Mrs. Dorriman Volume Ii Part 12

Without a soul to speak to, without any real interest in her life, Margaret did what many a woman before her has done, where there has existed an unusually active brain and no outlet for thought in any other direction. She began to write, and her sense of harmony, and the fervid and poetical temperament she possessed, drove her to writing in metre.

Not always. She sometimes wrote down her impressions of character, of scenes--she put down those rapid and subtle changes of feeling about things animate and inanimate that received life and colour from the mood of the moment. She found so great a relief from this occupation that it gradually absorbed her. It was like pouring out her very soul to a friend, who could never wound her or disappoint her.

But she never conceived that there was any danger in it. All was carefully destroyed or locked away. She had many lonely hours and a constant struggle with herself. But for this occupation she would have suffered more. The moment a pa.s.sionate grief or sorrow can find expression it obtains relief, it is the being pent up and choked back that gives intensity.

She had known love (such as he required) to be impossible as regarded her husband, but she had thought esteem and a certain regard enhanced by his business ability, was within her reach. She now discovered that he was not true, that he had no great capacity or clearness of understanding, and that his standard in all and everything was as low as it could be.

This discovery was not so much a shock to her as an excuse for her not caring more for him. She had been guided by instinct to a right judgment of his character; and there was a sense of having understood him from the first, which was not without its gratification.

All this went down on paper--as a critical essay it was admirable, trenchant, concise, and to the point--but it was a terrible picture judged dispa.s.sionately, and, as Margaret finished it, she hastily put it into her blotting-book; she felt troubled and guilty when her husband called her, and she resolved to destroy this record of her inmost convictions. She had perhaps been wrong in writing it, even for her own eye. Then they left that evening.

The journey was hurried over with small regard to her comfort and convenience, but Margaret heeded nothing; the thoughts of once more being within reach of Grace supported her through fatigue and all else.

She was quite aware as regarded her husband that had she chosen to flatter him, and had she only been able to stoop a little, she might have ruled him, but her principle was too high for this, and she made a point of being honest with him to her own loss.

When they reached London it was yet early in the morning, and they went, greatly to her surprise, to a small and very second-rate hotel in the City, where everything was dingy and mean.

"Are we not going home?" Margaret asked, astonished.

Mr. Drayton laughed uneasily.

"The truth is that there are some people in my house."

"Oh! it is let," said Margaret, in a tone of disappointment. "Then what are we to do?"

"We might take lodgings--they must not be far from here, and then we can see----" He turned on his heel and left her.

When she had rested, she started in a cab to look for lodgings--a weary quest--and all she saw near that part of London were so dingy and so dirty that she returned to the hotel in despair. Her husband came in looking so white and so utterly broken down that she could not imagine what had happened; but he would tell her nothing.

The landlady to whom Margaret spoke suggested some rooms in the country close to a station.

"As you think so much of cleanliness and fresh air, you had better go there, ma'm."

"It is only for a little while--my husband let his place and cannot turn out his tenants before their time is up," said Margaret, happily unconscious what a falsehood this was.

She liked the rooms; and then, when they paid their bill and were leaving, her husband made her understand a little how things were.

Throwing a handful of silver on the table he exclaimed, angrily,

"There! that is every penny I have in the world."

Margaret stared at him--want of money had never yet presented itself to her in connection with him. She did not now understand him literally, but she was startled.

That evening, cheered by the bright cleanliness of the little cottage at Chiselhurst to which they had removed, she asked him to tell her what was wrong.

Then he told her.

"I have lost everything!" he said. "I have not a s.h.i.+lling in the world left, except that money settled upon you. I am ruined--I do not suppose I shall have anything to live upon at all," and he laid his head upon his arms and cried like a child.

"Is there nothing I can do?" faltered Margaret.

"Yes!" he said. "You can go away, Mr. Sandford will take you--you can go. Our married life has been a short, if it has not been a merry, one,"

he said, bitterly, and he burst into a laugh so wild that Margaret left the room.

