<h4><SPAN name="CHAPTER6" id="CHAPTER6">CHAPTER VIII.<br/>
"MY LIFE IS COLD, AND DARK, AND DREARY."</SPAN></h4>
<p></p>
<p>Mr. Richard Paulette, of that eminent legal firm, Paulette, Paulette, and
Mathewson, coming to Marchmont Towers on business, was surprised to behold the
quiet ease with which the sometime copying–clerk received the punctilious
country gentry who came to sit at his board and do him honour.</p>
<p>Of all the legal fairy–tales, of all the parchment–recorded
romances, of all the poetry run into affidavits, in which the solicitor had
ever been concerned, this story seemed the strangest. Not so very strange in
itself, for such romances are not uncommon in the history of a lawyer's
experience; but strange by reason of the tranquil manner in which John
Marchmont accepted his new position, and did the honours of his house to his
late employer.</p>
<p>"Ah, Paulette," Edward Arundel said, clapping the solicitor on the back, "I
don't suppose you believed me when I told you that my friend here was
heir–presumptive to a handsome fortune."</p>
<p>The dinner–party at the Towers was conducted with that stately
grandeur peculiar to such solemnities. There was the usual round of
country–talk and parish–talk; the hunting squires leading the
former section of the discourse, the rectors and rectors' wives supporting the
latter part of the conversation. You heard on one side that Martha Harris'
husband had left off drinking, and attended church morning and evening; and on
the other that the old grey fox that had been hunted nine seasons between
Crackbin Bottom and Hollowcraft Gorse had perished ignobly in the
poultry–yard of a recusant farmer. While your left ear became conscious
of the fact that little Billy Smithers had fallen into a copper of scalding
water, your right received the dismal tidings that all the young partridges had
been drowned by the rains after St. Swithin, and that there were hardly any of
this year's birds, sir, and it would be a very blue look–out for next
season.</p>
<p>Mary Marchmont had listened to gayer talk in Oakley Street than any that was
to be heard that night in her father's drawing–rooms, except indeed when
Edward Arundel left off flirting with some pretty girls in blue, and hovered
near her side for a little while, quizzing the company. Heaven knows the young
soldier's jokes were commonplace enough; but Mary admired him as the most
brilliant and accomplished of wits.</p>
<p>"How do you like my cousin, Polly?" he asked at last.</p>
<p>"Your cousin, Miss Arundel?"</p>
<p>"Yes."</p>
<p>"She is very handsome."</p>
<p>"Yes, I suppose so," the young man answered carelessly. "Everybody says that
Livy's handsome; but it's rather a cold style of beauty, isn't it? A little too
much of the Pallas Athen� about it for my taste. I like those girls in blue,
with the crinkly auburn hair,––there's a touch of red in it in the
light,––and the dimples. You've a dimple, Polly, when you
smile."</p>
<p>Miss Marchmont blushed as she received this information, and her brown eyes
wandered away, looking very earnestly at the pretty girls in blue. She looked
at them with a strange interest, eager to discover what it was that Edward
admired.</p>
<p>"But you haven't answered my question, Polly," said Mr. Arundel. "I am
afraid you have been drinking too much wine, Miss Marchmont, and muddling that
sober little head of yours with the fumes of your papa's tawny port. I asked
you how you liked Olivia."</p>
<p>Mary blushed again.</p>
<p>"I don't know Miss Arundel well enough to like her––yet," she
answered timidly.</p>
<p>"But shall you like her when you've known her longer? Don't be jesuitical,
Polly. Likings and dislikings are instantaneous and instinctive. I liked you
before I'd eaten half a dozen mouthfuls of the roll you buttered for me at that
breakfast in Oakley Street, Polly. You don't like my cousin Olivia, miss; I can
see that very plainly. You're jealous of her."</p>
<p>"Jealous of her!"</p>
<p>The bright colour faded out of Mary Marchmont's face, and left her ashy
pale.</p>
<p>"Do <em>you</em> like her, then?" she asked.</p>
<p>But Mr. Arundel was not such a coxcomb as to catch at the secret so na�vely
betrayed in that breathless question.</p>
<p>"No, Polly," he said, laughing; "she's my cousin, you know, and I've known
her all my life; and cousins are like sisters. One likes to tease and aggravate
them, and all that; but one doesn't fall in love with them. But I think I could
mention somebody who thinks a great deal of Olivia."</p>
<p>"Who?"</p>
<p>"Your papa."</p>
<p>Mary looked at the young soldier in utter bewilderment.</p>
<p>"Papa!" she echoed.</p>
<p>"Yes, Polly. How would you like a stepmamma? How would you like your papa to
marry again?"</p>
<p>Mary Marchmont started to her feet, as if she would have gone to her father
