Part 2, Chapter IX
The White Wreath
There could not be much sorrow at Waynflete for so new a comer, but there was much respectful interest. All the villagers crowded into the little church and churchyard on the stormy morning of Mrs Waynflete’s funeral, at their head “soft” Jem, with a bit of crape on his sleeve; and the neighbouring gentry and clergy either came themselves or sent their carriages to follow the procession from the church to Kirk Hinton station. The actual mourners were few, and Cuthbert Staunton came into the church behind the two brothers.
“She said that she forgave your family,” Guy said gravely. “It is right that you should be there.”
Guy seemed quite able to bear his part. He hardly looked paler than Godfrey, and was less agitated, as he stood with the white wreath in his hand, looking down at the pavement. It was a day of heavy driving clouds, and the light in the dark old church dimmed and brightened alternately, catching now and then the stony figures of the older Waynfletes, till Cuthbert felt as if it would hardly have surprised him if the ghostly form of the traitor ancestor had stood among the mourners and mocked their grief. It grew so dark as the service went on that he could see little but the fair heads of the two brothers before him, and the white surplice of the vicar.
The prayers and hymns were over, the coffin was lifted up again and carried out across the nameless grave of the unhappy Guy, whose shortcomings she who was gone had retrieved so resolutely. But the Guy who followed the funeral, who had also lost the inheritance for himself, stopped short. He stooped and laid the white and scented wreath over the brief record on that unhonoured stone, then drew himself up, and slowly and resolutely looked all round the church, his eyes resting at last on the door in front of him. There was, or Cuthbert fancied so, an instant’s recoil, then he walked straight on, as if he were walking up to a cannon’s mouth, and followed the coffin out of the church. Godfrey, who had stood with drooping head, fighting with boyish tears, stared after him in amazement at his action.
The long drive to Kirk Hinton, and the weary commonplaces of the railway journey were got through in time, and at Ingleby station the scene changed. The invited guests were waiting on the platform – rough, sensible-looking business men, with some few of the more nearly connected ladies, in handsome black.
Outside, it might have been the burying of a princess – the open space in front of the station was filled with grave, weather-beaten faces. And two and two, the work-people, in their Sunday clothes, formed behind the funeral party and walked after them through the smoky town, into the big, ugly parish church, full of pews and galleries, and with plain square windows letting in a dull glare of cold grey light. It was soon filled to overflowing with silent men and women.
There were only two surpliced figures; but in the west gallery were the choir, by their own request, and the funeral hymn rose up, full, sweet and strong, joined in by all the vast concourse of people.
Then they passed out into a large churchyard, filled with square grey stones, in which the family vault of the Palmers had been opened, and there Margaret Waynflete’s body was laid among those for whom, and with whom, she had worked through all her long life.
In consideration of Guy’s fatigue, and of Godfrey’s obstinate reluctance to take his place, there was no formal meal, but the party gathered in the big dining-room at the Mill House, where various cold refreshments were placed on the table, with a great display of heavy, handsome plate.
Presently Guy, after such civilities as were required of him, raised his voice above the decorous murmur of the guests, and said —
“I have asked Mr Manton to read aloud my great-aunt’s will, as I have no doubt every one here will wish to know what it is. And, first, I wish to say that, though its contents were a great surprise to my brother Godfrey, they were not at all unexpected by me. I know the grounds on which my aunt acted, and I am fully aware that, to the best of her belief, she acted rightly.”
It perhaps goes without saying that the two young Waynfletes were not very popular with the Palmer clan. Guy, in especial, with his delicate face and girlish eyes, was an incomprehensible person to them. He compelled attention now, however, as after this little speech he sat down near the head of the table, while Godfrey shrank into a dark corner, only withheld from a protest by the force of his brother’s will.
In the silence that ensued, the solicitor began to read; the various Palmers listened critically, John Cooper and Joshua Howarth, with their two sons, with deep anxiety. They listened to the statement of various legacies to old servants, and more considerable ones to Cooper and Howarth, and then to the startling fact that Godfrey Waynflete was to be heir of Waynflete Hall and all the land belonging to it, and of certain sums of money invested in various railways and securities. The management of the business was entirely in the hands of the two brothers, and Ingleby Mill House was also left for the use of both or either as should be convenient, neither being able to let or sell it without the consent of the other. It was soon evident to the intelligent audience that besides the money spent on Waynflete, and invested in the business, the fortune realised was unexpectedly small, and the long-standing family suspicion of Thomas Palmer’s wisdom in leaving everything in the hands of his wife gained in strength.
