his mother. ‘I did not sleep a bit last night for making up how it was
to be. I had quite settled in my mind what parties it would be necessary
to give. We have not entertained since your poor dear father died, not
once,--but now I had been thinking there ought to be a series of
dinners, and perhaps a ball, to give Renton its proper place again in
the county, and prove that everything is settled. And now you come and
break my heart, and tell me you are going away!’
‘But, dear godmamma, he will soon come back,’ said Mary, coming to the
rescue. ‘He does not mean he is to go on making railways all his life.
He is going to finish his work,--that is what he said; though it is
disappointing of course.’
‘Because of the ball?’ said Ben, looking at her across his mother; but
Mary was not able at that moment to take her part in any encounter of
wit.
‘No,’ she said, almost angrily, ‘not because of the ball. I am not young
enough now to care very much for balls; but because I thought it was
your turn now to take care of godmamma, and----’ Mary could trust
herself no further. She went back abruptly to her work, leaving both
mother and son in a state of the utmost surprise and consternation.
‘I think you are all bent on driving me wild,’ said poor Mrs. Renton.
‘It seemed as if everything was over yesterday; but now here is Ben
going away, and Mary is disagreeable. And who have I to fall back upon?
Laurie is very kind, but he will be going too; and Alice is nice, but I
am not used to her. If Mary is to be sharp with me like this, what am I
to do?’
‘I will never be sharp with you, godmamma,’ said Mary, who for the first
time in her gentle life felt herself driven further than she could bear.
‘But you must remember sometimes that I have a home and people of my
own. You have wanted me very much for these seven years, and you know I
have never said a word,--but now that the boys have all come home, I did
hope----’
She would not break down and cry,--not for the world, while Ben kept
gazing at her from his mother’s bedside. But she stopped short abruptly,
in the middle of her sentence, which was the only alternative, and
applied herself with a kind of fury, with trembling fingers, and eyes
blind with unshed tears, to the worsted work. Calculating upon her
services as if she were a piece of furniture! Making all these
arrangements without any reference to her! It was more than Mary could
bear.
‘Ben, speak to her,’ said Mrs. Renton, faintly. ‘Oh, my dear, the boys!
Of course I am fond of the boys; but what can boys do for a poor woman
like me? Oh, Ben, speak to her! You would not go and forsake me, Mary,
when I want you most?’
Ben did not speak, however. He was startled, and out of his reckoning.
He went to the window again, and stood opposite to his cousin, and gazed
down upon her, with his hands in his pockets and a look of profound
concern and uncertainty on his face.
‘I won’t forsake you, godmamma,’ said Mary, with a trembling voice; ‘but
surely you might think,--plan out something,--make some arrangement.’
How hard it is for a woman to assert herself, to speak out of a heart
sore with the consciousness of being made no account of, and not to cry!
It would have been easier for Mary to put herself down under their feet
and allow them to walk over her,--as, indeed, it seemed to her she had
been doing. And they did not know it! They had endured their seven
years’ bondage, and it had come to an end, and all was right again; but
for her the same round was to go on for ever, and nobody even was aware
for what poor hire she had sacrificed her life and her youth.
‘Davison, Miss Mary says she is going to leave us,’ said Mrs. Renton, as
the maid came in. ‘No, no; take it away. I could not swallow it. I am
sure if I thought there was anything in the world she wanted, I would
have got it for her, Davison. And I always thought she was so happy with
me. No, it would choke me, I tell you. And if she was not happy with me,
there are years and years that I might have got used to it; but to go
and tell me now, just when I want her most----’
‘You’ll take your arrowroot, ma’am,’ said Davison, soothingly. ‘It’s
just as you like it, neither too hot nor too cold. Miss Mary agoing
away! That’s a fine joke. Miss Mary couldn’t stay away, ma’am, not if
you was to send her. She’s a deal too fond of you. It’s just nice now,
just as you like it. It’s all her fun, that’s what it is!’
‘I don’t see any fun in it,’ said Mrs. Renton, feebly. But she was
consoled by the fuss, and the re-arrangement of her pillows, and the
arrowroot. ‘You’ll speak to her, Davison, won’t you?--and tell her I
couldn’t bear it. I am sure it would cost me my life.’
‘To be sure, ma’am, I’ll tell her,’ said the maid.
While this little scene was going on, Ben stood by the window, always
with his hands in his pockets, gazing at his cousin, who worked with
fury, with hands that trembled, and eyes blind with tears. She kept them
from falling with a superhuman effort, but she could not see anything
but great blurs of mixed colour on the piece of embroidery before her,
harmless bits of worsted all dilated and magnified through the tears.
‘Do you really mean it, Mary?’ he said, looking down upon her with a
look of grief, which she did not see, and yet knew of, and was stung by
to the bottom of her heart.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘Ben. I can’t tell. I don’t want to give you
more trouble. I don’t know what I am saying. It has all been too
much,--too much!’
‘Come out into the air,’ said Ben. ‘I see it has been too much. We are
all such selfish wretches, thinking only of our own concerns. Come out
into the air.’
‘I think I am more fit to go to bed,’ said Mary, and the tears fell in
spite of her. ‘Never mind me. I have got such a headache,--and,--a bad
temper. Never mind! I think I shall go to bed.’
‘Come out to the woods instead,’ said Ben, with a brother’s tender
sympathy. ‘Never mind, mother,--she will come round. It is only that she
is worn out and over-done. I am going to take her out into the air.’
And so he did, though there was nothing she less desired. He took her
out, giving her his arm, and suiting his steps to hers as if she had
been ill. She was moved to a weary laugh, half of exasperation, when she
had been thus led forth. ‘There is nothing the matter with me, Ben.
Don’t make all this fuss. You make me ashamed of myself,’ she said.
‘There is something the matter with you,’ said Ben. ‘Come and sit down
here, where we can have a good talk. I see now, though I was such a
selfish ass as not to think of it before. You see, Mary, you have always
been so much one of ourselves, that it never occurred to me to think of
the sacrifice you were making in living here.’
‘It was no sacrifice!’ cried Mary. ‘Don’t make me wretched, Ben. I lost
my temper, that was all. I thought you were making all your plans, as if
it were to go on for ever and ever; and that I was only a piece of
furniture that nobody thought of. Don’t pay any attention to me.’
‘My poor little Mary!’ said Ben, taking her hand into his. He made her
sit down on the root of the beech, and bent his eyes wistfully on her,
holding her hand in one of his, and with the other stroking his
moustache, as is the wont of men in trouble. He saw there was something
in it, more than met the eye; and he looked at her with a certain blank
wistfulness. What did Mary want? If it had been anything he could fetch
for her from the ends of the earth, he would have done it. If he had
only known what it was!--or what would please her,--or how to soothe the
nerves, which were evidently all ajar. Mary could not bear that gaze.
