Margaret Denzil's History. Annotated by her husband [A novel. By Frederick Greenwood.] Reprinted from the 'Cornhill Magazine.'

Front matter

MAEGAEET DENZIL'S HISTOEY. ANNOTATED BY HEE HUSBAND. PREPRINTED FROM THE " CORNHILL MAGAZINE ") IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. II. LONDON: SMITH, ELDER AND CO., 65, CORNHILL. 1864. [The right oj Translation is reserved.^ CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME. CHAP. PAGE I. Mt New Home 1 II. Mt Mother the Pedlar 16 HI. Mt Babt 39 IV. Cat and Moose 58 V. Mt Confidential Friend 67 VI. Question and Answer 84 VH. Flight 97 VIII. A Dream and its Consequences Ill IX. The Lamonts 136 X. The Beginning of the End „ 151 XL Rout _._ 161 XII. Illumination CONTENTS. IV CHAP. PA0,! XHI. Sister Agnes 20, XIV. The End of Arthur Lamont 220 238 XV. Letters from the Dead XVI. The Truth at Last 258 XVII. A Little More of the Truth IARGAEET DENZIL'S HISTOEY.

Chapter I. My Sew Home

We were away from England eight months after our marriage — that is to say, from the autumn of one year to the spring of the next; and all this time was spent in scenes which kept me in a swiftly changing rhapsody of surprise. Now at last I saw the world : strange seas, strange skies, strange cities, and what was still more unknown to me, men and women ; for of them I had little experience till now, nor had I ever troubled my fancy more with what I sometimes heard of as " society " than with what I read of as the South Sea Islands. This lack of curiosity I attribute to my breeding in the forest, where I had never any sympathy except such as an 21 VOL. imaginative self-contenting child may find in trees and clouds and clods, and the moss on the trees, and the tiny busy things that creep in the clods, and the thousand sounds of nature which, when you have learnt them, make up a language that fills the mind with a pagan learning and a pagan faith more subtle than any gained from books— that satis fies the mind more, and keeps it more like a whole some breezy field, and less like a hot and noisy factory.

Well, seas, skies, and cities were beautiful to my eyes and easy to read ; but as for those others, the men and women, they were more difficult. I saw that the veils of convention they wore were comely and charming, but somehow I did not like the charm. Character which appeared to be dressed a la mode three times a day made me more timid than ambitious ; indeed, I often felt the same sort of resentful proud shamefacedness that an innocent pretty savage in her half-nakedness might feel, paraded as a lionne in some London drawing room. Nowhere was I considered leonine, of course ; but all the same I was very much stared at. Espe cially in our excursions on the Mediterranean, which my husband enjoyed so heartily, I was often cruelly conscious of that kind of admiration which gentlemen swear to by Jove.

Moreover, people everywhere showed a certain tendency to distinguish between my husband and myself, and to separate us. This, of course, was because of his blunter manners, his no-conversation, his homely modes of speech, his je ne sais quoi of being " nobody ; " and — who knows ? — perhaps there was something in the fact that while his wife w*as yet in her teens, he had attained the age of forty. More than once this condition of things set my mind in such a mood that it was as if the leaf resolutely folded itself back into the bud again. More than once, in other moods, I had to conceal a quick Httle pang of pleasure at seeing how troubled and puzzled my husband looked when a knot of young gallants, beautifully whiskered, assembled to talk opera about my deck chair, or when one of them would do me some trifling service obviously needed, but which he never saw must be welcome till it was accomplished : accomplished, too, very often, with an ostentation meant to point a husband's indifference or stupidity.

Ah, but it was messieurs the gallants who were stupid. What did they know? If they detected any flutterings of satisfaction on my face, I hope they were not deceived : it was only because of that little pang of delight at his troubled 21—2 countenance, which had its most grateful response far deeper in my heart than could be reached by any ceremonial kindness of handing a chair or a shawl. Why should it not be my duty to hand chairs and wraps for him ? But it did not please me that he should be vexed without reason, or made to feel ashamed when there was no shame. It did not please me that he should take the subtle small "distinctions that were made between us with less resentment than I did — as though they were natural, or a price to be paid for one who was the very creature of his kindness.