Godfrey heard nothing after the little murmur of surprise that greeted his name. His ears and face burned and tingled with the sense of shame and wrongful dealing.
Guy sat looking at the table. He knew, of course, exactly what was coming, but the sound could not be other than bitter. He knew that his character was gone in the eyes of these shrewd, suspicious men of business. He set his mouth hard, and his eyes fell on the old-fashioned stand of small cut-glass spirit-decanters that stood in front of him. He stretched out his hand and poured out a wine-glassful of whisky. He forgot the will, and ceased to hear the solicitor as he drew it towards him, till Mr Manton, in the long dry catalogue of farms and fields, read: “the land going by the name of Upper Flete, lying between the river and the township of Kirk Hinton – ” Guy moved his hand, and knocked the full glass over, then pushed his chair back from the table, and sat absolutely still till the reading was over.
“Well, Mr Guy,” said Mr Matthew, the oldest and most important of the Palmers, “your great-aunt was a very shrewd woman of business, for a woman, so to speak, and you don’t seem to have met with her approval.”
“No,” said Guy, shortly, “I did not. Hush, Godfrey,” he added, as the poor boy pushed desperately forward and stood beside him. “Hold your tongue – there’s nothing you can say. We understand each other.”
“I’ve been at work in Ingleby Mills for sixty-five years,” said John Cooper, coming to the front, “and I’m not at all dissatisfied to work under Mr Guy. He knows the business as well as a lad of his age can do.”
“Thank you, John Cooper,” said Guy, with a look of almost disproportionate pleasure. He rose rather unsteadily, and caught at Godfrey’s arm. “Come,” he said, in a sharp, imperative whisper, “get me out of sight.”
He rather pulled Godfrey, than was guided by him, through the door behind him into the empty library, and sank into a chair, while Godfrey broke down into a tempest of uncontrollable misery.
“Now, look here,” said Guy, in the same faint, sharp tones, “you have nothing like the bargain you think for. To-morrow I’ll go into it all. I’m done for now; you must manage without me.”
How Godfrey managed through the rest of the hateful formalities of that wretched day he hardly knew; but when it was at last over, and he went to bed, he was so worn out with the weary misery of it that he fell dead asleep and slept till morning. He woke, with a sudden impulse so strong upon him that it seemed like an inspiration that had come in sleep. He would cut the whole concern. He would take his younger brother’s fair portion, whatever it might be, and make a new life for himself, somewhere, at the ends of the earth, away from Constancy’s scorn and his own conscience. So he would keep his vow, and cut the knot which he himself had tied so tight. Then Guy would see that he must take his own, and she would no longer despise him. A definite purpose, however rash, made him feel more himself. As he came downstairs he met Cuthbert.
“Guy wants you to go down to the mill,” he said, “and tell old Mr Cooper that he will see him to-morrow, and to ask for any message from him. And then he wants to talk to you. He will do it; but be as careful as you can. He is not fit for business.”
“Very well,” said Godfrey; “I want to talk to him too. He won’t mind what I want to tell him, and it won’t take five minutes to discuss it.”
Part 2, Chapter X
Grit
Godfrey paid but scant attention to poor old Cooper’s feelings when he reached the mill. He hardly took the trouble to glance round him, and never realised that he was, in part, owner of the great concern, and a person on whom its future depended. He gave Guy’s message, and asked indifferently if there was any in return. Cooper looked up the whole length of the young man’s tall figure, ending with the gloomy, indifferent face.
“Nay,” he said, “I’ve no message to send by you, Mr Godfrey.”
“All right, then,” said Godfrey, going, still thinking of nothing but his own purpose.
He found Guy on the sofa in the study, with some papers in his hands. Godfrey sat down opposite, and stared straight before him. Guy lay, looking down, very quiet but with a curious air of something held under and suppressed.
“I’m not up to long explanations,” he said; “but you ought to know at once that matters are in a bad way at the mill. It will take every penny we both possess, and all the energy and sense too, to pull through and turn the corner. Things have been going downhill for some time. Look here – ”
Here he showed the statement which he had partly prepared to lay before his aunt, adding a few explanations and comments.
“Then – is the mill going to fail?” said Godfrey, confusedly.
“Not if I can help it,” answered Guy. “No! But we’ve got our work cut out for us.”
