he looked at them both from the same satirically indifferent point of view. He called himself a pauper with a pedigree. He abandoned the entire direction of his household to the slatternly old woman who was his only servant, on the condition that she was never to venture near his books, with a duster in her hand, from one year’s end to the other. His favourite poets were Horace and Pope; his chosen philosophers, Hobbes and Voltaire. He took his exercise and his fresh air under protest; and always walked the same distance to a yard, on the ugliest high-road in the neighbourhood. He was crooked of back, and quick of temper. He could digest radishes, and sleep after green tea. His views of human nature were the views of Diogenes, tempered by Rochefoucault;1 his personal habits were slovenly in the last degree; and his favourite boast was that he had outlived all human prejudices.
Such was this singular man, in his more superficial aspects. What nobler qualities he might possess below the surface, no one had ever discovered. Mr Vanstone, it is true, stoutly asserted that ‘Mr Clare’s worst side was his outside’ – but, in this expression of opinion, he stood alone among his neighbours. The association between these two widely-dissimilar men had lasted for many years, and was almost close enough to be called a friendship. They had acquired a habit of meeting to smoke together on certain evenings in the week, in the cynic-philosopher’s study, and of there disputing on every imaginable subject – Mr Vanstone flourishing the stout cudgels of assertion, and Mr Clare meeting him with the keen-edged tools of sophistry. They generally quarrelled at night, and met on the neutral ground of the shrubbery to be reconciled together the next morning. The bond of intercourse thus curiously established between them, was strengthened on Mr Vanstone’s side by a hearty interest in his neighbour’s three sons – an interest by which those sons benefited all the more importantly, seeing that one of the prejudices which their father had outlived, was a prejudice in favour of his own children.
‘I look at those boys,’ the philosopher was accustomed to say, ‘with a perfectly impartial eye; I dismiss the unimportant accident of their birth from all consideration; and I find them below the average in every respect. The only excuse which a poor gentleman has for presuming to exist in the nineteenth century, is the excuse of extraordinary ability. My boys have been addle-headed from infancy. If I had any capital to give them, I should make Frank a butcher, Cecil a baker, and Arthur a grocer – those being the only human vocations I know of which are certain to be always in request. As it is, I have no money to help them with; and they have no brains to help themselves. They appear to me to be three human superfluities in dirty jackets and noisy boots; and, unless they clear themselves off the community by running away, I don’t myself profess to see what is to be done with them.’
Fortunately for the boys, Mr Vanstone’s views were still fast imprisoned in the ordinary prejudices. At his intercession, and through his influence, Frank, Cecil and Arthur were received on the foundation of a well-reputed grammar-school.2 In holiday time they were mercifully allowed the run of Mr Vanstone’s paddock; and were humanized and refined by association, indoors, with Mrs Vanstone and her daughters. On these occasions, Mr Clare used sometimes to walk across from his cottage (in his dressing-gown and slippers), and look at the boys disparagingly, through the window or over the fence, as if they were three wild animals whom his neighbour was attempting to tame. ‘You and your wife are excellent people,’ he used to say to Mr Vanstone. ‘I respect your honest prejudices in favour of those boys of mine with all my heart. But you are so wrong about them – you are indeed! I wish to give no offence; I speak quite impartially – but mark my words, Vanstone: they’ll all three turn out ill, in spite of everything you can do to prevent it.’
In later years, when Frank had reached the age of seventeen, the same curious shifting of the relative positions of parent and friend between the two neighbours, was exemplified more absurdly than ever. A civil engineer in the north of England, who owed certain obligations to Mr Vanstone, expressed his willingness to take Frank under superintendence, on terms of the most favourable kind. When this proposal was received, Mr Clare, as usual, first shifted his own character as Frank’s father on Mr Vanstone’s shoulders – and then moderated his neighbour’s parental enthusiasm from the point of view of an impartial spectator.
‘It’s the finest chance for Frank that could possibly have happened,’ cried Mr Vanstone, in a glow of fatherly enthusiasm.
‘My good fellow, he won’t take it,’ retorted Mr Clare, with the icy composure of a disinterested friend.
‘But he shall take it,’ persisted Mr Vanstone.
‘Say he shall have a mathematical head,’ rejoined Mr Clare; ‘say he shall possess industry, ambition and firmness of purpose. Pooh! pooh! you don’t look at him with my impartial eyes. I say, No mathematics, no industry, no ambition, no firmness of purpose. Frank is a compound of negatives – and there they are.’
‘Hang your negatives!’ shouted Mr Vanstone. ‘I don’t care a rush for negatives, or affirmatives either. Frank shall have this splendid chance; and I’ll lay you any wager you like he makes the best of it.’
‘I am not rich enough to lay wagers usually,’ replied Mr Clare; ‘but I think I have got a guinea about the house somewhere; and I’ll lay you that guinea Frank comes back on our hands like a bad shilling.’
‘Done!’ said Mr Vanstone. ‘No: stop a minute! I won’t do the lad’s character the injustice of backing it at even money. I’ll lay you five to one Frank turns up trumps in this business! You ought to be ashamed of yourself for talking of him as you do. What sort of hocus-pocus you bring it about by, I don’t pretend to know; but you always end in making me take his part, as if I was his father instead of you. Ah, yes! give you time, and you’ll defend yourself. I won’t give you time; I won’t have any of your special-pleading. Black’s white according to you. I don’t care: it’s black for all that. You may talk nineteen to the dozen – I shall write to my friend and say Yes, in Frank’s interests, by to-day’s post.
Such were the circumstances under which Mr Francis Clare departed for the north of England, at the age of seventeen, to start in life as a civil engineer.
From time to time, Mr Vanstone’s friend communicated with him on the subject of the new pupil. Frank was praised, as a quiet, gentlemanlike, interesting lad – but he was also reported to be rather slow at acquiring the rudiments of engineering science. Other letters, later in date, described him as a little too ready to despond about himself; as having been sent away, on that account, to some new railway works; to see if change of scene would rouse him; and as having benefited in every respect by the experiment – except perhaps in regard to his professional studies, which still advanced but slowly. Subsequent communications announced his departure, under care of a trustworthy foreman, for some public works in Belgium; touched on the general benefit he appeared to derive from this new c
hange; praised his excellent manners and address, which were of great assistance in facilitating business communications with the foreigners – and passed over in ominous silence the main question of his actual progress in the acquirement of knowledge. These reports, and many others which resembled them, were all conscientiously presented by Frank’s friend to the attention of Frank’s father. On each occasion, Mr Clare exulted over Mr Vanstone; and Mr Vanstone quarrelled with Mr Clare. ‘One of these days, you’ll wish you hadn’t laid that wager,’ said the cynic-philosopher. ‘One of these days, I shall have the blessed satisfaction of pocketing your guinea,’ cried the sanguine friend. Two years had then passed since Frank’s departure. In one year more, results asserted themselves, and settled the question.