Part 2

‘Do not be angry with me; but try to see a little with my eyes. You will do so when you learn how guilty he is.’

‘I will not hear it!’ and she moved.

‘For Philip’s sake,’ he said softly but firmly, ‘if not for that of another, who would tell you it was right that you should hear me.’

Madge stood still, her face towards the wall, so that he could not see her agitation. The bright fire cast the shadow of his profile on the same wall, and the silhouette, grotesquely exaggerated as the outlines were, still suggested suffering rather than anger.

‘Do you know that Hadleigh has good reason for enmity towards me?’

‘No; I never knew or thought that he could have reason for enmity towards any one.’

‘He had towards me.’

‘I believe you are wrong. I am sure of it;’ and she thought that here might be her opportunity to further Philip’s desire to reconcile them.

‘Should you desire to test what I am about to tell you, say to Hadleigh that you have been told George Laurence was a friend of Philip’s mother. He was my friend too. My poor sister was passionate and, like all passionate people, weak. Hadleigh took her from my friend _for her money_—a pitiful few hundred pounds. I never liked the man; but I hated him then, and hated him still more when Laurence, becoming reckless alike of fortune and life, ruined himself and ... killed himself. But the crime was Hadleigh’s, and it lies heavy on his soul.’

‘Oh, why should you speak so bitterly of what he could neither foresee nor prevent.’

‘I charged him with the murder,’ Beecham continued, without heeding the interruption, ‘and he could not answer me like a man. He spoke soft words, as if I were a boy in a passion; he even attempted to condole with me for the loss of my friend, until I fled from him, lest my hands should obey my wish and not my will. But he had his revenge. He made my sister’s life a torture. She tried to hide it in her letters to me; but I could read her misery in every line. And then, when he discovered that I had gone into the wilds of Africa, without any likelihood of being able to send a message home for many months, he told the lie which destroyed our hopes.’

‘How do you know that it was he who told it?’ she asked, without moving and with some fear of the answer.

‘The man he employed to spread the false report confessed to me what had been done and by whom.’

Madge’s head drooped; there seemed to be no refutation of this proof of Mr Hadleigh’s guilt possible.

Beecham partly understood that slight movement of the head, and his voice had become soft again when he resumed:

‘I did not seek to retaliate. She was lost to me, and it did not much matter what evil influence came between us. I am not seeking to retaliate now. I would have forgotten the man and the evil he had wrought, if it had not been for the cry my sister sent to me from her deathbed. She asked me for some sign that in the future I would try to help and guide her favourite child, Philip. I gave the pledge, and she was only able to answer that I had made her happy. I am here to fulfil that pledge, and it might have been easily done, but for you.’

‘For me!’—Startled, but not looking at him yet.

‘Ay, for you, because I wish to be sure that you will be safe in his keeping; and to be sure of that, I wish him to prove that he has none of his father’s nature in him.’

‘Do you still hate his father so much?’ she said distressfully.

‘I have long ceased to feel hatred; but I still distrust him and all that belongs to him. Now that you know why I stand aside to watch how Philip bears himself, do you still ask me to release you from your promise?’

‘I will not betray your confidence,’ she answered mechanically; ‘but what I ought to do I will do.’

‘I would not desire you to do anything else, my child,’ and all his gentleness of manner had returned. ‘I will not ask you to say at this moment whether or not you think I am acting rightly. I ask only that you will remember whose child you are, and what she was to me, as you have learned what I was to her. Then you will understand and judge me.’

‘I cannot judge, but I will try to understand.’

Then she turned towards him, and he saw that although she had been speaking so quietly, her pain had been great.

‘Forgive me, my poor child, for bringing this sorrow to you; but it may be the means of saving you from a life of misery, or of leading you to one of happiness.’