“But we couldn’t take out – realise – any part of the capital.”
“Rather not,” said Guy, with a shrug. “But what I want to say is this. You can’t do anything till you have taken your degree – except give your consent to certain measures. I’ll explain by-and-by. But, then, if you come back, and give your mind to it and work, as the old folks did, we’ll get on our legs again. I – of course Aunt Margaret thought you would be able to live at Waynflete.”
“Nothing would induce me to live at Waynflete, apart from the horrible injustice of it – I hate it. I should never endure it!”
“Shouldn’t you?” said Guy, and paused for a minute. “Then, I think you should use some of the investments to put it properly to rights, and let it again. Don’t sell it.”
“I don’t regard it as mine to sell,” said Godfrey; “and no – that would be undoing all she lived for.”
“Just so. And remember this. We owe it to her strong purpose that we’re not driving some one else’s plough, or working at some one else’s looms; that we are as we are, such as it is. That work can’t be undone. I don’t mean to give up. But, I can’t depend on my own health, or powers; I mayn’t live long, or be able to work constantly. But if you co-operate, we’ll pull through. Aunt Margaret trusted you, and you’re bound not to disappoint her. Her memory shall not be dishonoured.”
Guy was moved to speak more warmly from the kind of stupefaction with which Godfrey heard him. He thought that he had been too abrupt.
“You’re surprised,” he said more gently. “I’ve known how it was for a long time. It’s not at all a hopeless case.”
“I can’t take it in,” said Godfrey. How could he propose to “cut the whole concern,” and go away in the face of this news. Even if he went without a penny, how could he leave his sick brother with such a weight on his shoulders? Did dropping Waynflete out of his hands merely mean shirking a hard struggle? At any rate, he could not tell Guy his intention at that minute.
“You know,” said Guy, “after all the legacies are paid, and Waynflete is put to rights, I’m afraid you’ll have very little ready money. The work of restoring the family isn’t complete. You’ve got it to finish.”
“If – if the will had been burned, you wouldn’t have sold Waynflete, and put the money into the business?”
“No!” said Guy. He stopped to rest a minute, and then said, “If the business really failed, neither of us could honourably keep Waynflete. It would have to be sold to pay the creditors. And it is possible that, to save the business – But no, Godfrey – no – it won’t come to that. It shall not. Aunt Margaret shan’t be defeated.”
“I’ll think it over,” said Godfrey, after a moment. “Ought I to take my degree?”
“Of course, what’s the use of leaving a thing half-finished? But you’ll have to understand a little what has to be done at once, and give your consent to it. I’ll tell you about it another time. Take these papers, and read them.”
“Yes,” said Godfrey, escaping; “anything. I consent to whatever you wish. That is the least I can do!”
So then, there was no such easy way of escape as he had hoped. It was a burden, not an honour, that he had unduly won. For the momentary act there was no momentary atonement; but years of uncongenial labour. He hated the mills. Surely, if he dropped all claim on the profits, and gave his brother an entirely free hand, it would be enough? He would willingly sell Waynflete, and throw the price into the business, if Guy had not objected so vehemently. He had thought that his mind was settled, and behold! it was more unsettled than ever before. To give Waynflete to Guy, he could have worked tooth and nail; without a settled purpose, he was all at sea.
Guy felt a little baffled and disappointed. He had expected to find, as he put it, more grit in Godfrey.
“I suppose you will have to go away soon,” he said to Cuthbert afterwards.
“Yes – on the 18th, I fear – but I want you to come with me. There’s no one here to look after you even as clumsily as I can. I suppose Mrs Palmer stays; but her notions are limited to good beef-tea.”
“It’s not a bad notion. Cuthbert, don’t you want to know what happened to me?”
“Yes – when you can tell me.”
“I’m going to tell you now. Come here – quite close – lock the door first.”
Cuthbert did as he was told, and sat down quietly.
“Well,” he said, “how was it?”
“Well, that night when I was walking from Kirk Hinton, I got on very slowly, and it was a long – long time.”
“Yes – you got very tired.”
“Yes, but I thought hard. I almost made up my mind that the whole thing was a craze inherited from the other Guy, or at least shared with him. I thought nothing existed outside my own brain; that the old Guy had probably got drunk at the old public in the valley, and that I should too. That the cause of the whole horror was in me, because my brain was made wrong or crooked.”
He paused, and Cuthbert said no more than, “Well?”