Shame, and a sense of humiliation, and all the sensitive pride of a
woman, overwhelmed her. Was there something in her heart which she would
not have him discover? She put up her other hand and covered her face
with it, turning away from him; and whether any sort of enlightenment
might by degrees have penetrated the blank anxiety of his gaze, I cannot
tell; for at that moment they were interrupted in such a way as Mary
remembered to the end of her life.
All at once a rustle was audible as of some one coming,--indeed, of some
one quite near; and then there was a little, light laugh. “Oh, good
gracious! we have come at an unlucky moment,’ said Millicent’s voice,
close at their side. Mary sprang to her feet, drawing her hand away from
Ben’s, raising her flushed face in a kind of desperation. Mrs. Tracy and
her daughter had just turned the corner round the beech-tree, from which
Ben rose, too, with more surprise than delight. Millicent had put on a
white dress, with no sign, except in the black ribbons, of her mourning.
She was in the full splendour of her beauty, excited into more
brilliancy than usual. ‘I am sure I am very sorry if I have interrupted
anything,’ she said, with the colour rising into her cheek, and a
laughing devil of malice in her eyes.
‘Yes, you interrupted a serious discussion,’ said Ben. ‘Mary is worn
out, and I have been questioning her about her health. She has been
shutting herself up a great deal too much, and she denies it, as all
women do.’
‘How sorry I am! and you were feeling her pulse, I suppose?’ said
Millicent. ‘It looked the prettiest scene imaginable, seen through the
trees. You did not hear us coming, you were so pleasantly,--I mean
seriously,--occupied. And have you found out what is the matter with
her, Mr. Ben?’ This was said with the air half-malicious, half-friendly
of the discoverer of a secret. And on the score of this pretended
confidence, Millicent approached him closely, and used all her weapons
against the man who had once knelt at her feet. She looked him in the
face with eyes as much brighter than Mary Westbury’s as they had been in
the earlier days,--with the sweet tints of her complexion increased by
exercise, and by, perhaps a little excitement over this supposed
discovery,--with the morning air puffing out the white frills and
trimmings of her dress, and ruffling a curl which, after the fashion of
the day, fell over her shoulder. The mother had immediately appropriated
Mary, who, wild with shame and confusion and anger, stood at bay, and
was now with difficulty restraining her inclination to burst away from
the intruder, and go home and bury herself in her room, where nobody
could see her hot blushes and angry tears. Ben was moved by a certain
confusion, too, against his will. It was an awkward attitude, certainly,
in which to be seen by any stranger eye.
‘I am not much of a physician,’ he said; ‘but we have all had a great
deal of excitement lately, and Mary is worn out. I trust it is nothing
more.’
‘Ah, yes,’ said Millicent. ‘I know that; indeed, I had thought I might
come and inquire this morning as an old friend. You forget that you told
me all about it,--once. I thought I might ask, for the sake of old
times, if all was right at last.’
‘You do me a great deal of honour to remember anything about my
affairs,’ said Ben. ‘Are you going to the river?’ and he turned with her
to go down in the direction she had been taking. ‘Have you a boat?’
‘Yes; the old gardener put us across,’ said Millicent. ‘You do not give
me credit for any friendly feeling, and you always try to get rid of me,
Mr. Renton. Oh, indeed, I can see it very well. I do not feel angry, for
perhaps you have had provocation; though I can see it very well. But it
would not do you any harm, nor me much good--except for old friendship’s
sake,--if you were to answer my question. Is it all right?’
‘It is perfectly right,’ said Ben, with a little bow. ‘I don’t know that
there was ever any doubt on that subject. I must thank you for taking
so much interest in us and our affairs.’
‘That is all you say now,’ cried Millicent, with ready tears springing
to her eyes; and tears come as readily from mortification and the
passion of anger as from any other cause. ‘You would not have answered
me like that once. Ah, Ben Renton, how much you are changed!’
‘I think it is very natural I should be,’ said Ben. ‘You are changed,
too, Mrs. Rich; though not in anything external,--unless it may be for
the better, if that were possible,’ he added, with a certain grudge in
his words. The man was but a man, and they were extorted from him by the
beauty which could neither be mistaken nor overlooked.
‘If I am not changed in externals, you may be sure I am changed in
nothing else,’ said Millicent, turning upon him with a smile of such
eager sweetness and hope, that it almost reached his heart. She, poor
creature! believed she was winning him back. The thought quickened all
her powers, quickened the very springs of being in her. She forgot Mary,
and the attitude which for a moment had driven her to despair. So much
the better if he had been Mary’s lover,--a touch of triumph the more! ‘I
have had a great deal to endure since we parted,’ she went on. ‘Oh, you
cannot tell all I have had to bear! And I thought time had worn me and
aged me, and that you would scarcely have known me again. But nothing
has ever changed me at heart.’
‘Mrs. Rich, you forget that this conveys very little information to me,’
said Ben, moved with sudden vindictiveness. ‘In those days of which you
speak,--and I don’t know why you should speak of them, the recollection
cannot be a pleasant one,--I remember clearly enough what a fool I made
of myself. My heart was open enough,--ass as I was,--but I don’t know
now, and I did not then, what were the sentiments of yours,--if
indeed----’
‘I had one!’ cried Millicent. ‘Oh, that you should say this to me! And
yet I feel that I deserve it. I acted as if I had none. What can I say
or do to make you know how sorry I am? Sorry is too poor a word. Oh,
Ben, I know I ought not to say it; but if either then or now you could
have seen into my heart----’
Her eyes were shining through her tears; her cheeks glowed with soft
blushes; her look besought, implored, entreated him. Poor soul! she said
true. If he could have seen into her heart, then or now, this is what he
would have seen there:--If Ben Renton will lift me out of all the
necessities of my scheming, wretched life,--if he will give me plenty,
money, luxury, comfort, what my soul sighs for,--then I will do my best
to love him. I will be a good wife to him,--I will be good in my way,--I
will,--I will,--I will! She had said all this to God many a time saying
her prayers, and this is what her heart would have said to Ben, with a
kind of desperate ingenuousness,--innocence in the midst of guile. And
he looked at her, and the man’s soul was shaken within him. Something of
the truth became visible to him;--not the ineffable charm of love. If it
had been very love that shone in her eyes,--however his finer sense had
been revolted by its over-frankness,--no doubt he would have fallen a
victim. For he had loved her once, and she had never been more
beautiful, perhaps never so beautiful in her life. He was touched by her
loveliness, by her eagerness, by the pitiful intensity of expression in
her eyes. Take me,--save me!--she seemed to be crying to him: and, good
heavens! to think what one gleam of this fire, one such look, would have
been to him once! Ben grew confused in himself, half with recollections,
half with pity; and the softness of success and restoration was in his
mind,--even of triumph,--for had not he won a victory, and silenced all
opposers? His voice faltered as he answered her, if answer it could be
called.