in the midst of all those spectators. John was standing near Olivia and her
father, talking to them, and playing nervously with his slender
watch–chain when he addressed the young lady.</p>
<p>"My papa––marry again!" gasped Mary. "How dare you say such a
thing, Mr. Arundel?"</p>
<p>Her childish devotion to her father arose in all its force; a flood of
passionate emotion that overwhelmed her sensitive nature. Marry again! marry a
woman who would separate him from his only child! Could he ever dream for one
brief moment of such a horrible cruelty?</p>
<p>She looked at Olivia's sternly handsome face, and trembled. She could almost
picture that very woman standing between her and her father, and putting her
away from him. Her indignation quickly melted into grief. Indignation, however
intense, was always short–lived in that gentle nature.</p>
<p>"Oh, Mr Arundel!" she said, piteously appealing to the young man, "papa
would never, never, never marry again,––would he?"</p>
<p>"Not if it was to grieve you, Polly, I dare say," Edward answered
soothingly.</p>
<p>He had been dumbfounded by Mary's passionate sorrow. He had expected that
she would have been rather pleased, than otherwise, at the idea of a young
stepmother,––a companion in those vast lonely rooms, an
instructress and a friend as she grew to womanhood.</p>
<p>"I was only talking nonsense, Polly darling," he said. "You mustn't make
yourself unhappy about any absurd fancies of mine. I think your papa admires my
cousin Olivia: and I thought, perhaps, you'd be glad to have a stepmother."</p>
<p>"Glad to have any one who'd take papa's love away from me?" Mary said
plaintively. "Oh, Mr. Arundel, how could you think so?"</p>
<p>In all their familiarity the little girl had never learned to call her
father's friend by his Christian name, though he had often told her to do so.
She trembled to pronounce that simple Saxon name, which was so beautiful and
wonderful because it was his: but when she read a very stupid novel, in which
the hero was a namesake of Mr. Arundel's, the vapid pages seemed to be
phosphorescent with light wherever the name appeared upon them.</p>
<p>I scarcely know why John Marchmont lingered by Miss Arundel's chair. He had
heard her praises from every one. She was a paragon of goodness, an uncanonised
saint, for ever sacrificing herself for the benefit of others. Perhaps he was
thinking that such a woman as this would be the best friend he could win for
his little girl. He turned from the county matrons, the tender, kindly,
motherly creatures, who would have been ready to take little Mary to the loving
shelter of their arms, and looked to Olivia Arundel––this cold,
perfect benefactress of the poor––for help in his difficulty.</p>
<p>"She, who is so good to all her father's parishioners, could not refuse to
be kind to my poor Mary?" he thought.</p>
<p>But how was he to win this woman's friendship for his darling? He asked
himself this question even in the midst of the frivolous people about him, and
with the buzz of their conversation in his ears. He was perpetually tormenting
himself about his little girl's future, which seemed more dimly perplexing now
than it had ever appeared in Oakley Street, when the Lincolnshire property was
a far–away dream, perhaps never to be realised. He felt that his brief
lease of life was running out; he felt as if he and Mary had been standing upon
a narrow tract of yellow sand; very bright, very pleasant under the sunshine;
but with the slow–coming tide rising like a wall about them, and creeping
stealthily onward to overwhelm them.</p>
<p>Mary might gather bright–coloured shells and wet seaweed in her
childish ignorance; but he, who knew that the flood was coming, could but grow
sick at heart with the dull horror of that hastening doom. If the black waters
had been doomed to close over them both, the father might have been content to
go down under the sullen waves, with his daughter clasped to his breast. But it
was not to be so. He was to sink in that unknown stream while she was left upon
the tempest–tossed surface, to be beaten hither and thither, feebly
battling with the stormy billows.</p>
<p>Could John Marchmont be a Christian, and yet feel this horrible dread of the
death which must separate him from his daughter? I fear this frail, consumptive
widower loved his child with an intensity of affection that is scarcely
reconcilable with Christianity. Such great passions as these must be put away
before the cross can be taken up, and the troublesome path followed. In all
love and kindness towards his fellow–creatures, in all patient endurance
of the pains and troubles that befel himself, it would have been difficult to
find a more single–hearted follower of Gospel–teaching than John
Marchmont; but in this affection for his motherless child he was a very Pagan.