There was a subdued element of solemnity in this—it was so calm, so earnest, that she remained silent. He imagined that he understood; but he was mistaken. She did not herself yet understand the complicated emotions which had been stirred within her. She had tried to put away those sad visions, but could not: the sorrowful face of the mother was always looking wistfully at her out of the mists. She ought to have been filled with bitterness by the account of the crime—for crime it surely was—which had wrought so much mischief, and the proof of which appeared to be so strong. Instead of that, she felt sorry for Mr Hadleigh. Here was the reason for the gloom in which he lived—remorse lay heavily upon him. Here, too, was the reason for all his kindliness to her, when he was so cold to others. She was sorry for him.

Hope came to her relief, dim at first, but growing brighter as she reflected. Might there not be some error in the counts against him? She saw that in thinking of the misfortunes of his friend Laurence, passion had caused Austin Shield to exaggerate the share Mr Hadleigh had in bringing them about. Might it not be that in a similar way he had exaggerated and misapprehended what he had been told by the man who denounced Mr Hadleigh as the person who had employed him to spread the fatal lie? Whether or not this should prove to be the case, it was clear that until Mr Shield’s mind was disabused of the belief that Philip’s father had been the cause of his sorrow and her mother’s, there was no possibility of effecting a reconciliation between the two men. But if all his charges were well founded—what then?... She was afraid to think of what might be to come after.

Still holding her hand, he made a movement towards the door. Then she spoke:

‘I want you to say again that whilst I keep your secret, you leave me free to speak to Mr Hadleigh about ... about the things you have told me.’

‘Yes, if you still doubt me.’

‘I will speak,’ she said deliberately, ‘not because I doubt you, but because I believe you are mistaken.’

Again that long look of reverent admiration of her trustfulness, and then:

‘Act as your own heart tells you will be wisest and kindest.’

* * * * *

As he passed down the frozen gravel-path, he met Philip. He was in no mood for conversation, and saying only ‘Good-evening,’ passed on. Philip was surprised; although, being wearied himself, he was not sorry to escape a conversation with one who was a comparative stranger.

‘What is the matter with Mr Beecham?’ he inquired carelessly, when he entered the oak parlour and, to his delight, found Madge alone.

‘He is distressed about some family affairs,’ she answered after a little hesitation.

Philip observed the hesitation and, slight as it was, the confusion of her manner.

‘Oh, something more about that affair in which you are his confidant, I suppose, and came to you for comfort. Well, I come upon the same errand—fagged and worried to death. Will you give me a glass of wine?—Stay, I should prefer a little brandy-and-water.—Thank you.’

He had dropped into an armchair, as if physically tired out. She seated herself beside him and rested a hand on his shoulder.

‘You have been disturbed again at the works,’ she said soothingly.

‘Disturbed!—driven to my wits’ end would be more like my present state. Everything is going wrong. The capital has nearly all disappeared, without any sign of a return for it, so that it looks as if I should speedily have to ask Uncle Shield for more.—What has frightened you?’

‘Nothing—it was only a chill—don’t mind it. Have you seen—him?’

‘Came straight from him here. He was rather out of humour, I thought; and as usual, referred me to his lawyers on almost every point. As to more capital, he said there would be no difficulty about that, if he was satisfied that the first money had been prudently invested.’

‘I understood that he was pleased with what you were attempting.’

‘So did I; but it seems to me now as if he was anything but satisfied. However, he would give me no definite answer or advice. He would think about it—he would make inquiries, and then see what was to be done. He is right, of course; and queer as his ways are, he has been kind and generous. But if he pulls up now, the whole thing will go to smash, and—to fail, Madge, to fail, when it only requires another strong effort to make a success!’

‘But you are not to fail, Philip.’

‘At present, things look rather like it. Oh, it will be rare fun for them all!’ he added bitterly.

‘All?’

‘Yes, everybody who predicted that my scheme was a piece of madness and must come to grief. That does not matter so much, though, as finding myself to be a fool. I wish uncle would talk over the matter quietly with me. I am sure he could help me.... Why, you are shivering. Come nearer to the fire.’