‘It is a long time ago,’ he said; ‘one’s very body and being alter you
know, they say, completely in seven years.’
‘But one’s heart never changes,’ murmured Millicent. And that was the
moment when Mrs. Tracy, feeling that the conflict was not progressing,
chose to come in like a watchful goddess, who sees that her champion’s
arms do not prevail.
‘My dear, we are taking Mr. Renton away from his cousin,’ she said, ‘and
from talking over family matters; but since we have done so, could you
not persuade him, Millicent, to come over to us to luncheon? You might
go on the water a little; you are so fond of it; and then lunch would be
ready. Mr. Renton, you must not think it strange that we are anxious to
see a little of such a kind friend as you are. I always say your ready
kindness saved my life.’
Millicent turned sharp round, and involuntarily clenched her hand, as if
she would have struck her mother. ‘It is all over now!’ she said to
herself; and never had the battle been so nearly won. As for Ben, the
sound of the new voice woke him up in a moment. He gave himself a little
shake, and recovered his self-command. Good heavens! to think how near a
step it had been to falling helpless into the syren’s snare!
‘Thanks; but we must turn back when we have seen you to your boat,’ he
said; and lingered to let Mrs. Tracy join them. ‘I have no time for any
such pleasures. My mother thinks it hard enough already, and I must give
her what little time remains. I am going away to-morrow.’
‘To-morrow!’ said Mrs. Tracy, with a half-sneer and a look at her
daughter, to which Millicent, flushed, and pouting, and angry, made no
reply. ‘Then is it a mistake, after all? I thought I heard you say all
was right. I beg your pardon, I am sure----’
‘About the property it is all right,’ said Ben; ‘but I am not the idle
fellow you once knew me. Those were the only six months I ever
absolutely threw away in my life. And I can’t give up my work in a
moment because I have got back my rights.’
‘It was a pity you threw away those six months you speak of,’ said
Millicent. ‘Come, mamma; why should we trouble Mr. Renton to go with us
to the boat? Of course he must have a great deal to talk of,--to his
mother,--and to Mary,--his own people. We are strangers, and have no
claim upon him.’
‘There are some things which one gives all the more freely because there
is no claim,’ said Ben, with good-nature. ‘The path is rather rough
here. Mrs. Tracy, give me your hand.’
‘Thank you, I want no help!’ Millicent cried, when he turned to her, and
she sprang over the gnarled mass of roots, and ran down the path to the
green river-bank. She stood there, framed in by the thick foliage, her
white figure standing out against the light of the river,--a picture not
to be easily forgotten. Emerald green below,--green, just touched with
points of autumnal colour, here and there a yellow leaf above;--gleams
of blue sky looking through;--one long line of light reflecting all the
darker objects, the river, with one boat lying close to the grassy
margin; and in the midst the beautiful, flushed, brilliant creature,
full of passion, and mortification, and an angry despair. She did not
think it worth while now to hide the strong emotions in her mind, but
stood with her face turned to them as they followed, humiliated, yet
defiant,--the crown of all the scene, and the only discord in it. Poor
Millicent! her eyebrows lowered, her eyes shone; her colour was high
with the shame of her defeat; and yet, beyond the angry glance in her
eye, there was a tear, and the corners of her mouth drooped; and,
scarcely concealed by the hard, little laugh of artificial gaiety, a sob
was sounding in her throat.
‘Good-bye,’ she said, almost roughly, ‘Ben,--I will never call you so
again! I wish you luck of your good fortune. It makes a great difference
to most people in this world.’
‘Good-bye,’ said Ben, taking her hand almost against her will. ‘It makes
little difference to me. What has been done has been done by nature and
years. If you should ever want help or counsel that I can give---- Well,
let us say nothing about that. Good-bye----’
‘For a time,’ Mrs. Tracy added, with her bland smile, taking his hand in
both hers,--‘till our meeting again.’
And Mary, whose feelings all this time had been more overwhelming than
can be described, and who had followed mechanically, with an instinct
of being there to the last to see what direful harm might happen, stood
passive by his side, not knowing if she were in a trance or a dream; and
saw the boat push off into the shining river. Mrs. Tracy turned and
waved her hand to them, bland to the last. But Millicent never turned
her head. Once only, just as the boat shot past the long drooping
branches of the willow which closed in the view, she looked round
sharply and saw them; and the rowlocks sounded hollow and loud, and with
another stroke the boat was gone. Neither of them have ever seen that
beautiful face again.
Ben stood for some time after they had disappeared on the same spot,
forgetting everything, gazing out upon the vacant stream and vacant
sunshine, in a curious vacant way. If it had been put to him, he would
never have confessed how much moved he had been. Perhaps he was himself
unconscious of it. But nature made a pause in him, manifesting the
convulsion, in her own way, when this woman, who had influenced it so
strangely, passed for ever out of his life.
‘Are you fond of Coleridge, Mary?’ he said to her without any preface,
quite suddenly, as they went up the steep bank.
‘Of Coleridge, Ben? What an odd question! Why do you ask?’
‘Do you remember what he says? And what a curious sense he had of the
things that are inexpressible,--
‘How there looked him in the face
An angel beautiful and bright,
And how he knew--‘
‘No, I don’t mean that,--not so bad as that!’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Mary, with a little shiver; and she
took hold of his arm with an instinctive desire to show him her
sympathy. Very well did she know what he meant; or at least thought,
hoped she did; but denied it with characteristic readiness. He pressed
the soft, sisterly hand to him when he felt it on his arm. Certainly,
there was a great sympathy between them, though nothing more. And he did
not say another word to her of the subject of the conversation which
this last meeting had blotted out as if it had never been. They did not
talk of anything, indeed, but went home together, with a silent
understanding of each other in which there was certainly some balm.
Understanding each other! which meant that the
woman,--partly,--understood the man, and had it in her heart to be a
little sorry for him in respect to the conflict through which he had
come; and a little, a very little,--which was more remarkable,--sorry
for the other woman thus finally foiled and done with; but that the man
had no comprehension at all of the woman, and gave no particular thought
to her, except so far as was conveyed in a tender, kindly sympathy for
poor little Mary. Her life must not be made a burden to her any longer
by his mother’s drives and her worsted work. That was all the progress
Ben had made in the comprehension of his cousin’s heart.
CHAPTER XV.
AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR.
On the next morning Ben went away without a word, no repentance of his
intention or lingering desire to postpone it having apparently crossed
his mind. He took leave of his mother the night before, for he was going
away early. ‘It will not be for seven years this time,’ he said, as he
kissed her, and was going to kiss Mary, too,--a formula which his
cousin, with a pang of mortification in her heart, felt might be better
dispensed with. ‘Nay; I shall see you in the morning,’ she said, half
terrified lest the blood which she felt to be scorching her cheek might
‘make him think anything.’ What should it make him think? She puzzled
him a little, it must be allowed; but he was not the kind of man who can
think of many different things at one time. His mind had been absorbed
with the business which brought him to Renton. It was absorbed now with
thoughts of what he had to do in the winding-up of his own affairs. Now
and then it flitted vaguely across his perception that Mary had
something on her mind which, one time or other, it would be his
business to see into. Dear little Mary! Ben was very fond of his cousin.
If she had wanted a hair from the beard of the Cham of Tartary, or a
golden apple from the Tree of Bliss in the gardens of the Enchanted
Isles, he would have done all a man could do to get it for her. But he
did not know now what she wanted, or if she wanted anything,--and that
was one of the matters which could wait till he came home.
Laurie, too, was going away with Ben, though only to town; and the night
before they left was a night of talk and recollections more than the
separated family had yet permitted themselves. It was true that Hillyard
put himself singularly in their way. Perhaps he had not had all the
advantages of the Rentons; but still he was a gentleman, though much
knocking about the world had taken some of the outside polish off him,
and he had never shown any inclination to intrude upon their private
talk, or make himself a sharer in the family communings,--never till
now. Perhaps it was because they were just setting off again, and Ben’s
family came in for the _attendrissement_, which might have been more
justly bestowed upon his own. But it was ridiculous that he should plant
himself by Mary, occupying her attention, and pouring forth his
confidences upon her, as it seemed to him good to do. They were all
gathered together in the drawing-room as they had been so many times
before, after Mrs. Renton went to bed, with the windows open as usual,
the lights shaded, the languor of the night and its wistfulness and soft
content and melancholy stealing in; the half-darkness and the soft
breathing of the night air, and the fluttering moths about the lamp,
were all accessories of the picture which nobody could forget. And there
was a mysterious gloom about the walls and the roof, owing to the shades
on the lamps, which gave a more distinct character to the half-visible
faces, each in its corner, and to the brilliant circles of illumination
round every light. They had begun to talk of their father, and this last
event in the story of his will, which was so strange, and so unlike all
his previous life.
‘One would like to know what he meant by it,’ said Laurie. ‘Poor, dear
old father! If there had been something dependent on the issue of our
probation; if there had been a reward for the man that had used his
talent best, like you, Ben; or for the man who had given him an heir,
like Frank; but all to end in this aimless way! We have always thought
ourselves very sound in the brain, we Rentons, or I know what one might
be tempted to think.’
‘That is what I have thought all along,’ said Frank.
‘It is not for us to say so, at least,’ said the elder brother. ‘I
believe illness coming on had confused his mind. They say it does. I
don’t think he can have been quite clear what he was doing. And then he
remembered at last, and was sorry,--don’t you recollect?’
‘My poor father!’ said Laurie. And then there was a pause; and in this
pause, through the dimness and the stillness, came the sound of
Hillyard’s voice, too low to be distinguishable, coming from Mary’s
corner, addressed to her with a volubility and eagerness which struck
them all with amazement. He had not meant to be so audible; and when,
after the first silence, a little laugh burst from Alice at the one
voice thus brought into prominence, he faltered and stopped too, as
people do under such circumstances. What could he be finding to say to
Mary? and what could Mary be thinking of to listen to him? were the
half-angry thoughts that flashed over Ben’s mind. Of course he was a
guest here, and everybody’s equal. Yet still, it seemed to Ben as if, on
the whole, this was bad taste, to say the least, on Hillyard’s part.
But Alice, though she had laughed at the sound of the solitary voice
which continued when they all dropped, was eager to let loose her
opinions, too, on the other subject. ‘I cannot see what other will could
have been just, now,’ she said. ‘If he had told you something to do, it
would have been different. But he gave you nothing to do; and how were
you to know what he wanted? It was not Laurie’s three princes, after
all.’
‘And, now I come to think of it, I don’t believe in my three princes,’
said Laurie. ‘I have not a doubt they fought it out when papa was out
of the way. Fancy two elder brothers giving in to a fellow because he
had the marvellousest little dog that ever was seen! It came to natural
justice, you may be sure, at the end, and the strongest had it. And it
has come to a kind of natural justice with us, so far as law allows.
Poor old father! One used to feel as if he must be so much wiser than we
were. And it proves he was as confused as the rest, and saw just as
short a way before him, and stultified himself, half-knowingly, like one
of his own sons.’
‘Don’t!’ said Ben, with a voice of pain. He was more angry with his
father than soft-hearted Laurie ever could have been, and consequently
was less able to talk of it. ‘Thank heaven!’ he cried, suddenly, ‘I
don’t suppose it has done any of us any lasting harm.’
‘No,’ said Laurie, out of the silence, after a pause, ‘no more harm than
we should have done ourselves, anyhow, for our own hand.’
And somehow, in the room, there was the sound of a sigh; whom it
proceeded from it would be hard to tell--six people all gathered
together of a soft autumn evening, and not too much light to betray
them, it would be strange if there was not more than one who sighed. But
Alice, in the shade, slid her hand through her husband’s arm, and said
joyously, ‘It has done us no harm, Frank!’ ‘Because we would not let
it,’ he whispered back again, brushing her soft cheek with his
moustache. Yes, that was the secret. Have your will, anyhow, whether
fortune permits or no; and in the long run the chances are you will come
out just as well as your neighbour, who allowed fortune to constrain
him, and will have had your will and your happiness into the bargain;
bad social morality, perhaps, but just as good fact as any other. The
young soldier and his wife had their little triumph unsuspected by the
others, who heard but a momentary whisper in that corner, which was
drowned by Hillyard’s more forcible whisper, always conversing with
Mary. What did the fellow mean by it? Ben was so disgusted by this ‘bad
taste’ of his friend, that he got up and stepped out on the lawn, with
some murmur about a cigar. And the other men all rose and joined him,
though not with any enthusiasm. When they had all trooped out, he
stepped back for a moment, and held out his hand to his cousin.
‘Is it really the case, Mary, that I am not to bid you good-bye
to-night?’
‘No,’ Mary said, drawing back, with a shy hesitation which he did not
understand; ‘do you think I would let you go away,--so far,--and not
make your breakfast for you the last morning? This is only good-night.’