He set up an idol for himself, and bowed down before it. Doubtful and fearful
of the future, he looked hopelessly forward. He <em>could</em> not trust his
orphan child into the hands of God; and drop away himself into the fathomless
darkness, serene in the belief that she would be cared for and protected. No;
he could not trust. He could be faithful for himself; simple and confiding as a
child; but not for her. He saw the gloomy rocks louring black in the distance;
the pitiless waves beating far away yonder, impatient to devour the frail boat
that was so soon to be left alone upon the waters. In the thick darkness of the
future he could see no ray of light, except one,––a new hope that
had lately risen in his mind; the hope of winning some noble and perfect woman
to be the future friend of his daughter.</p>
<p>The days were past in which, in his simplicity, he had looked to Edward
Arundel as the future shelter of his child. The generous boy had grown into a
stylish young man, a soldier, whose duty lay far away from Marchmont Towers.
No; it was to a good woman's guardianship the father must leave his child.</p>
<p>Thus the very intensity of his love was the one motive which led John
Marchmont to contemplate the step that Mary thought such a cruel and bitter
wrong to her.</p>
<p></p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p></p>
<p>It was not till long after the dinner–party at Marchmont Towers that
these ideas resolved themselves into any positive form, and that John began to
think that for his daughter's sake he might be led to contemplate a second
marriage. Edward Arundel had spoken the truth when he told his cousin that John
Marchmont had repeatedly mentioned her name; but the careless and impulsive
young man had been utterly unable to fathom the feeling lurking in his friend's
mind. It was not Olivia Arundel's handsome face which had won John's
admiration; it was the constant reiteration of her praises upon every side
which had led him to believe that this woman, of all others, was the one whom
he would do well to win for his child's friend and guardian in the dark days
that were to come.</p>
<p>The knowledge that Olivia's intellect was of no common order, together with
the somewhat imperious dignity of her manner, strengthened this belief in John
Marchmont's mind. It was not a good woman only whom he must seek in the friend
he needed for his child; it was a woman powerful enough to shield her in the
lonely path she would have to tread; a woman strong enough to help her,
perhaps, by–and–by to do battle with Paul Marchmont.</p>
<p>So, in the blind paganism of his love, John refused to trust his child into
the hands of Providence, and chose for himself a friend and guardian who should
shelter his darling. He made his choice with so much deliberation, and after
such long nights and days of earnest thought, that he may be forgiven if he
believed he had chosen wisely.</p>
<p>Thus it was that in the dark November days, while Edward and Mary played
chess by the wide fireplace in the western drawing–room, or ball in the
newly–erected tennis–court, John Marchmont sat in his study
examining his papers, and calculating the amount of money at his own disposal,
in serious contemplation of a second marriage.</p>
<p>Did he love Olivia Arundel? No. He admired her and respected her, and he
firmly believed her to be the most perfect of women. No impulse of affection
had prompted the step he contemplated taking. He had loved his first wife truly
and tenderly; but he had never suffered very acutely from any of those
torturing emotions which form the several stages of the great tragedy called
Love.</p>
<p>But had he ever thought of the likelihood of his deliberate offer being
rejected by the young lady who had been the object of such careful
consideration? Yes; he had thought of this, and was prepared to abide the
issue. He should, at least, have tried his uttermost to secure a friend for his
darling.</p>
<p>With such unloverlike feelings as these the owner of Marchmont Towers drove
into Swampington one morning, deliberately bent upon offering Olivia Arundel
his hand. He had consulted with his land–steward, and with Messrs.
Paulette, and had ascertained how far he could endow his bride with the goods
of this world. It was not much that he could give her, for the estate was
strictly entailed; but there would be his own savings for the brief term of his
life, and if he lived only a few years these savings might accumulate to a
considerable amount, so limited were the expenses of the quiet Lincolnshire
household; and there was a sum of money, something over nine thousand pounds,
left him by Philip Marchmont, senior. He had something, then, to offer to the
woman he sought to make his wife; and, above all, he had a supreme belief in
Olivia Arundel's utter disinterestedness. He had seen her frequently since the
dinner–party, and had always seen her the same,––grave,
reserved, dignified; patiently employed in the strict performance of her
duty.</p>
<p>He found Miss Arundel sitting in her father's study, busily cutting out
coarse garments for her poor. A newly–written sermon lay open on the
table. Had Mr. Marchmont looked closely at the manuscript, he would have seen
that the ink was wet, and that the writing was Olivia's. It was a relief to
this strange woman to write sermons sometimes––fierce denunciatory
protests against the inherent wickedness of the human heart. Can you imagine a
woman with a wicked heart steadfastly trying to do good, and to be good? It is
a dark and horrible picture; but it is the only true picture of the woman whom
John Marchmont sought to win for his wife.</p>
<p>The interview between Mary's father and Olivia Arundel was not a very
sentimental one; but it was certainly the very reverse of commonplace. John was
too simple–hearted to disguise the purpose of his wooing. He pleaded, not
for a wife for himself, but a mother for his orphan child. He talked of Mary's
helplessness in the future, not of his own love in the present. Carried away by
the egotism of his one affection, he let his motives appear in all their
nakedness. He spoke long and earnestly; he spoke until the blinding tears in
his eyes made the face of her he looked at seem blotted and dim.</p>
<p>Miss Arundel watched him as he pleaded; sternly, unflinchingly. But she
uttered no word until he had finished; and then, rising suddenly, with a dusky
flush upon her face, she began to pace up and down the narrow room. She had
forgotten John Marchmont. In the strength and vigour of her intellect, this
weak–minded widower, whose one passion was a pitiful love for his child,
appeared to her so utterly insignificant, that for a few moments she had
forgotten his presence in that room––his very existence, perhaps.
