That noun of multitude, "the neighbourhood," was at first disposed to take it very ill that the wedding of the eldest Miss Crofton should be despoiled of any of its contemplated gaiety and display, by what it was pleased to call the "airs which Mrs. Baldwin gave herself." It bethought itself of Margaret's marriage, and arrived at the very probable conclusion that she was disposed to be a little jealous of her sister-in-law elect, and not disposed to allow her to "have a fuss made about her" if she could help it.
Poor Mrs. Crofton found her explanations and apologies coldly received; which distressed her, for she was a slave to conventional observances, and visited and received visits with exasperating regularity, and Mrs. Baldwin's popularity declined. But not permanently; when it was understood that her return to the Deane was desirable for a reason which every one understood, and whose force all recognised, opinions were modified, and general good-humour was restored.
The preparations for the wedding went on, and nothing was wanting to the cheerfulness and content of all concerned, except less inquietude regarding Margaret. They remembered afterwards that it happened so frequently that, when they came to think of it, they were amazed that the circumstance had not impressed them more deeply at the time: that when any two of the small party at Chayleigh met, one would say to the other, "How ill Margaret looks to-day!" or, "She is looking better to-day;" or, "She seems hardly so well, I think;" the phrases varying widely, but each conveying the fact that Margaret's looks and health, Margaret's spirits and general demeanour, were in some form or other the objects of general attention, and were altered from their ordinary condition.
Mr. Carteret's solicitude about her was fitful, and easily tranquillised. He would question her anxiously enough when she came down to breakfast in the morning, and be so uneasy and unhappy if she did not come down, that, perceiving that circumstance, she was rarely absent from the breakfast-table. But when the day advanced, and Margaret began to look brighter, he would remark that she "had got some colour now, and looked quite herself again," and, with the inconsequence which is frequently observable among persons who are constantly in the presence of even the most beloved objects, he failed to notice how often she required to "look quite herself again," in order to remove his transient uneasiness.
She looked very handsome at this time; handsomer than she had ever looked, even at the period when people had first found out that there was no great exaggeration in calling Mrs. Baldwin "a beauty." The broad brow, the sweet serious lips, which kept all their firmness, but had less severity than in the old time, the large sensible gray eyes, the delicate face, which had never had much colour, and now had permanently less, wore a spiritualised expression which made itself felt by those who never thought of analysing it.
Among the number were the Croftons, Hayes Meredith, and Lady Davyntry. Mr. Baldwin was not so blind. He saw that a change, which impressed him painfully, had come over the face and the spirit of the woman whom he loved more and more with every day of the union which had hitherto surpassed the hopes he had built upon it in happiness, and the only mistake he made was in believing that he quite understood that change, its origin, its nature, and its extent. He knew Margaret too well, had been too completely the confidant of her misgivings and hesitations previous to their marriage, and of the relief, the peace, the rehabilitation which had come to her since, to under-estimate the severity of the blow which had fallen upon her; but there was one aspect of her trouble in which he had never regarded it, in which it was her earnest desire, her constant effort, that he should never see it.
He had no knowledge of the presentiment under which Margaret laboured; he had never suspected her of such a weakness; and if it had been revealed to him, he would have unhesitatingly referred it to the condition of her health, have pronounced it a passing nervous affection, and dismissed it from his thoughts. He had never heard her express any of the vague, formless, but unconquerable apprehension with which she had learned the probability of Hayes Meredith's coming to England; he had no idea that a foregone conclusion in her mind lent the truth which had been revealed to her an additional power to wound and torture her, which was doing its work, unrecognised, before his eyes.
One of the most sympathetic, generous, unselfish of men, Fitzwilliam Baldwin united cheerfulness of disposition with good sense to a degree not so frequently attained as would be desirable in the interests of human nature; and while he comprehended to the utmost the realities of the misfortune which had befallen Margaret, himself, and their child, he would have been slow to appreciate, had he been aware of its existence, the imaginary evil with which Margaret's morbid fancy had invested it. When this wedding, with all its painful associations--so painful for them both that they never spoke of the subject when they were alone--should be over, Margaret would be quite herself again; and she would find so much to occupy and interest her at the Deane, she would be able to throw off the impressions of the past, and to welcome the new interest which was so soon to be lent to her life with nearly all the gladness it would have commanded had the incident they had to deplore never occurred.