‘Good-night, then,’ he said, but held her hand still. ‘What was that
fellow, Hillyard, so voluble about?’
‘That fellow!’ said Mary. ‘I thought he was your great friend. Indeed,
it was mostly you he was talking about.’
‘A poor subject,’ Ben said, only half satisfied; and then she drew her
hand away from him, and he went off with a half-suspicious glance at
her, and a certain sense of uneasiness, to join the men outside.
A parting in the morning is of all things in the world the most
detestable. He who would have a tender farewell, and leave a soft
recollection behind him, let him depart by the night train,--the later
the better,--when there is no inquisitive light to spy out, not only the
tear, but even that humidity of eye which tells when tears are coming.
Mary’s eyes were in this condition when Ben rose from his hurried
breakfast, and came up to her in the full light of day, and of Mr.
Hillyard, who lingered, though nobody wanted him. She had kept behind
the urn, feeling that, after all, had she stayed up-stairs and watched
him going away from her window, it would have been less unsatisfactory.
‘You’ll write and let me know how things are going on,’ Ben had said,
not feeling particularly cheerful himself, but yet approaching the best
part of the wing of a partridge to his mouth. ‘Oh, yes, of course I will
write, as usual,’ Mary said, and he gave a nod of satisfaction as he
ate. To be sure, he had to eat before he started. And then she added,
‘You’ll let us know as soon as you arrive.’ And he nodded again over
his coffee-cup. It was to give him his breakfast she had got up,--and
what else was there to be expected? And when the dog-cart was at the
door, Ben wiped the crumbs carefully from his moustache, and went up to
his cousin, and took her hand, and bent over her. ‘Good-bye, Mary,’ he
said, kissing her cheek, ‘take care of yourself. I’ll write a line from
town before we start. I’m very sorry, now it has come to the last.
Good-bye!’
‘Good-bye, Ben!’ she said, unable to articulate another word. The blood
seemed all to stagnate about her heart. Up to this moment there had
always been a possibility of something happening,--something being done
or said. But now it was all over. A certain haze came over her eyes, and
yet she could see him looking back at her as he went to the door, with
an indefinable expression. She stood and held by the back of the chair,
looking out of the window before which the dog-cart was standing,
forgetting for the moment that there was any one else in the world.
‘Good-bye, Miss Westbury,’ said a voice at her ear.
Mary turned round with an impatience it was scarcely possible to
disguise. ‘Oh, Mr. Hillyard, I beg your pardon! I thought you were gone.
Good-bye!’ she said. He was standing holding out his hand with his eyes
bent on her, and a glow in them such as even a woman agitated with
feelings of her own could scarcely mistake.
‘Good-bye, Miss Westbury. I shall never forget the days I have spent
here,’ he said, and stooped over her hand, as if----
‘Hillyard! do you mean to stay all day?’ cried Ben from the dog-cart, in
a tone which was not sweet.
‘Indeed, you will be late for the train; you have not a moment to lose,’
cried Mary, withdrawing her hand.
He muttered something, she could not tell what,--nor, indeed, did she
care. ‘Not farewell yet,’ was it he said? But what did it matter? The
interruption had so far roused her that she felt able to go to the
window and smile and wave her hand to Ben. Hillyard was still holding
his hat in his hand, trying to attract her attention, when the dog-cart
disappeared down the avenue. Then Mary sat down and gazed straight
before her, with that poignant sense of unreality which such a moment
gives. Five minutes ago he was there; and now here was vacancy,
silence,--a blank in which life lost itself. Five minutes, and all the
world changed! Her brow was burning and heavy with tears unshed,--an
ache which seemed physical, so hard the strain and pain it produced in
her, went through her heart. And a whole long day to go through, and the
birds singing merrily, and the sun shining, and old Willis on his way to
remove the remains of Ben’s breakfast, and to spread the table for the
family that remained! ‘It don’t seem no good, do it, Miss Mary, to have
master home so short, and he been so long away?’ Mary started to her
feet at the words. No good indeed?--perhaps harm, if one dared say
so!--deeper blank and silence after the momentary movement and the
light!
And now to think it was all over, and that there remained nothing but
the old life to be taken up again and gone on with just as before! If it
had been night, when one could have shrouded one’s-self in one’s own
room, and cried or slept, and forgotten one’s-self! But it was
day,--early morning,--with a whole heap of duties to be performed, and
people to look on while she was performing them. And Mary felt sick of
it all,--the duties, and the daylight, and the life. Laurie, who thought
early rising idiotic, went by a much later train, at what he called a
rational hour. And then the house was left in its old quiet, but for the
presence of Frank and Alice and the children, which no doubt made a
great difference. When Mary went to her godmother with the newspaper she
was questioned minutely about Ben’s departure and his looks. ‘Did he eat
any breakfast, Mary?’ Mrs. Renton said, putting her handkerchief to her
eyes.
‘He ate a very good breakfast,’ said Mary, with a slight sense of
humour, but on the whole, a greater sense of something like displeasure.
Yes, he had been quite able to eat breakfast, though he was going away!
‘And enjoyed it, poor fellow?’ said his mother. ‘Ah, if one only knew
when he would eat his next meal at Renton? And was he cheerful, my dear,
or did he feel it very much? Poor Ben! None of you think how hard it is
upon me!’
‘You have Frank, godmamma,’ said Mary, ‘and if he settles in the
Dovecote it will be very nice for us all. And there is Laurie close at
hand whenever you want him, and no one could be more kind than
Laurie----’
‘But neither Laurie nor Frank is Ben,’ said Mrs. Renton with decision,
drying her eyes--which, alas! as her niece felt to the bottom of her
heart, was most true. And then Mary read the papers, all the bits of
news, as she had done any day these seven years. Had there been any
break in the endless round, or had she only dreamed it? It seemed so
hard to know: for the interruption, with all its agitations and
pleasures, had vanished, and everything was as it had been before.
Except, indeed, that Frank and Alice made the dinner-table cheerful, and
took the heavy duty of the drive off Mary’s hands, which was a relief
for which she should have been more grateful. But even that showed the
difference between her own life and that of Frank’s wife, though Mary,
had she not been driven to it, was not given to such comparisons. For
her there was but the usual monotonous promenade over the well-known,
too well-known country; but Alice was taken to the Dovecote, and even
the invalid grew interested about the changes necessary, and the
furnishing and decorations of that abode. ‘The Frank Rentons’ had all
the pleasant excitement of settling down before them. And Mary felt that
it was very wicked and unwomanly of her to desire any excitement, or to
feel so wearily conscious of the want of interest in her own existence.