They offended me — they could not have been delight ful to him ; and yet wherever amusement and gay company were accessible (it was winter then, you know), there he took me most faithfully. " You came to see the world, my dear," said he, " and it is nothing but right you should do so. You are not to be a hermit or a nurse yet awhile ; and if I don't show much pleasure in this sort of thincr. I feel it all the same." But I was not to be deceived by such disingenuous generosity ; while for my own part, what he called the "world" propounded too many puzzles of act and motive to be enjoyed with out fear. My happiest days were spent in travel on the road ; the most welcome mornings were those when I woke in some rustic villa ; and as soon as I thought I could do so without seeming ungrateful or sentimental, I asked to be taken home.

And by this time I had found for that request the sweetest excuse that can be. Another reason : I had not yet seen the home that was to be mine. Of course I was intensely curious about it, but I resolutely disciplined my curiosity — asking no questions that the gift might come with all its due surprises ; and my husband said nothing about it either, for the same reason. Well, I was gratified at last ! There it was — a most cozy, comely house in a great old walled garden that sloped down to the river near Twickenham. Without, it was simply a large, handsome cottage of no particular pretensions, but within, I can't say how charming it was : so bright, so rich, so homelike all the while, I had seen nothing like it. How should I, with my experiences confined to boarding-schools and hotels ? And yet I felt rather as if I had returned to an old halfforgotten home than come to a' new one.

Every room seemed to embrace me when I entered it; and I was so grateful and foolish that I would have embraced every room, had that been pos sible. Whether the house was new or old was not very clear from appearances, for the builder had modelled it very much upon the plan of the edifice which stood there more than two hundred years before, and I thanked him for it ; for thus the house was kept in harmony with the ancient garden. Especially at the river front of the house : where it rested on a terrace, whose slope to the garden was broken by a flight of shallow broad stone steps, widening, and edged with a low parapet ; and along each parapet crept evergreen vines in long straight lines — a stream of verdure flowing to the lawn. The garden itself was strikingly antique — quaintly antique, solemnly old.

Though it had been kept with exceeding care, the care was strictly conservative. Change had never entered the gates after its first gardeners had done with it ; and all the sweepings, and clippings, and trimmings that had since gone on there only added to it the neatness we see in an ancient faded gentleman. It was still an Italian garden, with fountained nooks grown hoary in seclusion, with avenues of limes too close to rustle — though I fancied a rustling was to be heard there on many a still evening, when the ghosts of grand ladies in silken sacs, and whispering swains in silk and satin and buckram too, walked down them once more, witty and wicked and gossipping. The sward seemed to repose on a dozen old grey swards, so soft it was : you said, " It is like tapestry," and not, " It is like a carpet."

There was a grotto. Once there had been a labyrinth, but that had gone. The sun dial remained, but it was rather too quaint : a black boy with a turban on, who, kneeling, presented the dial to the sun, on a stone cushion that looked at a httle distance like a wash-hand basin. A mere view of this charming old place from a window was not enough. He who gave it. me longed for his dinner; I longed to go and take possession of my territory at once ; and it promised so much in the way of discovery that I seized an opportunity of making the expedition alone. And a delightful dreamy ramble I had over the lawns and in and about the alleys, for it was a soft April evening, and a shower had fallen ; and that well over, the sun came out to shine, and birds set up their throats to sing, for one half hour more.

Where the house was hidden by tall " memorial elms," all but a gable or so, there you were fairly shut in with the eighteenth century. At any moment Mr. Pope might appear, attendant on some one of the brocaded dames whom he knew too well and respected too little. But instead of the fine romantic personages of that time, what should I behold approaching me by and by but a little odd figure in the black of our own day — a wizen, wigged little figure, bowing very much, and smiling very much, with a face like a winter russeting long forgotten in a cupboard. He appeared so suddenly from behind a clump of evergreens, when I thought myself quite alone, that I was startled out of all composure ; but the small, small gentleman did his best to reassure me, bowing at every other step. " I beg your pardon, ma'am," said he, in the cracked voice that was expected of him, " but I'm only an old fellow — a neighbour of yours — who hates the world and loves a little quiet meditation ; and so I prevailed upon your housekeeper you are Mrs. Denzil, I presume, whom we have been expecting so long ?

" I bowed of course — but not graciously. " Yes ? I prevailed upon your housekeeper, then, to give me leave to stroll in your nice old garden occasionally, till you came home. And, I assure you," with another simper, which might have meant anything, " I have had many profitable and pleasant reflections here." I told him I was very glad to hear it. " Very pleasant," said he. " But I cannot intrude any longer, of course. Permit me to restore the wicket key your housekeeper was good enough to lend me. Good evening ! I wish you joy of your delightful residence." He handed me the key with another bow*, and shuffled off, smiling still. " Thanks for the key that locks you out," said I to myself, shivering. " I don't like you. You shall not come creeping here any more — like a great old black beetle."