She wrote a long letter to Mr. Sandford; understanding him too well to appeal to him for a.s.sistance, she asked him to come and look into everything.

"I know a little of my husband's affairs, very little, but what I know convinces me that all cannot be so completely lost as he thinks; I fancy that, unduly elated at times, he is just now unduly depressed; and your clear brain will unravel much--besides, my husband is not well."

This invitation followed Grace's abrupt appearance at his house; and Mr.

Sandford, who was, to a certain extent, involved in Mr. Drayton's fall, was content to obey the summons; more than content, there was much that required explanation, and it was a temptation he could not resist.

He was also pleased to have an opportunity of consulting a good doctor about himself. He was unwell and irritable even beyond his normal irritability; and felt ill and completely out of sorts when Mrs.

Dorriman met him at breakfast, with a speech carefully arranged to do Grace good and avoid hurting his susceptibilities; she found the question of Grace's remaining in his house had sunk into a question of little importance, and that her little speech, like many another, was not required.

He left Renton, soothed by Margaret's letter to him, and full of bringing her back with him. Of course she would leave Drayton, now he could no longer support her, and he should have her again. Grace he never remembered.

When that young lady woke in the morning she felt surprised to hear all so quiet, and, ringing her bell, she asked Jean, who answered the bell, why all was so still, "Is every body dead and buried?" she said, laughing.

"Eh! Miss Grace, we was to keep quiet for you; you looked so ill last night, Mrs. Dorriman and I have been saying 'whisht!' all the morning, to let you sleep. Shall I bring you some tea?"

"If you will," said Grace; her tone was indifferent, but Jean saw that her eyes had a wistful look in them.

"What is it, my bairn?" the old woman said, her kind heart warming towards the poor girl, so evidently hovering at the gates of death.

"It is nothing," said Grace, with a pitiful little laugh, "but no one has offered to do any thing for me for a long while."

Jean understood, and, when she took in the tea, Mrs. Dorriman accompanied her.

Some women are distinctly born with a gift for nursing, and Mrs.

Dorriman was one of these women. Grace, weak and feeble, worn out by the journey, the want of rest and comfort of the last few weeks, was nursed as few are nursed.

She was too weak to wonder about anything. She never asked for Mr.

Sandford, and only once for Margaret. She lay there in the place she had so hated, grateful now for its shelter.

She touched lightly upon her experiences during that interval when she had left Torbreck, and had gone to London to see the world, and Mrs.

Dorriman was too wise to question her.

Mr. Sandford only wrote once, and that was a short note to his sister, "Margaret refuses to leave her husband," he said, "so you need not expect her."

"I never thought she would," murmured Mrs. Dorriman to herself, to whom it had never occurred as possible.

At Chislehurst, in the small place called by courtesy a villa, Margaret had at first to face her husband's anger. Nothing could have been more hateful to him than this inquiry into his affairs Margaret had requested Mr. Sandford to make, and yet he had no reason to give against it, and it was natural that Mr. Sandford should act for Margaret.

Grace's return was a fresh and a most painful surprise for Margaret. She realised now that she might have saved herself; if Grace could of her own free-will seek shelter at Mr. Sandford's hands, she might have been urged to do so before, and so her sacrifice might have been unnecessary--might? would have been. But once this reflection was fought with, she was glad that her sister, still so delicate, was with Mrs.

Dorriman.

In the meantime Mr. Sandford and his unwilling a.s.sistant, Mr. Drayton, waded through a ma.s.s of papers and accounts; and various transactions came to light that reflected no credit on Mr. Drayton's ability, and still less on his honesty. Some of his acts had been bad, and some were the action of a madman; and were to Mr. Sandford's cool Scotch caution and clear head utterly incomprehensible. He made few remarks, however, betraying his sentiments only by a secret and sudden clench of his hand, as though it might be a relief to knock down something or somebody.