She moved her chair as he suggested.

‘But how is it that the money is all gone?’

‘It is not exactly gone, but sunk in the buildings and the machinery; and the disputes with the men have caused a lot of waste. The men are the real trouble; they can’t get the idea into their heads, somehow; and even Caleb is turning rusty now. But that is because he is bothered about Pansy.... Ah, Madge’ (his whole manner changing suddenly as he grasped her hand and gazed fondly into her eyes); ‘although it will be a bitter pill to swallow if this scheme falls through—I was so proud of it, so hopeful of it at the start, and saw such a bright future for it, and believed it would be such a mighty social lever—although that would be bitter, I should get over it. I could never get over any trouble about you, such as that poor chap is in about Pansy.... But that can never be,’ he concluded impulsively.

For the next few minutes he forgot all about the works, the men, and the peril in which his Utopia stood, threatening every day to tumble all to pieces. Madge was glad that his thoughts should be withdrawn for a space from his worry, and was glad to be able to breathe more freely herself in thinking only of their love, for those references to his Uncle Shield troubled her.

‘You are not losing courage altogether, then?’ she said smiling.

‘I shall never lose it altogether so long as you are beside me, although I may halt at times,’ he answered. ‘There; I am better now. Don’t let us talk any more to-night about disagreeable things—they don’t seem half so disagreeable to me as they did when I came in.’

So, as they were not to talk about disagreeable things, they talked about themselves. They did remember Caleb and Pansy, however; and Madge promised to see the latter soon, and endeavour to persuade her to be kind to her swain.

A NORMAN SEASCAPE.

It was on our way from Paris to the sea that we found out Dives; a little town, forgotten now, but once, long ago, holding for four short weeks an urgent place in the foreground of the world’s history. It is a day’s journey distant from Paris, a long summer day’s journey through fair France, fairest of all when one reaches green Normandy, rich in sober old farmhouses, quaint churches, orchards laden with russet fruit ripening to fill the cider-barrels.

The little station near Dives is set in a desert of sand; one white road leads this way, another that. Of the modest town itself you see nothing. Your eye is caught for a moment as you look round you by the gentle undulation of the hills that rise behind it. On these slopes, a nameless battle was once fought and won; but the story of that struggle belongs to the past, and it is the present you have to do with. At this moment your most urgent need is to secure a seat in omnibus or supplement; all the world is going seawards, and even French politeness yields a little before the pressure of necessity; for the crowd is great and the carriages are small. There is infection in the gaiety of our fellow holiday-seekers, whose costumes are devised to hint delicately or more broadly their destination. Their pleasure is expressed with all the _naïveté_ of childhood; so we too, easily enough, catch something of their spirit, and watch eagerly for the first hint of blue on the horizon, for the first crisp, salt breath in the air. Dives, after its spasmodic revival, falls back into silence, and is forgotten. We forget it too, and for the next few days the problem of life at Beuzeval-Houlgate occupies us wholly.

He who first invented Beuzeval must have had a vivid imagination, a creative genius. What possibilities did he see in that sad reach of endless sand, in that sadder expanse of sea, as we first saw it under a gray summer sky? Yet here, almost with the wave of an Aladdin’s wand, a gay little town sprung into existence—fantastic houses, pseudo-Swiss châlets, very un-English ‘Cottages Anglais;’ ‘Beach’ hotels, ‘Sea’ hotels, ‘Beautiful Sojourn’ hotels lined the shore, and Paris came down and took possession. Houlgate and we are really one, though some barrier, undefinable and not to be grasped by us, divides us. But Houlgate holds itself proudly aloof from us; Houlgate leads the fashions; it is dominated by ‘that ogre, gentility;’ its houses are more fantastic, its costumes more magnificent, its ways more mysterious. At Beuzeval, one is not genteel, one is natural; it is a family-life of simplicity and tranquillity, as the guide-book sets forth in glowing terms. We live in a little house that faces, and is indeed set low upon the beach. There is a strip of garden which produces a gay crop of marigolds and sunflowers growing in a sandy waste—gold against gold. We belong to Mère Jeanne, an ancient lady, who wears a white cotton night-cap of the tasselled order, and who is oftenest seen drawing water at the well. Her vessel is of an antique shape; and she, too, is old. Tradition whispers that she has seen ninety winters come and go, yet her cheeks are rosy as one of her Normandy apples. One feels that life moves slowly and death comes tardily to this sea-village, where the outer world intrudes but once a year, and then but for one brief autumn month alone.