And in truth, the apparition of this mystical person, and his too impressive manners, put an end to the pleasures of my ramble. The interview was over in three or four minutes, but in that interval time and place had changed. The sun had set, the slatey gloom of an April evening had fallen everywhere ; and not till I was seated with my happy husband in the light of half-a-dozen candles, and we found ourselves so charmingly " at home," did I forgive that malappro priate little man. After a few days of rest in this pretty place (the selection of which for me argued such instinctive penetration that I respected my husband ever so much more now), I began to make acquaintances. All round about I had pleasant homely people for neighbours — families of the hereditary merchant class — not very rich families, but full of sons and daugh ters and decorous bonhomie.

First, the parson called on me, and was so agreeable as never to say a word about the charities or pieties of the parish during the half hour he sat and chatted, with his long black legs bent at acute angles on the littlest chair in the room. And I suppose I pleased him ; though my part of the conversation was hampered by a naughty troublesome nursery rhyme which repeated itself in my mind the whole time. The legend is well known — it is about a Miss Muffet who sat on a tuffet (probably a settee), and about a great spider who sat down beside her, and frightened Miss Muffet away. However, I was not much frightened, and it was due to this interview, I suppose, that before the end of a week two or three of the nicest mothers came to call on me, with their daughters ; and I liked the mothers best ; and they liked me ; and soon I found myself as welcome as any one in the half dozen houses which made up the friendliest and best community of the place.

By some rare concurrence of circumstance, taste, and feeling, it was, indeed, like one great family; and I was assured that no stranger had been admitted within its comfortable bounds for a long time past, save myself and " oh, such a nice, funny old gentle man,"—a doctor retired from his profession, who had come to settle in the village about six months before our arrival. I found presently that to this gentleman belonged the quaint figure that had sur prised me when I went to take possession of my garden ; and he always surprised me : the impression he made upon my mind at first remained in full force after more meetings than one. Mr. Calamy was not often met, indeed. He was rarely seen at our neigh bourly evening assemblies, but was chiefly known to the afternoon tea-tables of the ladies, where he en joyed a certain popularity, first for his charities, and next for his eccentric manners and opinions ; which added something piquant and original to the humdrum society on whose outskirts he preferred to dwell.

He was a physician who railed against physic, and an old bachelor who disliked not the other sex, but his own. It was whispered every where, in a mysterious way, that he was very clever, though nobody could vouch for any particular instances of successful practice ; and now it was too late to ask advice of him, for he would give none. On the very first occasion of my meeting the doctor in com pany, I heard him ridicule the pretensions he had resigned. " Let me alone," said he, in his high cracked voice, to some poor lady who had ventured to hint at her chronic headaches and his well-known skill. " Don't tempt me to risk another murder. I have no wish to add to the ill-gained guineas which would burn my pocket out if I did not give some of them now and then to your Dorcas work. Prescribe ! there isn't a drug in Poison's shop that I know any more about than Poison's shop-boy does.

We are nothing but a pack of experimentalists, I tell you. Half the disease in the world is caused by experiments on the other half; and when all's done, we are as much in the dark as ever ! " " Then you'll positively have nothing to do with us?" said the disappointed woman. "Not one of you!" he answered. "Nobody here shall persuade me to be the death of her — unless," he added in a lower voice, and turning to me with a smile that was meant to be polite and pleasant, no doubt, but which looked rather grim upon that withered face — " unless it be you." " I hardly know how to take your reservation," said I. " Well, don't take my drugs, Mrs. Denzil, and then you'll be perfectly safe," he answered, smiling again ; and I certainly felt as if in that particular alone would I trust him. Nevertheless, Mr. Calamy always treated me with such anxious courtesy (especially when we happened to meet rambling or riding in the neighbourhood, which was pretty often,) that I was convinced he gave me the greater share of his good will.

