John Marchmont's Legacy. Volumes 1-3

Better that John Marchmont should have lived for ever, better that Edward Arundel should die far away upon some Eastern battle–field, before some Affghan fortress, than that he should return to inflict upon her the same tortures she had writhed under two years before.

"God grant that he may never come back!" she thought. "God grant that he may marry out yonder, and live and die there! God keep him from me for ever and for ever in this weary world!"

And yet in the next moment, with the inconsistency which is the chief attribute of that madness we call love, her thoughts wandered away dreamily into visions of the future; and she pictured Edward Arundel back again at Swampington, at Marchmont Towers. Her soul burst its bonds and expanded, and drank in the sunlight of gladness: and she dared to think that it might be so–there might be happiness yet for her. He had been a boy when he went back to India–careless, indifferent. He would return a man,–graver, wiser, altogether changed: changed so much as to love her perhaps.

She knew that, at least, no rival had shut her cousin's heart against her, when she and he had been together two years before. He had been indifferent to her; but he had been indifferent to others also. There was comfort in that recollection. She had questioned him very sharply as to his life in India and at Dangerfield, and she had discovered no trace of any tender memory of the past, no hint of a cherished dream of the future. His heart had been empty: a boyish, unawakened heart: a temple in which the niches were untenanted, the shrine unhallowed by the presence of a goddess.

Olivia Marchmont thought of these things. For a few moments, if only for a few moments, she abandoned herself to such thoughts as these. She let herself go. She released the stern hold which it was her habit to keep upon her own mind; and in those bright moments of delicious abandonment the glorious sunshine streamed in upon her narrow life, and visions of a possible future expanded before her like a fairy panorama, stretching away into realms of vague light and splendour. It was possible; it was at least possible.

But, again, in the next moment the magical panorama collapsed and shrivelled away, like a burning scroll; the fairy picture, whose gorgeous colouring she had looked upon with dazzled eyes, almost blinded by its overpowering glory, shrank into a handful of black ashes, and was gone. The woman's strong nature reasserted itself; the iron will rose up, ready to do battle with the foolish heart.

"I will not be fooled a second time," she cried. "Did I suffer so little when I blotted that image out of my heart? Did the destruction of my cruel Juggernaut cost me so small an agony that I must needs be ready to elevate the false god again, and crush out my heart once more under the brazen wheels of his chariot? He will never love me!"

She writhed; this self–sustained and resolute woman writhed in her anguish as she uttered those five words, "He will never love me!" She knew that they were true; that of all the changes that Time could bring to pass, it would never bring such a change as that. There was not one element of sympathy between herself and the young soldier; they had not one thought in common. Nay, more; there was an absolute antagonism between them, which, in spite of her love, Olivia fully recognised. Over the gulf that separated them no coincidence of thought or fancy, no sympathetic emotion, ever stretched its electric chain to draw them together in mysterious union. They stood aloof, divided by the width of an intellectual universe. The woman knew this, and hated herself for her folly, scorning alike her love and its object; but her love was not the less because of her scorn. It was a madness, an isolated madness, which stood alone in her soul, and fought for mastery over her better aspirations, her wiser thoughts. We are all familiar with strange stories of wise and great minds which have been ridden by some hobgoblin fancy, some one horrible monomania; a bleeding head upon a dish, a grinning skeleton playing hide–and–seek in the folds of the bed–curtains; some devilry or other before which the master–spirit shrank and dwindled until the body withered and the victim died.

Had Olivia Marchmont lived a couple of centuries before, she would have gone straight to the nearest old crone, and would have boldly accused the wretched woman of being the author of her misery.

"You harbour a black cat and other noisome vermin, and you prowl about muttering to yourself o' nights" she might have said. "You have been seen to gather herbs, and you make strange and uncanny signs with your palsied old fingers. The black cat is the devil, your colleague; and the rats under your tumble–down roof are his imps, your associates. It is you who have instilled this horrible madness into my soul; for it could not come of itself."

And Olivia Marchmont, being resolute and strong–minded, would not have rested until her tormentor had paid the penalty of her foul work at a stake in the nearest market–place.