He had a keen perception, though he did not care to examine its origin very closely, that Margaret would find it a relief to be rid of the presence of Meredith and his son. They were associated with all that had been most painful, most humiliating, in the old life; they had brought the evil tidings which had cast a heavy gloom over the calm sunny happiness of the new, and she could not be happy or oblivious in their presence--could not, that is to say, at present, in her abnormal state of sensitiveness and nervousness.
Fitzwilliam Baldwin did not cordially like Robert Meredith. He felt that he did not understand the boy, and his frank nature involuntarily recoiled, with an unexplained antipathy, from contact with a disposition so voilée, so little open, so calculating, as his observation convinced him that of Robert Meredith was. Quite unselfish, and very simple in his habits and ideas, Mr. Baldwin was none the less apt to discover the absence or the opposite of those qualities, and it was very shortly after their return to Chayleigh that he said to his wife,
"Meredith intends to make a lawyer of his son, he tells me."
"Yes," said Margaret, "it is quite decided, I understand. I daresay he will do well, he has plenty of ability."
"He has, and a few other qualifications, such as cunning and coolness, and a grand faculty for taking care of himself, which people say are calculated to insure success in that line of life."
"You don't like lawyers," said Margaret.
"I don't like Robert Meredith; do you? said her husband.
"No," she replied promptly, "I do not; more than that, I ought to be ashamed of myself, I suppose, and yet I can't contrive to be; but I dislike the boy extremely, more than I could venture to tell; the feeling I have about him troubles me--it is difficult for me to hide it."
"I don't think you do hide it, Margaret," said Baldwin; "I only know you did not hide it from me. I never saw you laboriously polite and attentive to any one before; your kindness to every one is genuine, as everything else about you, darling; but to this youngster you are not spontaneous by any means."
"You are right," she said, "I am not. There is something hateful to me about him. I suppose I am afflicted with one of those feminine follies which I have always despised, and have taken an antipathy to the boy. Very wrong, and very ungrateful of me," she added sorrowfully.
"Neither wrong nor ungrateful," her husband answered in a tone of remonstrance. "You are ready to do him all the substantial benefit in your power, as I am, for his father's sake. There is no ingratitude in that, and as for your not liking him being wrong--"
"Ah, but I don't stop at not liking him," said Margaret; "if I did, my conscience would not reproach me as it does. I hope his father does not perceive anything in my manner."
"Nothing more unlikely. Meredith does not observe you so closely or understand you so well as I do; and I don't think any one but myself could find out that you dislike the boy; and I was assisted, I must acknowledge, by a lively fellow-feeling. I should not wonder if Robert was perfectly aware that he is not a favourite with you."
"I am sure there is nothing in my manner or that of any one else," said Margaret, "which in any way touches himself, that he fails to perceive."
"Fortunately it does not matter. He loses nothing material by our not happening to take a fancy to him, and I don't think he is a person to suffer from any sentimental regrets. More than that, Margaret--and enough to have made me dislike him--I don't think he likes you."
"Like me! He hates me," she said vehemently. "I catch his eye sometimes when he looks at me, and wonder how so young a face can express so much bad feeling. I have seen such a diabolical sneer upon his face sometimes, particularly when either my father or his father spoke affectionately to me, as almost startled me--for my own sake, I mean."
"For your own sake?" said Mr. Baldwin in a tone of some annoyance. "How can you say such a foolish thing? Why on earth should you give such a thing a moment's thought? What can it possibly matter to you that you are the object of an impertinent dislike to a boy like young Meredith?"
"Nothing indeed," answered Margaret, "and I will never think of it again. You are all in a conspiracy to spoil me, I think, and thus I am foolish enough to be surprised and uncomfortable when any one dislikes me without a reason."
No more was said then on this subject, and Mr. Baldwin dismissed it from his mind. The conversation he had had with his wife had just so much effect upon him and no more, that he took very little notice of Robert, and displayed no more interest than politeness demanded in the discussions concerning him and his future, which just then shared the attention of the family party at Chayleigh with Captain Carteret's rapidly approaching marriage.
This circumstance the young gentleman was not slow to notice, and it had the effect of intensifying the feeling with which he regarded Margaret.