As for the rest, how could he help having such a strange old figure, or the ugly oddity of his looks ? And thus commenced the very happiest period of my hfe. Behold how dignified I was — a wife and mistress at eighteen ! How rich, with all those pretty bonnets, and wonderful fine dresses, and delicate lawns and laces ! How healthy, and strong, and handsome too ! All is vanity, saith the Preacher, but who can help rejoicing in her strength and beauty w*hen they and happiness are so much in accord that they seem to sing together through all her limbs ? I rejoiced. As Earth is conscious, day and night, of the rustling of her trees, and the noise of her streams, and the humming of the air, so I felt my hfe busy in my veins always : sometimes, indeed, I almost fancied I could see it in hand or foot, as one sees light in a leaf.

And ah, if you only knew how proud and exultant I was ! Altogether, my heart was nothing but a little musical box, tinkling with har monies shut in. Or to make a bigger comparison, it was hke the " sleeping woods in the leafy month of June," whereto the hidden brook " all night singeth a quiet tune." Not one brook either, but several mingling; the sweetest being the one which was hidden most. Ah me ! how many afternoons hot and still, how many soft dun evenings have I spent listening to that little chattering stream of thoughts about my baby that was to be ! What a busy little chattering stream of thoughts, half choked by the verdure, the hap piness it nurtured ! I had plenty of time and solitude to enjoy it, for my husband had now embarked in some city business (also for the future baby's sake, I do believe), and went with his neighbours to town every day.* Besides, this is not a happiness that * The baby was partly my motive, no doubt; but there were others.

It was some consideration that Margaret could not want me always at home; and I'd a notion, that when husband and wife are not on what I may call sentimental sweethearting terms, all sugar and bread and butter, it is best for them to be apart a good time during the day. But, more particularly, as to money matters. Our investments, I mean the first Mrs. Denzil's and mine, had not been very lucky; so that spite of onr economical way of living and saving, the fortune she left me with was no greater than it was when we married. In fact, I found on making my calculations, just before I bought the Twickenham house, that it amounted to precisely the same sum, within a trifle,— taking into account an exchequer bill for two or three hundred pounds, which she must have earned away, sent to her sister, I imagined.

Now, I did not like finding myself with exactly our original fortune, her original fortune, I may say— somehow: not only because I wished Margaret to live in a better style than the money would safely warrant, but because it was the other one's money, with scarcely any additions of my own. On all these accounts, I readily accepted a small partnership in a shipping house, offered by one of my neighbours; and it turned out so fortunate that, in a month or two, I found myself living in a moderately handsome way, on what, I suppose, were my own gains, though her capital supplied the start— J. D. can be shared, or even indulged when any one is by. What do persons engaged in shipping business, and freights, and exchange, know about the rhapsodies of little laced caps and tiny gowns which possess other people when they are young women, and, to then own intensest wonder, going to be mothers? And yet I wished there had been somebody to whom I might open my heart a httle, for sympathy and guidance sake ; but there was none.

Chapter II. My Mother The Pedlar

This wish spoke rather despairingly in my mind one day, when I went out for my morning's drive in the modest little carriage which I had learnt to manage myself. It was a day in the sullen heats of July — the sky pale, the air dizzy, every beetle drunk, every bird dumb with heat. Happy you, 0 songster, then who — Sitting still, With that cold dagger of thy bill Fretted the summer jenneting, in the cool branches of the jenneting tree, where no dust was. As for wayside trees and hedges, and the weeds under the hedges, they were white and wither ing with dust : there was not a breath of wind to brush the choking load away. Only a httle more heat, and it seemed that in the roads themselves the dust would swarm into life, take wing, and devour every green thing in the land. I fancied there was a lively venom, already, in the way in which the clouds ft MY MOTHER THE PEDLAR. 17 rose under the horses' feet, and followed them as long as their sullen flight could last.

Yet I must have my drive, were it only for the sake of observing all this. But whether because of the sultriness of the day, or for reasons that cannot be acknowledged as reasons, I felt more despondent than at any time since my marriage. The musical box had stopped. What I have called "that little chattering stream of thought" flowed thin and muddy through my mind, and all the fine joy-flags that waved therein drooped and draggled in the channel. There came a tramp-woman down the road with a baby bundled in a shawl at her back. The child, clean as a pebble, bright-eyed as a lizard, sat up and stared at me as I rolled listlessly by ; and whereas I had never seen a baby of any sort for many a week past without instantly wanting to hug it, to this pretty brown creature and its nightcap I was totally indifferent.