And indeed some of our madnesses are so mad, some of our follies are so foolish, that we might almost be forgiven if we believed that there was a company of horrible crones meeting somewhere on an invisible Brocken, and making incantations for our destruction. Take up a newspaper and read its hideous revelations of crime and folly; and it will be scarcely strange if you involuntarily wonder whether witchcraft is a dark fable of the middle ages, or a dreadful truth of the nineteenth century. Must not some of these miserable creatures whose stories we read be possessed; possessed by eager, relentless demons, who lash and goad them onward, until no black abyss of vice, no hideous gulf of crime, is black or hideous enough to content them?

Olivia Marchmont might have been a good and great woman. She had all the elements of greatness. She had genius, resolution, an indomitable courage, an iron will, perseverance, self–denial, temperance, chastity. But against all these qualities was set a fatal and foolish love for a boy's handsome face and frank and genial manner. If Edward Arundel had never crossed her path, her unfettered soul might have taken the highest and grandest flight; but, chained down, bound, trammelled by her love for him, she grovelled on the earth like some maimed and wounded eagle, who sees his fellows afar off, high in the purple empyrean, and loathes himself for his impotence.

"What do I love him for?" she thought. "Is it because he has blue eyes and chestnut hair, with wandering gleams of golden light in it? Is it because he has gentlemanly manners, and is easy and pleasant, genial and light–hearted? Is it because he has a dashing walk, and the air of a man of fashion? It must be for some of these attributes, surely; for I know nothing more in him. Of all the things he has ever said, I can remember nothing–and I remember his smallest words, Heaven help me!–that any sensible person could think worth repeating. He is brave, I dare say, and generous; but what of that? He is neither braver nor more generous than other men of his rank and position."

She sat lost in such a reverie as this while her dead husband was being carried to the roomy vault set apart for the owners of Marchmont Towers and their kindred; she was absorbed in some such thoughts as these, when one of the grave, grey–headed old servants brought her a card upon a heavy salver emblazoned with the Marchmont arms.

Olivia took the card almost mechanically. There are some thoughts which carry us a long way from the ordinary occupations of every–day life, and it is not always easy to return to the dull jog–trot routine. The widow passed her left hand across her brow before she looked at the name inscribed upon the card in her right.

"Mr. Paul Marchmont."

She started as she read the name. Paul Marchmont! She remembered what her husband had told her of this man. It was not much; for John's feelings on the subject of his cousin had been of so vague a nature that he had shrunk from expounding them to his stern, practical wife. He had told her, therefore, that he did not very much care for Paul, and that he wished no intimacy ever to arise between the artist and Mary; but he had said nothing more than this.

"The gentleman is waiting to see me, I suppose?" Mrs. Marchmont said.

"Yes, ma'am. The gentleman came to Kemberling by the 11.5 train from London, and has driven over here in one of Harris's flys."

"Tell him I will come to him immediately. Is he in the drawing–room?"

"Yes, ma'am."

The man bowed and left the room. Olivia rose from her chair and lingered by the fireplace with her foot on the fender, her elbow resting on the carved oak chimneypiece.

"Paul Marchmont! He has come to the funeral, I suppose. And he expects to find himself mentioned in the will, I dare say. I think, from what my husband told me, he will be disappointed in that. Paul Marchmont! If Mary were to die unmarried, this man or his sisters would inherit Marchmont Towers."

There was a looking–glass over the mantelpiece; a narrow, oblong glass, in an old–fashioned carved ebony frame, which was inclined forward. Olivia looked musingly in this glass, and smoothed the heavy bands of dead–black hair under her cap.

"There are people who would call me handsome," she thought, as she looked with a moody frown at her image in the glass; "and yet I have seen Edward Arundel's eyes wander away from my face, even while I have been talking to him, to watch the swallows skimming by in the sun, or the ivy–leaves flapping against the wall."

She turned from the glass with a sigh, and went out into a dusky corridor. The shutters of all the principal rooms and the windows upon the grand staircase were still closed; the wide hall was dark and gloomy, and drops of rain spattered every now and then upon the logs that smouldered on the wide old–fashioned hearth. The misty October morning had heralded a wet day.