Bathing is the chief occupation of the day, and it is undertaken with a seriousness that is less French than British. Nothing can be funnier than to watch this matter of taking _le bain_. From early morning till noon, all the world is on the beach. Rows of chairs are brought down from the bath-house—all gay at this hour with wind-tossed flags—and are planted firmly in the soft loose sand; here those of us who are spectators sit and watch the show. A paternal government arranges everything for its children. Here one goes by rule. So many hours of the morning and so many hours of the evening must alone be devoted to the salt bath; such and such a space of the wide beach, carefully marked off with fluttering standards, must alone be occupied. Thus bathing is a very social affair; the strip of blue water is for the moment converted into a _salon_, where all the courtesies of life are duly observed. On the other side of the silver streak, business of the same nature is no doubt going on; but French imagination alone could evolve, French genius devise, the strange and wonderful costumes appropriate to the occasion.

Here is a lady habited in scarlet, dainty shoes and stockings to match, and a bewitching cap (none of your hideous oilskin) with falling lace and telling little bows of ribbon. Here another, clad in pale blue, with a becoming hat tied under her chin, and many bangles on her wrists. The shoes alone are a marvel. How do all these intricate knots and lacings, these glancing buckles, survive the rough and sportive usage of the waves? Who but our Gallic sisters could imagine those delicate blendings of dark blue and silver, crimson and brown, those strange stripes and æsthetic olives and drabs? The costume of the gentlemen is necessarily less varied, though here and there one notices an eccentric harlequin, easily distinguishable among the crowd; and again, what Englishman would dream of taking his morning dip with a ruff round his neck, a silken girdle, and a hat to save his complexion from the sun? Two amiable persons dressed in imitation of the British tar, obligingly spend the greater part of the day in the sea. Their business it is to conduct timid ladies from the beach and to assist them in their bath. The braver spirits allow themselves to be plunged under the brine, the more fearful are content to be sprinkled delicately from a tin basin. There is also a rower, whose little boat, furnished with life-saving appliances, plies up and down among the crowd, lest one more venturesome than his neighbours should pass beyond his depth; an almost impossible event, as one might say, seeing with what fondness even the boldest swimmer clings to the shore.

Danger on these summer waters seems a remote contingency. Here is neither ‘bar that thunders’ nor ‘shale that rings.’ It is for the most part a lazy sea, infinitely blue, that comes softly, almost caressingly, shorewards. At first, one is struck with the absence of life which it presents—the human element uncounted. There is no pier, and boating as a pastime is unknown. Occasionally, a fleet of brown-sheeted fishing-smacks rides out from the little port of Dives, each sail slowly unfurled, making a spot of warm colour when the sun shines on the canvas; now and then there is a gleam of white wings on the far horizon. But the glory of the place is its limitless, uninterrupted sea, shore, and sky—endless reaches of golden sand, endless plains of blue water. With so liberal a space of heaven and of ocean, you have naturally room for many subtle effects, countless shades and blendings of colour, most evanescent coming and going of light and shadow. To the left, gay little Cabourg, all big hotels and Parisian finery, runs out to meet the sea; farther still, Luc is outlined against the sky. To the right are the cliffs at Havre, pink at sunset; their position marked when dusk has fallen by the glow of the revolving light. Beyond, _là bas_—that ‘indifferent, supercilious’ French _là bas_—an ‘elsewhere’ of little importance, lies unseen England. When the sun has set, dipping its fireball in haste to cool itself in the waters, there comes sometimes an illusive effect as of land, dim, far off, indistinct; but it is cloud-land, not our sea-island.