“You’ve always wanted me to think that. You don’t know what it’s like to think so, when there is a great horror that your brain has made for you.”
Guy spoke very quietly. Cuthbert hardly ventured to answer him. “You would never understand what I meant by ‘feeling.’ But then I felt —nothing. I don’t think even Christ felt like that – quite, when He said God had forsaken Him. For I felt that there was no one even to forsake me.”
“But, my dear boy,” exclaimed Cuthbert, distressed, “I do not think so. I never meant to teach you to think so. That one hallucination – ”
“If you knew what a spiritual presence in your soul is, good or evil – you would know what is involved in finding it a delusion. I was glad when I felt him come.”
“Did you see – it?”
“I saw the figure on the bridge, standing in my way. Well, it was a question of drowning myself or letting him drown me. I was almost mad – I – I think he laughed at me – I’m not sure. His eyes – ”
Guy dropped his voice, and into his own eyes there came a wild, uncertain look, as of a sorely shaken brain. But he sat up and spoke emphatically.
“Suddenly I knew that I could try to get across. That’s the point, you see, Cuthbert – that’s the point! One can try, one can fight – devil or delusion – I don’t know which – one can resist, and he will flee. I think he will always flee – for there’s help. All spiritual presences are not evil; something helped me. I fainted, I suppose; but I got across the river – I set myself to get on, but the hill was so steep – and long – I was so deadly faint. It took an awful time, I had to stop so often; oh, I don’t wonder the other Guy was too late! But I got there in time. Aunt Margaret knew it, she quite understood.”
“It is all over now,” said Cuthbert, soothingly; “you won’t see the figure again.”
Guy slowly turned his eyes away from Cuthbert’s face, and looked straight in front of him.
“I see it now,” he said. “Listen – don’t stop me. I saw it ahead all the way. I’ve seen it ever since. But – but – it’s not him– now. Oh, you won’t understand. I know he’s not here now. This is a spectre – a delusion – but it’s very bad to bear. Stop; let me rest a bit.”
He put his hand over his eyes and lay still – whispering, “I’ve some more to say.”
“Yes, tell me everything – tell me just what it is,” said Cuthbert, gently.
“I can’t,” said Guy. “Shakespeare was right – and it’s very hard to be quite sure. The more one thinks, the harder it is. But whatever that is – which comes to me, I can fight it; I can resist. And I will. I mustn’t give in an inch. I’ve got to hold on with the business, and against the drink, and against the terror. That’s all I know; but I know that, though I’ve almost died of learning it.”
Guy turned faint after this eager speech, and was forced to lie back and be silent. Presently he spoke again in a faltering whisper —
“Doesn’t all this – ”
“What, my boy? Yes, tell me.”
“It is so queer – you’ll dislike me for it,” said poor Guy, simply, and with tears in his eyes. “Anybody would.”
“Well, I don’t,” said Cuthbert, in his dry, gentle voice. “You know, I promised to see you through.”
“It eases me so to have you know it. But no one else – promise me – no one else.”
“Well – but your best help in the fight would be the doctor.”
“Oh yes – you may tell him anything you like, anything you can. The real thing is past man’s understanding. Only,” and he collected his strength, and looked up again steadfastly, “remember – devil or delusion – it is not irresistible, and I can resist.”
When Guy, soothed by his friend’s sympathy, had dropped into a much-needed sleep, Cuthbert still sat beside him puzzled, and, spite of himself, awed by the terrible story. He could not forget the records of that earlier struggle, which had come into his hands, and which Guy must see, as soon as he was fit to do so. He did not understand the experience enough to see why, as he put it, in the half-jesting thought with which deep feeling veils itself, Guy preferred the devil to a delusion. But he saw that mind and soul and body were all in danger, and he recognised that the belief in a resisting power must be fostered and guarded to the utmost.
“Only his faith can save him,” thought Cuthbert, with a mental start at the familiar ring of words, of which he had never made any personal application.
“It’s beyond me,” he thought, “and I’ll take off my hat and wait. He may be crazed, but he’s pretty much of a hero. And as for disliking him – well – not much fear of it. I’ll do all I know for him.”
Then Cuthbert thought the whole matter through, from beginning to end, and finally, with wise and uncommon mental patience, made up his mind not to rush in like a fool, where a man of any ordinary experience might well fear to tread. He would take every care of Guy; but, in that unknown region of his trial, he would let him judge for himself.