She turned to him presently, and looked him full in the face.</p>
<p>"You do not love me, Mr. Marchmont?" she said.</p>
<p>"Pardon me," John stammered; "believe me, Miss Arundel, I respect, I esteem
you so much, that––"</p>
<p>"That you choose me as a fitting friend for your child. I understand. I am
not the sort of woman to be loved. I have long comprehended that. My cousin
Edward Arundel has often taken the trouble to tell me as much. And you wish me
to be your wife in order that you may have a guardian for your child? It is
very much the same thing as engaging a governess; only the engagement is to be
more binding."</p>
<p>"Miss Arundel," exclaimed John Marchmont, "forgive me! You misunderstand me;
indeed you do. Had I thought that I could have offended you––"</p>
<p>"I am not offended. You have spoken the truth where another man would have
told a lie. I ought to be flattered by your confidence in me. It pleases me
that people should think me good, and worthy of their trust."</p>
<p>She broke into a sigh as she finished speaking.</p>
<p>"And you will not reject my appeal?"</p>
<p>"I scarcely know what to do," answered Olivia, pressing her hand to her
forehead.</p>
<p>She leaned against the angle of the deep casement window, looking out at the
garden, desolate and neglected in the bleak winter weather. She was silent for
some minutes. John Marchmont did not interrupt her; he was content to wait
patiently until she should choose to speak.</p>
<p>"Mr. Marchmont," she said at last, turning upon poor John with an abrupt
vehemence that almost startled him, "I am three–and–twenty; and in
the long, dull memory of the three–and–twenty years that have made
my life, I cannot look back upon one joy––no, so help me Heaven,
not one!" she cried passionately. "No prisoner in the Bastille, shut in a cell
below the level of the Seine, and making companions of rats and spiders in his
misery, ever led a life more hopelessly narrow, more pitifully circumscribed,
than mine has been. These grass–grown streets have made the boundary of
my existence. The flat fenny country round me is not flatter or more dismal
than my life. You will say that I should take an interest in the duties which I
do; and that they should be enough for me. Heaven knows I have tried to do so;
but my life is hard. Do you think there has been nothing in all this to warp my
nature? Do you think after hearing this, that I am the woman to be a second
mother to your child?"</p>
<p>She sat down as she finished speaking, and her hands dropped listlessly in
her lap. The unquiet spirit raging in her breast had been stronger than
herself, and had spoken. She had lifted the dull veil through which the outer
world beheld her, and had showed John Marchmont her natural face.</p>
<p>"I think you are a good woman, Miss Arundel," he said earnestly. "If I had
thought otherwise, I should not have come here to–day. I want a good
woman to be kind to my child; kind to her when I am dead and gone," he added,
in a lower voice.</p>
<p>Olivia Arundel sat silent and motionless, looking straight before her out
into the black dulness of the garden. She was trying to think out the dark
problem of her life.</p>
<p>Strange as it may seem, there was a certain fascination for her in John
Marchmont's offer. He offered her something, no matter what; it would be a
change. She had compared herself to a prisoner in the Bastille; and I think she
felt very much as such a prisoner might have felt upon his gaoler's offering to
remove him to Vincennes. The new prison might be worse than the old one,
perhaps; but it would be different. Life at Marchmont Towers might be more
monotonous, more desolate, than at Swampington; but it would be a new monotony,
another desolation. Have you never felt, when suffering the hideous throes of
toothache, that it would be a relief to have the earache or the rheumatism;
that variety even in torture would be agreeable?</p>
<p>Then, again, Olivia Arundel, though unblest with many of the charms of
womanhood, was not entirely without its weaknesses. To marry John Marchmont
would be to avenge herself upon Edward Arundel. Alas! she forgot how impossible
it is to inflict a dagger–thrust upon him who is guarded by the
impenetrable armour of indifference. She saw herself the mistress of Marchmont
Towers, waited upon by liveried servants, courted, not patronised by the
country gentry; avenged upon the mercenary aunt who had slighted her, who had
bade her go out and get her living as a nursery governess. She saw this; and
all that was ignoble in her nature arose, and urged her to snatch the chance
offered her––the one chance of lifting herself out of the horrible
obscurity of her life. The ambition which might have made her an empress
lowered its crest, and cried, "Take this; at least it is something." But,
through all, the better voices which she had enlisted to do battle with the
natural voice of her soul cried, "This is a temptation of the devil; put it
away from thee."</p>
<p>But this temptation came to her at the very moment when her life had become
most intolerable; too intolerable to be borne, she thought. She knew now,
fatally, certainly, that Edward Arundel did not love her; that the one only
day–dream she had ever made for herself had been a snare and a delusion.