The sunsets are a thing to marvel at, never two nights alike. ‘C’est adorable!’ as our old Norman waiting-woman said, with a fervent pressure of the hands, as she looked with us on ‘the crimson splendour when the day had waned.’ Sometimes it is a lingering glory, the rose-light on the pools fading slowly, as if loath to go; sometimes the spectacle is more quickly over, and almost ‘with one stride comes the dark;’ then swiftly in their appointed order the familiar stars. Now and again, it is a great storm—a blue-black sea and an inky sky, rent too frequently by the zigzags of the lightning. There is always the charm of change and novelty; the piquancy of the unexpected.

After the serious business of the bath is over, the lunch-hour has arrived. Being as it were one family, we all take our meals at the same time. Later in the afternoon, Houlgate rides and drives, elegant landaus, carriages with linen umbrellas suspended over them, donkey-carts driven by beautiful young ladies in beautiful Paris gowns. Beuzeval braves the dust, and looks on respectfully at the show; but Beuzeval does not drive much. It takes its little folks to the beach and helps them to build sand-castles. It goes off in bands armed with forks to the exciting chase of the _équilles_. These little fish of the eel tribe, which are savoury eating, burrow in the sand at low tide, and it requires some skill to capture them. Whole families go out shrimping too, looking not unpicturesque as, set against the light on the far sea-margin, they push their nets before them. One afternoon we watched two bearded men amuse themselves for hours with flying a pink kite. Their gesticulations were lively, and their excitement great, when at last it sailed bravely before the breeze. We are very easily amused here; for the most part, we are content to look about us, hospitable to all stray impressions. At such times, one is tempted to the idlest speculations. Why, for instance, are all the draught-horses white? Is it that the blue sheep-skin collar may have the advantage of contrast? Why, in a land of green pastures, where kine abound, is milk at a ransom price, and butter not always eatable? Why, again, in spite of our simplicity, our _vie de famille_, is it necessary to one’s well-being here to have an inexhaustible Fortunatus’s purse? But these things are mysteries; let us cease to meddle with them, and follow Houlgate wider afield, on foot, if you will, to little Dives, too long neglected—Dives, which sends its placid river to swell the sea, but lingers inland itself, hardly on the roughest day within sound of the waves.

It was at Dives that Duke William of Normandy and his host waited for the south wind, that fair wind that was to carry them to England. The harbour, choked now with the shifting sand, and sheltering nothing larger than a fishing-smack—held the fleet which some have numbered in thousands; gallant ships for which Normandy’s noblest forest trees were sacrificed during that long summer of preparation. Finest of them all, riding most proudly on the waves, was William’s own _Mora_, the gift of his Matilda. At its prow there was carved in gold the image of a boy ‘blowing on an ivory horn pointing towards England.’ ‘Stark’ Duke William thus symbolised his conquest before ever he set foot on that alien shore. On the gentle slopes above the little town, where the cattle feed, the great army encamped itself, waiting for that fair wind that never came. Four weeks they lingered, long enough to associate the seaport inseparably with the Conqueror’s name; and brave stories are chronicled of the order he kept among his fierce Gauls, and how the worthy people of Dives learned to look on the strangers without distrust—almost with indifference; to till their fields, to tend their flocks, to gather in the harvest, as if no nation’s fate hung on the caprice of a breeze. Four weeks of this, and then that great company melted away almost with the suddenness of a certain Assyrian host of old—a west wind blew gently—not the longed-for south; but the ships, weary of inaction, spread their wings, and flew away to St Valery, where a narrower band of blue separated them from the desired English haven. And the village folks were left once more to the vast quietude of their country life.