Would it be much better in the cottage with her mother, who in all these
years had learnt to do without her, and whose whole mind was absorbed in
her curate-boy? Perhaps that would not be any better. And, anyhow, it
was evident that there was nothing to do in the meantime but to submit.
There was, however, an excitement awaiting Mary much nearer than she had
any expectation of. It came to her just two days after Ben’s departure,
in the afternoon, when once more Alice and the children had gone to
accompany Mrs. Renton in her drive, and she was alone in the
drawing-room, with the window open as usual,--that window by which
everybody went and came,--everybody, that is to say, belonging to the
family. Mary was reading, seated in her favourite chair, half buried in
the curtains, when it seemed to her that a shadow fell on her book,--a
very familiar accident. It must be Frank, she thought, looking up; but
to her great amazement she saw it was Hillyard standing with a
deprecating, anxious look before the window. She made a spring from her
seat with that one thought which fills the mind of a preoccupied woman
to the exclusion of all personal courtesy and consideration. Something
must have happened to Ben! ‘What is it? for God’s sake, tell me! tell
me!’ she said, rushing out upon him, dropping her book, and holding up
her clasped hands.
‘Nothing, Miss Westbury,’ he said, putting out his hand to take hers,
with the humblest, softest tone,--a tone amazing in its gentleness from
such a big-bearded, unpolished man. ‘I was only waiting to ask you
whether I might come in.’
‘But you are sure there is nothing wrong with--my cousin?’ Mary cried;
and then recollected herself, and was covered with confusion. ‘I beg
your pardon; but seeing you so suddenly it was natural to think of Ben.
I felt as if you must have brought bad news, Mr. Hillyard; don’t think
me very silly--but godmamma may come in any moment from her drive--you
are sure there is nothing the matter with Ben?’
‘Nothing at all. I left him a few hours ago, very well and very busy,’
said Hillyard; and then once more he added in the same soft, subdued,
disquieting tones, ‘Will you let me come in?’
‘Yes, surely,’ said Mary, though she was trembling with the sudden
fright. ‘But it is so strange to see you. Is there any change in your
plans? I thought you were to go to-day.’ And then a wavering of light
and colour came over her face suddenly in spite of herself. This man,
who had no possible business at Renton, surely could not have come
alone!
‘I begged for another day,’ said Hillyard, following her into the room.
‘I daresay I was a fool for my pains. It may be years before I return
again. I asked for another day.’
‘I am sure godmamma will be very glad,’ said Mary, courteously; ‘but
somehow it was very startling to see you, and not Ben.’
And she gave a momentary glance out, as if still she expected the other
to appear. Such a reception to a man who had come on Hillyard’s errand
was like frost to a brook. It bound him, shrank him up within himself.
He stood looking at her with a half-stupefied, wistful gaze, saying
nothing. Ben; always Ben! Was that the only thought in her mind? Was it
possible she could see him thus, and meet his eye, and not see his
errand was altogether apart from Ben?
Mary, however, was so much occupied with her tremor and start, and
curious little flutter of expectation, that it did not occur to her as
strange for some minutes that her present companion said no more. She
took his silence with the composure of perfect indifference. She was not
even curious about him, further than concerned her cousin. Why should
she be curious about Mr. Hillyard? But at last it did strike her that
politeness required that she should speak to him. And, looking up, she
caught the expression of his face and of his attitude all in a moment,
and the ardent light in his eyes. Such a look is not to be mistaken.
With a sudden rallying of all her blood to her heart, and steadying of
her nerves for an utterly unforeseen but unmistakable emergency, Mary
faltered and stopped in her intended speech, waiting for what was to
come.
‘Miss Westbury,’ he said, ‘I might as well tell you at once that I see
what a fool I am. I have my answer before I have spoken. You think no
more of me than if I were Ben Renton’s horse, or his dog, or anything
that belonged to him. I see it quite plain, and I might have seen it
before I went away on Wednesday; but there are things in which a man
cannot be anything but a fool.’
‘I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Hillyard?’ said Mary. ‘I hope I have
not been rude. You are a stranger to us all. It is only through Ben we
have known you; and it was natural when I saw you that I should think of
my cousin. If I have hurt your feelings I am sure I beg your pardon.’
In all this she was talking against time, hoping that Frank or somebody
would come in.
‘No,’ he said; ‘I know I had no right to think of anything else. Of
course I am a stranger. Ben’s dog,--that is about it! I am not sneering,
Miss Westbury. I should not have minded your calling me so when I
came.’
And there he stood, turning his eyes away from her, a big strong man of
the woods as he looked, abashed and disconcerted, like a chidden child.
He gazed out blankly, pulling his beard, with a flush of such quick
mortification and downfall as a boy might feel when he sees his hasty
projects fall to nought, and yet a deeper pang underneath than any boy
could bear. Altogether the man looked so humbled and sore and sad,
silenced in the very moment of effusion, that Mary’s heart was moved.
She was sorry for him, and remorseful for her own indifference. It
seemed almost needful to let him say out his say by way of consolation.
‘We all called you Ben’s friend,’ she said; ‘his best friend, whom we
have heard of for years. Nobody else could have come among us at such a
time. You must not think I mean anything disrespectful or unkind.’
Then there came a great burst of words from him. ‘That was what I
thought,’ he said; ‘that you had been used to hearing of me; that I
might have been to you as an old friend. I too have heard of you for
years. And look here, Miss Westbury; you may scorn me, but I must say
it, I have been in love with you for years. I used to see your letters,
and think there was a woman, if one could ever hope to get within speech
of her! And then I came here. I ought never to have come. My heart was
full of you before, and you may think what it was when I saw you. Don’t
stop me, please; it is better now that it should all come out. You were
kind to me, as you would have been to any stranger; but you did not know
what was in my mind, and I did, and went on fire like a fool. There now,
I see how it is. I won’t grieve you by asking anything. Only give me
your hand and say you forgive a rough fellow for taking it upon him to
love you, before he ever saw you; and behaving himself like an ass when
he did.’
‘Mr. Hillyard, I am so sorry,’ said Mary, with tears in her eyes. ‘I did
not mean,--I never thought,--It is me whom you must forgive,--if you
can.’
‘You!’ said the strange man. ‘God bless you! that’s what I say. You and
forgiving have nothing to do with each other.’ And then he took her hand
between both his, and gazed down upon her with a fond, lingering,
sorrowful look, as if he were getting her face by heart. ‘I don’t know
why I came,’ he said, muttering to himself; ‘I knew it would be exactly
so,--just so. And yet I wanted you to know----’
And then the man seemed suddenly to forget her presence altogether.