The radiance of that foolish dream had been the single light of her life. That
taken away from her, the darkness was blacker than the blackness of death; more
horrible than the obscurity of the grave.</p>
<p>In all the future she had not one hope: no, not one. She had loved Edward
Arundel with all the strength of her soul; she had wasted a world of intellect
and passion upon this bright–haired boy. This foolish, grovelling madness
had been the blight of her life. But for this, she might have grown out of her
natural self by force of her conscientious desire to do right; and might have
become, indeed, a good and perfect woman. If her life had been a wider one,
this wasted love would, perhaps, have shrunk into its proper insignificance;
she would have loved, and suffered, and recovered; as so many of us recover
from this common epidemic. But all the volcanic forces of an impetuous nature,
concentrated into one narrow focus, wasted themselves upon this one feeling,
until that which should have been a sentiment became a madness.</p>
<p>To think that in some far–away future time she might cease to love
Edward Arundel, and learn to love somebody else, would have seemed about as
reasonable to Olivia as to hope that she could have new legs and arms in that
distant period. She could cut away this fatal passion with a desperate stroke,
it may be, just as she could cut off her arm; but to believe that a new love
would grow in its place was quite as absurd as to believe in the growing of a
new arm. Some cork monstrosity might replace the amputated limb; some sham and
simulated affection might succeed the old love.</p>
<p>Olivia Arundel thought of all these things, in about ten minutes by the
little skeleton clock upon the mantel–piece, and while John Marchmont
fidgeted rather nervously, with a pair of gloves in the crown of his hat, and
waited for some definite answer to his appeal. Her mind came back at last,
after all its passionate wanderings, to the rigid channel she had so
laboriously worn for it,––the narrow groove of duty. Her first
words testified this.</p>
<p>"If I accept this responsibility, I will perform it faithfully," she said,
rather to herself than to Mr. Marchmont.</p>
<p>"I am sure you will, Miss Arundel," John answered eagerly; "I am sure you
will. You mean to undertake it, then? you mean to consider my offer? May I
speak to your father? may I tell him that I have spoken to you? may I say that
you have given me a hope of your ultimate consent?"</p>
<p>"Yes, yes," Olivia said, rather impatiently; "speak to my father; tell him
anything you please. Let him decide for me; it is my duty to obey him."</p>
<p>There was a terrible cowardice in this. Olivia Arundel shrank from marrying
a man she did not love, prompted by no better desire than the mad wish to
wrench herself away from her hated life. She wanted to fling the burden of
responsibility in this matter away from her. Let another decide, let another
urge her to do this wrong; and let the wrong be called a sacrifice.</p>
<p>So for the first time she set to work deliberately to cheat her own
conscience. For the first time she put a false mark upon the standard she had
made for the measurement of her moral progress.</p>
<p>She sank into a crouching attitude on a low stool by the fire–place,
in utter prostration of body and mind, when John Marchmont had left her. She
let her weary head fall heavily against the carved oaken shaft that supported
the old–fashioned mantel–piece, heedless that her brow struck
sharply against the corner of the wood–work.</p>
<p>If she could have died then, with no more sinful secret than a woman's
natural weakness hidden in her breast; if she could have died then, while yet
the first step upon the dark pathway of her life was
untrodden,––how happy for herself, how happy for others! How
miserable a record of sin and suffering might have remained unwritten in the
history of woman's life!</p>
<p></p>
<p>* * * * *</p>
<p></p>
<p>She sat long in the same attitude. Once, and once only, two solitary tears
gathered in her eyes, and rolled slowly down her pale cheeks.</p>
<p>"Will you be sorry when I am married, Edward Arundel?" she murmured; "will
you be sorry?"</p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
<p></p>
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