The Bertrams Part 35

I certainly have no right to bind you to my will; all that I ask in such case is, that your decision shall not be delayed."

Such was Miss Waddington's letter; a portion of it, at least, for not above the half has been given here. Its effect upon Bertram had not been exhilarating. In his heart he called her cold and heartless, and at first resolved to take her at her word and break off from her.

He would willingly have done so as far as she was concerned; but he could not bring himself to do it on his own part. He could not endure to part with her, though he would willingly have punished her by telling her that she had forfeited her claim to him. As it was, he did nothing. For three weeks he neither answered the letter nor went near her, nor gave her any token that he was thinking about her.

Then came a note from Miss Baker, asking him to come to Littlebath.

It was good-humoured, playful, almost witty; too much so for Miss Baker's una.s.sisted epistle-craft, and he at once saw that Caroline had dictated it. Her heart at any rate was light. He answered it by one equally good-humoured and playful, and perhaps more witty, addressed of course to Miss Baker, in which he excused himself at present in consequence of the multiplicity of his town engagements.

It was June, and he could not get away without making himself guilty of all manner of perjuries; but in August he would certainly take Littlebath on his way to Scotland.

He had intended that every light word should be a dagger in Caroline's bosom; but there was not a pin's p.r.i.c.k in the whole of it. Sullen grief on his part would have hurt her. And it would have hurt her had he taken her at her word and annulled their engagement; for she had begun to find that she loved him more than she had thought possible. She had talked in her prudence, and written in her prudence, of giving him up; but when the time came in which she might expect a letter from him, saying that so it should be, her heart did tremble at the postman's knock; she did feel that she had something to fear. But his joyous, clever, laughing answer to her aunt was all that she could wish. Though she loved him, she could wait; though she loved him, she did not wish him to be sad when he was away from her.

She had reason and measure in her love; but it was love, as she began to find--almost to her own astonishment.

George had alluded not untruly to his own engagements. On the day after he received Caroline's letter he shut up c.o.ke upon Lyttleton for that term, and shook the dust off his feet on the threshold of Mr. Die's chambers. Why should he work? why sit there filling his brain with cobwebs, pouring over old fusty rules couched in obscure language, and useful only for a.s.sisting mankind to cheat each other?

He had had an object; but that was gone. He had wished to prove to one heart, to one soul, that, young as he was, poor as he was, she need not fear to trust herself to his guardians.h.i.+p. Despite his musty toils, she did fear. Therefore, he would have no more of them. No more of them at any rate then, while the sun was s.h.i.+ning so brightly.

So he went down to Richmond with Twisleton and Madden, and Hopgood and Fortescue. Heaven knows what they did when they got back to town that night--or, rather, perhaps heaven's enemy. And why not? Caroline did not care whether or no he amused himself as other men do. For her sake he had kept himself from these things. As she was indifferent, why need he care? He cared no longer. There was no more law that term; no more eulogy from gratified Mr. Die; but of jovial days at Richmond or elsewhere there were plenty; plenty also of jovial Baccha.n.a.lian nights in London. Miss Waddington had been very prudent; but there might perhaps have been a prudence yet more desirable.

He did go down to Littlebath on his way to Scotland, and remained there three days. He made up his mind as he journeyed down to say nothing about their late correspondence to Caroline till she should first speak of it; and as she had come to an exactly similar resolution on her part, and as both adhered to their intentions, it so fell out that nothing in the matter was said by either of them.

Caroline was quite satisfied; but not so Bertram. He again said to himself that she was cold and pa.s.sionless; as cold as she is beautiful, he declared as he walked home to the "Plough." How very many young gentlemen have made the same soliloquy when their mistresses have not been so liberal as they would have had them!

The lovers pa.s.sed the three days together at Littlebath with apparent satisfaction. They rode together, and walked together, and on one evening danced together; nay, they talked together, and Miss Baker thought that everything was smooth. But Bertram, as he went off to Scotland, said to himself that she was very, very cold, and began to question with himself whether she did really love him.

"Do write to me, and tell me what sport you have," Caroline had said when he went away. What a subject for a woman to choose for her lover's letters! She never said, "Write, write often; and always when you write, swear that you love me." "Oh, yes, I'll write," said Bertram, laughing. "I'll give you a succinct account of every brace."

"And send some of them too," said Miss Baker. "Certainly," said George; and so he did.

He was joined with Harcourt and one or two others in this trip to Scotland, and it was then that he told his friend how much he was disturbed by Miss Waddington's obstinacy; and how he doubted, not as to her heart being his, but as to her having a heart to belong to any one. In answer to this, Harcourt gave him pretty nearly the same counsel as she had done. "Wait, my dear fellow, with a little patience; you'll have lots of time before you for married troubles.