Standing there, holding her hand, he might have fallen into a dream so
perfectly still was he. But her hand was lost, buried between both his,
held fast, while she stood perforce by him. And yet there was no force
in it, no rudeness, but only a profound melancholy silence,--a sacrifice
of the hidden sweetness he had been cherishing in his life.
‘Mr. Hillyard,’ she said, softly, ‘you must say good-bye to me and let
me go.’ And then he woke up and came to life.
‘The other hand too,’ he said, ‘for this once. Good-bye, and God bless
you! It’s all I’ll ever have for my love. God bless you! Good-bye!’
He did not even kiss her hands, but held them fast; and then let them
drop, and turned, stooping his tall head through the white curtains, and
went out as he came in. Mary stood looking after him with an
indescribable sensation. Was he really gone, this man who had been
nothing to her barely an hour since, and now was part of her life? or
was it a dream altogether, an invention of her fancy? His heavy foot
ground upon the gravel for two or three steps while she stood in her
amazement looking after him; and then he stopped, and turned round, and
came back. But he did not attempt to come in. She on the one side of the
white curtains, and he on the other; stood for another moment and looked
at each other, and then he cleared his throat, which was husky. ‘I am
not coming back,’ he said, ‘I have just one word to say. If there should
ever be a time when you might think,--not of me, I don’t mean of me,
for I’m a stranger as you say,--but that a man’s love and support might
be of use to you,--they say women feel that sometimes, if things don’t
go altogether as they wish,--then let me but know, hold up only your
little finger, Mary,--there! I’ve said it for once,--and I’ll come if it
were from the ends of the earth!’
And then, without another word or look, he went away.
Was this the excitement she had been wishing for, and blaming herself
for wishing? Mary ran up to her room in terror of meeting any one, with
her heart beating wildly in her breast. Here was an incident indeed, to
diversify a dull afternoon, a dull life with! She was so touched and
excited, and moved by compassion and surprise and regret, that the
effort upon her was not much less than if Hillyard’s extraordinary suit
had been that of a man to whom her heart could have responded. She sat
down and hid her face in her hands, and got rid of some of her
excitement in tears, and went over the strange scene. How strange a
scene! For all these seven years,--her best and brightest,--Mary had
never heard the voice of love. Now and then a tone of that admiration
and interest which might have come to love had just caught her ear from
the outside world, but she had been drawn back into her retirement and
the deeper tone had never followed. And now, all at once, here was
passion of such a kind as seldom startles a woman’s ears in these days.
An utter stranger an hour ago, and now,--happen what might, should she
never see the man again,--a bit of her life! Mary’s head swam, and the
world went round with her. ‘They say women feel that sometimes, if
things don’t go altogether as they wish.’ What did he mean? Had he read
in her heart more than others could? Was she one to fall into a longing
for some love and support, some awakening and current of activity in her
life, after all youthful dreams were gone? The suggestion moved Mary
with a humbling sense of her own weariness and languor, and senseless
disappointment, and longing for she knew not what. She was not one of
those women to whom somebody’s love is indispensable,--if not one, then
another. With a cheek burning with shame, and eyes hot with tears, she
rose up and went down again to her duties, such as they were.
Henceforward she was determined she should suffice to herself. This,
after the first shock of emotion, was all the effect poor Hillyard’s
sacrifice upon her altar had on Mary. That he should have seen that all
was not going altogether as she wished! After all, what better had most
women to do with their lives, than to tend a real or imaginary invalid,
to order dinners, to read newspapers, to go out every afternoon for a
drive? And she had perfect health, and a beautiful country, and plenty
of books, and all the poor people in Renton parish, to occupy her. To
think with all that, there might come a time when she would want a
man’s,--any man’s,--love and comfort! The counter-proposition, that a
man should some time in his life long to have a woman by him, does in no
way shock the delicacy of the stronger creature. But what woman is there
who would not rather die than acknowledge personally for herself that a
man is necessary to the comfort of her existence? In the abstract, it is
a different matter. Poor Hillyard! the immediate result of his
pilgrimage of love, and hopeless declaration, was to move Mary Westbury,
in a wild flame of indignation at her own unwomanliness, to the task of
contenting herself, energetically and of set purposes, with all the
monotonies of her life.
CHAPTER XVI.
WHAT IT ALL MEANT TO LAURIE.
When Laurie Renton arrived in town, he went with the story of his
family’s fortune and his own, as was natural, to the padrona, who had
now a double interest in the tale. She had already heard of it in a
letter from Alice; but such a narrative is naturally more full and
satisfactory by word of mouth.
It was in the same house, up the same stairs, in the same studio, that
Laurie sought his friend. Everything was seven years older, and the hair
growing thin on the top of Laurie’s head, and Alice the mother of
children; but neither Mrs. Severn nor her studio was much changed. She
had attained, when we saw her first, to that table-land which lies in
the centre of an innocent and healthful life, and on which Time, if he
does not stand still, moves with such equal and steady steps, that it is
difficult to trace his progress; and as many more years were probably
before her ere there would appear in the padrona any such marked signs
of the passage of years as those which had already left their stamp on
Laurie in his youth. There might be a few white threads among her hair,
at least she said there were; but for all that any one could have told,
she might have been wrapped in some enchanted sleep for all those years,
instead of working, and thinking, and sorrowing, and taking such simple
pleasures as came to her. The pleasures had been less and the sorrows
greater since Alice left her; but now Edie had grown, as everybody said,
a great girl, and the mother’s heart was stirring into life in her
development, to prepare for herself another crisis and sacrifice. It was
years now since Laurie had returned from his first self-banishment to
Italy. He had come back and he had been away again from time to time,
but he had always returned here,--‘home’ as he liked to call it,--and
for a long period there had been nothing in the character of his
feelings which made it painful to him to come. How this was he could not
tell. When he went away on that forlorn journey to Rome he had felt as
if he never could look again upon the woman whom he loved with all his
heart, but who, as nature herself indicated, could never be more to him
than a friend. She could not be his,--never,--though everything in
heaven and earth were to plead for him,--and the only thing for him to
do was to rush away from her, and bury himself and his unhappy love out
of sight for ever. These had been his feelings when he went away;--but,
somehow, they did not last. Slowly, by degrees, he and his heart came
back to her without any anguish or despair in them. When he returned,
and went half-tremblingly to see if he could bear the sight of her,
Laurie found, somewhat to his astonishment, that the sight, instead of
driving him wild with disappointed affection, soothed and consoled and
softened him as nothing else could do. Perhaps, had it been possible
that she should become any other man’s wife the sensation would have
been different; but there had long ago ceased to be any strong wish on
the matter in Laurie’s mind. The old custom of hanging about her house
came back upon him. He would come and talk to her of all his own
concerns, and of a great many of hers, by the hour together; and not of
realities only, but of fancies,--everything that came into his head.