"She has put her fine husband up to snubbing me, has she?" he said to himself one day, when Mr. Baldwin had taken less notice of him than usual. "Now I wonder what that's for. Perhaps she's afraid of the goodness of my memory. I daresay she has told him a whole pack of lies about the time she was in Melbourne, and she's afraid, if I walked or rode out with him, I might get upon the subject. And I only wish he would give me a chance, that's all."
But nothing was more unlikely than that Mr. Baldwin should give Robert Meredith such a "chance," and that the boy's natural quickness soon made him understand. The only person with whom he associated at this time, who afforded him any opportunity for his spiteful confidences, was the bride-elect.
Lucy was still pleased by the unrepressed admiration of the only male creature within the sphere of Mrs. Baldwin's influence who was wholly unimpressed by her attractions. The "great friend's" project, though, according to Miss Lucy Crofton's somewhat shallow perceptions, triumphantly successful, did not in the least interfere with so thoroughly legitimate a development of feminine proclivities.
To be sure, the subject of Margaret's first marriage, and her disastrous life in Melbourne, was one which Lucy had never heard touched upon, even in the most intimate conversations among the family at Chayleigh. Her affianced Haldane had never spoken to her, except in the briefest and most general terms, of that painful episode in the family history. But that did not constitute, according to Lucy's not very scrupulous or refined code of delicacy, any barrier to her talking and hearing as much about it in any other available manner as she could.
She even persuaded herself that it was her "place" and a kind of "duty" to learn as much about her future sister-in-law as possible; people would talk, and it was only proper and right, when certain subjects were introduced, that she, in her future capacity of Mrs. Haldane Carteret (the cards were printed, and very new, and shiny, and important they looked), should know exactly "how things stood," and what she should have to say. Which was a reflection full of foresight on the part of the eldest Miss Crofton, and partaking somewhat of the nature of prophecy, as, from the hour of Mrs. Baldwin's marriage, the subject of her colonial life had never been revived in the coteries of "the neighbourhood."
Robert Meredith had method in his mischief. He did not offend the amour propre of Lucy by speaking contemptuously of Mrs. Baldwin, or betraying the dislike which he entertained towards her; he dexterously mingled in the revelations which he made to Lucy an affected compassion for Margaret's past sorrows, and a congratulatory compassion of her present enviable position, with artful insinuations of the incongruity between the Mrs. Baldwin of the present and the Mrs. Hungerford of the past, and a kind of bashful wonder, which he modestly imputed to his colonial ignorance of the ways of society, how any person could possibly consider Miss Lucy Crofton other than in every respect superior to Mrs. Baldwin.
The boyish flattery pleased Lucy's vanity, the boyish admiration pleased her, and she entirely deprecated the idea that Robert's manners and ideas were not on a par with those of other people born on this side of the ocean.
"You must remember," she said with much coquetry, and a smile which she intended to be immensely knowing, "that Mrs. Baldwin is a great lady in her way, and I am not of anything like so much importance. I fancy that would make as much difference in your part of the world as here."
And then they talked a great deal of his part of the world; and Robert acknowledged that his most earnest desire was that he might never see Australia again. And Lucy Crofton confessed that she was very glad Haldane could not be sent there, at least on that odious "foreign service," which she thought a detestable and absurd injustice, devised for the purpose of making the wives and families of military men miserable. She was quite alive to the fact that they were highly ornamental, but could not see that soldiers were of the slightest use at home--and as to abroad, they never did anything there, since war had ceased, but die of fevers and all sorts of horrors. So the pair pursued an animated and congenial conversation, of which it is only necessary to record two sentences.
"I suppose you have no one belonging to you in Australia?" Robert Meredith asked Miss Crofton, in a tone which implied that to so exceptionally delightful a being nothing so objectionable as a colonial connection could possibly belong.
"No one that I know anything about; there is a cousin of papa's--much younger than papa, he is--who got into trouble, and they sent him out there; but none of us ever saw him, and I don't know what has become of him. I don't even know his name rightly; it is something like Oldham, or Otway, or Oakley."
"How do you feel, Madge? are you sure you are equal to this business?" said Lady Davyntry to Margaret, as she came into her sister-in-law's room on the morning of Haldane's marriage. "Haldane is walking about the hall in the most horrid temper, your father is lingering over the last importation of bats, as if he were ............