What's the use of a man having half-a-score of children round him just when he is beginning to enjoy life? It is that that Miss Waddington thinks about; though, of course, she can't tell you so."

And then, also--that is to say, on some occasion a little subsequent to the conversation above alluded to--Bertram also told his friend what he knew of Miss Waddington's birth.

"Whew-w-w," whistled Harcourt; "is that the case? Well, now I am surprised."

"It is, indeed."

"And he has agreed to the marriage?"

"He knows of it, and has not disagreed. Indeed, he made some peddling little offer about money."

"But what has he said to you about it?"

"Nothing, not a word. I have only seen him once since Christmas, and then I did not speak of it; nor did he."

Harcourt asked fifty other questions on the matter, all eagerly, as though he considered this newly-learned fact to be of the greatest importance: all of which Bertram answered, till at last he was tired of talking of his uncle.

"I cannot see that it makes any difference," said he, "whose granddaughter she is."

"But it does make the greatest difference. I own that I am surprised now that Miss Waddington should wish to delay the marriage. I thought I understood her feelings and conduct on the matter, and must say that I regarded them as admirable. But I cannot quite understand her now. It certainly seems to me that with such a guarantee as that she needs be afraid of nothing. Whichever of you he selected, it would come to the same thing."

"Harcourt, if she would marry me to-morrow because by doing so she would make sure of my uncle's money, by heaven, I would not take her!

If she will not take me for myself, and what I can do for her, she may let me alone." Thus majestically spoke Bertram, sitting with his friend on the side of a Scottish mountain, with a flask of brandy and a case of sandwiches between them.

"Then," said Harcourt, "you are an a.s.s;" and as he spoke he finished the flask.

Bertram kept his word, and told his lady-love all particulars as to the game he killed; some particulars also he gave her as to scenery, as to his friends, and as to Scotch people. He wrote nice, chatty, amusing letters, such as most people love to get from their friends; but he said little or nothing about love. Once or twice he ventured to tell her of some pretty girl that he met, of some adventure with a laird's daughter; nay, insinuated laughingly that he had not escaped from it quite heart-whole. Caroline answered his letter in the same tone; told him, with excellent comedy, of the leading facts of life in Littlebath; recommended him by all means to go back after the laird's daughter; described the joy of her heart at unexpectedly meeting Mr. M'Gabbery in the pump-room, and her subsequent disappointment at hearing that there was now a Mrs. M'Gabbery. He had married that Miss Jones, of whom the parental Potts had so strongly disapproved. All this was very nice, very amusing, and very friendly.

But Bertram, as a lover, knew that he was not satisfied.

When he had done with the grouse and the laird's daughter he went to Oxford, but he did not then go again to Littlebath. He went to Oxford, and from thence to Arthur Wilkinson's parsonage. Here he saw much of Adela; and consoled himself by talking with her about Caroline. To her he did not conceal his great anger. While he was still writing good-humoured, witty letters to his betrothed, he was saying of her to Adela Gauntlet things harsh--harsher perhaps in that they were true.

"I had devoted myself to her," he said. "I was working for her as a galley-slave works, and was contented to do it. I would have borne anything, risked anything, endured anything, if she would have borne it with me. All that I have should have gone to s.h.i.+eld her from discomfort. I love her still, Miss Gauntlet; it is perhaps my misery that I love her. But I can never love her now as I should have done had she come to me then."

"How can I work now?" he said again. "I shall be called to the bar of course; there is no difficulty in that; and may perhaps earn what will make us decently respectable. But the spirit, the high spirit is gone. She is better pleased that it should be so. She is intolerant of enthusiasm. Is it not a pity, Miss Gauntlet, that we should be so different?"

What could Adela say to him? Every word that he uttered was to her a truth--a weary, melancholy truth; a repet.i.tion of that truth which was devouring her own heart. She sympathized with him fully, cordially, ardently. She said no word absolutely in dispraise of Caroline; but she admitted, and at last admitted so often, that, according to her thinking, Caroline was wrong.

"Wrong!" Bertram would shout. "Can there be a doubt? Can any one with a heart doubt?" Adela said, "No; no one with a heart could doubt."

"She has no heart," said Bertram. "She is lovely, clever, fascinating, elegant. She has everything a woman should have except a heart--except a heart." And then, as he turned away his face, Adela could see that he brushed his hand across his eyes.

What could she do but weep too? And is it not known to all men--certainly it is to all women--how dangerous are such tears?

Thus during his stay at Hurst Staple, Bertram was frequently at West Putford. But he observed that Adela was not often at his cousin's vicarage, and that Arthur was very seldom at West Putford. The families, it was clear, were on as good terms as ever. Adela and Mary and Sophia would be together, and old Mr. Gauntlet would dine at Hurst Staple, and Arthur would talk about the old rector freely enough. But Bertram rarely saw Adela unless he went to the rectory, and though he dined there with the Wilkinson girls three or four times, Arthur only dined there once.