And yet I might have seen — nay, I did see, that the little cap was white as snow, though it surmounted a bundle of tatters ; and at another time I should have thought with a grateful tenderness of how the poor mother, buying her pennyworth of soap with her pennyworth of bread in some village chandlery, had painfully washed that rag white in a brook, while I was contemvol. n. 22 < plating my laced finery in secret at home. How ever, nothing of the sort occurred to me. What did occur to me, in an apprehensive, unwholesome way, was that perhaps it was as well for a baby to begin life on the back of a tramp as in a cushioned cradle, since nobody knows what is to come after. So on I went, growing more and more peevish. Presently I descried another woman loitering in the road ahead ; but she had no child with her, only a pedlar's basket with laces dangling over the side, and pincushions, and kettle-holders, and other cottage gauds in patchwork.

Her I would not look upon ; for she had her eyes fixed on me, gradually slacken ing her pace as I approached her. But when, as I was about to pass by, she suddenly stopt altogether, and then staggered with an inarticulate cry toward a milestone as if for support, it was impossible to forego a scrutinizing glance at the woman. Only a momentary glance, for w*e were abreast when I turned my head ; but one that was enough to thrill me with a vague and terrified sense of recognition. Where had I seen that face ? Whose was it ? That I should find an answer to those questions seemed at the moment as necessary as if my whole happiness depended on theh* solution. This was why I had been so dull then, I argued. It was a presentiment that I should meet this woman which had troubled me : and yet now I could not decide whether I had really seen her before, or whether I was only possessed with an apprehension that I should meet her again in some way that would be disastrous.

Meanwhile every moment carried me farther and farther away from her ; she might leave the road by any one of its many turnings ; and therefore, if I could not remember at once who she was, I should have little chance of overtaking her, though I wished to do so ever so much. Still, search as I would, I could find no clue to her identity in my mind except this : somehow I associated her with soldiers ! Soldiers at a barrack-door ! A barrack-door ? Now if you remember a certain description in the first pages of this history, you understand an association of ideas tormenting in its persistency and its seeming childishness till I understood it. " It was not like a cottage at all. Much more did it resemble a slice of a barrack — so formal and heavy, with its walls of dull red brick, its cold slate roof on which no bird ever alighted, and its narrow windows viciously staring hke little Malayan eyes without eyebrows.

There was not a flower nor a shrub about it : nothing prettier than a patch of houseleek that squatted like a toad over the sentry-box that shaded the doorway." This 22—2 barrack-like cottage was that in which I was born, you know. The woman was my mother ! As the recognition flashed into existence, like light from confusing vapours, the reins fell from my hands, and before I had recovered from the poignant shock of the discovery my horse had stopped, and was pushing his unsatisfied nose through the dusty grass by the road side. Poignant, I say, for — I confess it — no tender instincts were awakened, only such bewildered ones as were lost in a medley of other instincts warning and apprehensive. Certainly the shock was not a joyful one. You know how little I had been loved at home — how little reason I had to love the despot of that dreary, ice-bound household of three.

Why now, when her figure first started out of my memory, it was as she stood, with set teeth, wringing my hand till the joints cracked, on an occasion herebefore described. And how was it that she mocked poor me, a child of thirteen, with courtesies and obeisances, when I was imprisoned in my bedroom ? And what did the mockery mean ? And why was she here ? Well, she could not carry me away to the barrack again, could she ? for I was married and had a husband. Encouraged by this reflection, my unreasonable panic began to abate ; and then it soon appeared not only foolish but unnatural also. Why was she here ? Her pedlar's basket answered that question, most fully. She had always been poor — her most favourite and frequent description of herself was " a poor wretch who hadn't a farden between her and the workhouse ; " and if her husband had died — (he, at least, had been kind to me, in his narrow way) — what was to keep her from actual pauperism but some such business as this of hawking laces from place to place like poor old Betty Prior, whose face was so well known in the villages of the New Forest ?

Betty had a hunch of bread and a draught of water when ever she called at my mother's door ; and how hungry might the donor of those welcome morsels be now ? Did I not see how faint and tired she looked as she staggered to the milestone ? And what could she think of me, who after staring her full in the face, drove on with no more heed ? She could not know that I failed to recognize her then ; and though my first thoughts about her might be intelligible, they were odiously selfish and unchristian. So my better mind decided ; and turning about, I hurried back as fast as I dare drive, resolved to over take her and make amends. It was too late. She had disappeared. No soul did I see from one end of the high road to the other ; but there were narrow paths on either side, any one of which she might have chosen to slink away, and there I could not follow her in a carriage.