Paul Marchmont was sitting in a low easy–chair before a blazing fire in the western drawing–room, the red light full upon his face. It was a handsome face, or perhaps, to speak more exactly, it was one of those faces that are generally called "interesting." The features were very delicate and refined, the pale greyish–blue eyes were shaded by long brown lashes, and the small and rather feminine mouth was overshadowed by a slender auburn moustache, under which the rosy tint of the lips was very visible. But it was Paul Marchmont's hair which gave a peculiarity to a personal appearance that might otherwise have been in no way out of the common. This hair, fine, silky, and luxuriant, was white, although its owner could not have been more than thirty–seven years of age.

The uninvited guest rose as Olivia Marchmont entered the room.

"I have the honour of speaking to my cousin's widow?" he said, with a courteous smile.

"Yes, I am Mrs. Marchmont."

Olivia seated herself near the fire. The wet day was cold and cheerless. Mrs. Marchmont shivered as she extended her long thin hand to the blaze.

"And you are doubtless surprised to see me here, Mrs. Marchmont?" the artist said, leaning upon the back of his chair in the easy attitude of a man who means to make himself at home. "But believe me, that although I never took advantage of a very friendly letter written to me by poor John–"

Paul Marchmont paused for a moment, keeping sharp watch upon the widow's face; but no sorrowful expression, no evidence of emotion, was visible in that inflexible countenance.

"Although, I repeat, I never availed myself of a sort of general invitation to come and shoot his partridges, or borrow money of him, or take advantage of any of those other little privileges generally claimed by a man's poor relations, it is not to be supposed, my dear Mrs. Marchmont, that I was altogether forgetful of either Marchmont Towers or its owner, my cousin. I did not come here, because I am a hard–working man, and the idleness of a country house would have been ruin to me. But I heard sometimes of my cousin from neighbours of his."

"Neighbours!" repeated Olivia, in a tone of surprise.

"Yes; people near enough to be called neighbours in the country. My sister lives at Stanfield. She is married to a surgeon who practises in that delightful town. You know Stanfield, of course?"

"No, I have never been there. It is five–and–twenty miles from here."

"Indeed! too far for a drive, then. Yes, my sister lives at Stanfield. John never knew much of her in his adversity; and therefore may be forgiven if he forgot her in his prosperity. But she did not forget him. We poor relations have excellent memories. The Stanfield people have so little to talk about, that it is scarcely any wonder if they are inquisitive about the affairs of the grand country gentry round about them. I heard of John through my sister; I heard of his marriage through her,"–he bowed to Olivia as he said this,–"and I wrote immediately to congratulate him upon that happy event,"–he bowed again here;–"and it was through Lavinia Weston, my sister, that I heard of poor John's death; one day before the announcement appeared in the columns of the 'Times.' I am sorry to find that I am too late for the funeral. I could have wished to have paid my cousin the last tribute of esteem that one man can pay another."

"You would wish to hear the reading of the will?" Olivia said, interrogatively.

Paul Marchmont shrugged his shoulders, with a low, careless laugh; not an indecorous laugh,–nothing that this man did or said ever appeared ill–advised or out of place. The people who disliked him were compelled to acknowledge that they disliked him unreasonably, and very much on the Doctor–Fell principle; for it was impossible to take objection to either his manners or his actions.

"That important legal document can have very little interest for me, my dear Mrs. Marchmont," he said gaily. "John can have had nothing to leave me. I am too well acquainted with the terms of my grandfather's will to have any mercenary hopes in coming to Marchmont Towers."

He stopped, and looked at Olivia's impassible face.

"What on earth could have induced this woman to marry my cousin?" he thought. "John could have had very little to leave his widow."

He played with the ornaments at his watch–chain, looking reflectively at the fire for some moments.

"Miss Marchmont,–my cousin, Mary Marchmont, I should say,–bears her loss pretty well, I hope?"

Olivia shrugged her shoulders.

"I am sorry to say that my stepdaughter displays very little Christian resignation," she said.

And then a spirit within her arose and whispered, with a mocking voice, "What resignation do you show beneath your affliction,–you, who should be so good a Christian? How have you learned to school your rebellious heart?"

"My cousin is very young," Paul Marchmont said, presently.