"Have you and Arthur quarrelled?" said he to Adela one day, laughing as he spoke.

"Oh, no," said she; but she could not keep down her rebellious colour as she answered him, and Bertram at once took the hint. To her he said nothing further on that matter.

"And why don't you marry, Arthur?" he asked the next morning.

And Arthur also blushed, not thinking then of Adela Gauntlet, but of that pledge which he had given to Lord Stapledean--a pledge of which he had repented every day since he had given it.

And here it may be explained, that as Arthur Wilkinson had repented of that pledge, and had felt more strongly from day to day that it had put him in a false and unworthy position, so did his mother from day to day feel with less force the compunction which she had at first expressed as to receiving her son's income. This had become less and less, and now, perhaps, it could no longer boast of an existence. The arrangement seemed to her to be so essentially a good one, her children were provided for in so convenient and so comfortable a manner, it was so natural that she should regard herself as the mistress of that house, that perhaps no blame is due to her in that this compunction ceased. No blame is now heaped upon her, and the fact is merely stated. She had already learned to regard herself as the legal owner of that ecclesiastical income; and seeing that her son deducted a stipend of one hundred and fifty pounds for merely doing the duty--a curate would have only had the half of that sum, as she sometimes said to herself--and seeing also that he had his fellows.h.i.+p, she had no scruple in making him pay fairly for whatever extra accommodation he received at home--exactly as she would have done had poor dear old Mr. Wilkinson not been out of the way. Considering all these comfortable circ.u.mstances, poor dear old Mr. Wilkinson was perhaps not regretted quite so much as might otherwise have been the case.

Mrs. Wilkinson was in the habit of saying many things from day to day in praise of that good Lord Stapledean, who had so generously thought of her and her widowhood. When she did so Arthur would look grim and say nothing, and his mother would know that he was displeased.

"Surely he cannot begrudge us the income," she had once said to her eldest daughter. "Oh, no; I am sure he does not," said Mary; "but, somehow, he is not so happy about things as he used to be." "Then he must be a very ungrateful boy," said the mother. Indeed, what more could a young full-fledged vicar want than to have a comfortable house under his mother's ap.r.o.n-string?

"And why don't you marry?" Bertram had asked his cousin. It was odd that Arthur should not marry, seeing that Adela Gauntlet lived so near him, and that Adela was so very, very beautiful.

Up to that day, Bertram had heard nothing of the circ.u.mstances under which the living had been given. Then did Wilkinson tell him the story, and ended by saying--"You now see that my marriage is quite out of the question."

Then Bertram began to think that he understood why Adela also remained unmarried, and he began to ask himself whether all the world were as cold-hearted as his Caroline. Could it be that Adela also had refused to venture till her future husband should have a good, comfortable, disposable income of his own? But, if so, she would not have sympathized so warmly with him; and if so, what reason could there be why she and Arthur should not meet each other? Could it then be that Arthur Wilkinson was such a coward?

He said nothing on the matter to either of them, for neither of them had confided to him their sorrows--if they had sorrows. He had no wish to penetrate their secrets. What he had said, and what he had learnt, he had said and learnt by accident. He himself had not their gift of reticence, so he talked of his love occasionally to Arthur, and he talked of it very often to Adela.

And the upshot of his talking to Adela was always this: "Why, oh why, was not his Caroline more like to her?" Caroline was doubtless the more beautiful, doubtless the more clever, doubtless the more fascinating. But what are beauty and talent and fascination without a heart? He was quite sure that Adela's heart was warm.

He went to Littlebath no more that year. It was well perhaps that he did not. Well or ill as the case may be. Had he done so, he would, in his then state of mind, most a.s.suredly have broken with Miss Waddington. In lieu, however, of accepting Miss Baker's invitation for Christmas, he went to Hadley and spent two or three days there, uncomfortable himself, and making the old man uncomfortable also.

Up to this time he had been completely idle--at any rate, as far as the law was concerned--since the day of his great break down on the receipt of Miss Waddington's letter. He still kept his Temple chambers, and when the day came round in October, he made another annual payment to Mr. Die. On that occasion Mr. Die had spoken rather seriously to him; but up to that time his period of idleness had mainly been the period of the long vacation, and Mr. Die was willing to suppose that this continued payment was a sign that he intended to settle again to work.

"Will it be impertinent to ask," his uncle at Hadley had said to him--"will it be impertinent to ask what you and Caroline intend to do?" At this time Mr. Bertram was aware that his nephew knew in what relations.h.i.+p they all stood to each other.