There was the strangest transposition of ordinary rules in their
intercourse. While he lounged about, and talked and poured out all his
mind, she would be working on steadily, pausing to note her
effects,--now and then calling him into counsel on some knotty point,
responding to his thoughts, understanding him even when he but
half-uttered his meaning, giving him a certain proof of perfect sympathy
and friendship, more soft and tender than ordinary friendship,--and yet
never stopping in her work. Had they been of the same age, such a thing
of course could not have been possible; but on the vantage-ground of a
dozen additional years the woman stood calm and steadfast, and the man
too, his boyish fit of passion over, was calm. No doubt there was a
whisper at one time in the artists’ quarter that Mrs. Severn was going
to make a fool of herself and marry a man young enough to be her son.
But as time disproved that matter, the world, which after all is not
such a stupid world, but acknowledges, after due probation, the
privileges that can be safely accorded to the blameless, held its
tongue,--or only jeered innocently by times at the friendship. ‘Such
things are impracticable generally, and dangerous, you know, and all
that. It is all very well to talk of friendship; but one knows it always
falls into love on one side or the other. I really do believe an
exception ought to be made for the padrona and Laurie Renton,’ was what
was said in Fitzroy Square. And as the two took matters with perfect
composure, and never looked as if they supposed either the world or the
Square to have anything to do with it, the unusual bond between them
soon came to be considered a matter of course. It was not such a bond
that the man was always at the woman’s apron-strings. He went away,
sometimes for months together, and travelled about in that
half-professional, half-dilettante way that suited Laurie; and then he
wrote to her, and next after Alice’s, Laurie’s letters were looked for
in Mrs. Severn’s house. And I will not say that there was not now and
then just a word in them which the padrona passed over when she read
these epistles to the boys, and which made her half smile, half sigh
with a curious mingled sense of regret, and amusement, and pleasure. He
would say, when he was describing something to her, ‘If you were but
here, padrona mia, I should want no more.’ Foolish fellow! as if she
ever could be with him, as if it would not be the height of folly and
weakness, and overturn of the whole rational world and all the modesties
of nature. But yet, so long as it evaporated in a harmless sigh like
this, it hurt no one,--not Laurie, who perhaps loved his wanderings all
the better for that soft want in them; and not her, as she doubled down
the page at that point with a half-laugh. And when he came home the
first place he went to was the Square. To be sure, such a friendship put
all thoughts of marrying out of Laurie’s head, as Mrs. Suffolk, who
thought everybody should marry, sometimes deplored. ‘Unless you send him
away, padrona, he will always be just as he is. He will never think of
any other kind of life,’ she would say to her friend. ‘My dear, he has
no money to marry on,’ the padrona would say,--and so Laurie’s heart had
always found a home and every kind of support and consolation and
sympathy in Fitzroy Square.
And, to tell the truth, the money had been rather a difficult point with
him now and then. To live upon two hundred a-year when you have been
brought up a Renton of Renton, is a matter which requires a great deal
of consideration. But Laurie, fortunately for himself, had no expensive
tastes, and he painted some pictures, and, what was more remarkable,
sold some; and even found himself on the line at the Academy, thus
carrying out his highest dreams. But it did not give him the
gratification, nor cause the stir he had once anticipated. It was a
small picture, a little bit of Italian air and sunshine, and Slasher
gave it a little paragraph all to itself in the ‘Sword;’ but the people
whom he had once pictured to himself finding out his name in the
catalogue, and calling heaven and earth to witness that Laurie Renton
had done something at last, had by this time forgotten all about Laurie
Renton, or he had forgotten them, which came to the same thing. And
candidly in his soul, Laurie allowed, that had not old Welby been on the
hanging committee, probably it never would have reached ‘the line;’ and
had not Slasher been a friend of his, would never have been noticed in
the ‘Sword.’ But it sold for a hundred pounds, which was always an
advantage. The picture was called ‘Feliciello, on Tiberio,’ and was the
picture of a dark-faced Capriote guide, on one of the highest points of
his island, pointing out to a fair English girl the points in the
wonderful landscape round. It was Edie Severn, who had never been there,
with her golden hair streaming round her, who was the English girl. But
handsome Feliciello had been studied on the spot. And Mr. Rich of
Richmont,--always a great patron of the fine arts,--gave Laurie a
hundred pounds for it, and thought it one of his greatest bargains.
‘This picture has a story,’ he would say to his guests; ‘it was painted
by a gentleman, the son of one of my neighbours in the country, a man
who had never been brought up to make his living by art. It is quite a
romance; but I hear matters are settled, and that he has come into his
share of the money, and will paint no more, and I think I was very lucky
to secure this. My daughter, Lady Horsman, will tell you all about it.’
‘About the picture painted by a gentleman?’ Nelly would say, on being
questioned. ‘Most painters that I know are gentlemen. Papa means to
infer that he is not much of a painter, I suppose.’ For Lady Horsman was
not fond of the Rentons, and had never cared to cultivate their society.
‘If you get my lady on painters she’ll talk till midnight,’ Sir George
said out of his moustache. He did not know the difference between a
sign-post and a Titian, and thought the one quite as pretty as the
other; but he was the head of one of the oldest families in Christendom,
and Master of the Hounds in his county, and a great many other
grandeurs; and, so far as I know, Nelly had the full value for her fifty
thousand pounds.
This, however, is a digression a long way out of Fitzroy Square. Laurie
went to the padrona with his story, and found her still in a state of
excitement over Alice’s letter,--the second since the event,--with
something in it about Dovecote, which was the last new possibility. She
had just been taken to see it, and her letter was full of an
enthusiastic description of its beauties. ‘Think, mamma, of a lovely
little house close to Renton, with a lawn sloping to the river, and a
cow, and a pony-carriage, and I don’t know what,’ the young wife wrote
in her delight. ‘And Frank thinks he may afford himself a hunter, and
there is the sweetest honeysuckle room for Edie and you!’ The padrona,
being mother to the being upon whom this glorious prospect was opening,
was more interested at first in the Dovecote than in anything Laurie had
to say.
‘To think one has only to take the train and be with her in an
hour,--after being so far away for,--a lifetime!’ the padrona said, with
tears in her eyes.
‘Only six years,’ said Laurie; ‘but never mind; after Alice has had her
turn perhaps you will think of me.’
‘When you know I always think of you!’ said Mrs. Severn, ‘it becomes you
to be _exigeant_, Laurie! and you are not going to have a cow, and a
pony-carriage, and everything that is most delightful on the face of the
earth. Think of Alice having a cow! You are so terribly _blasé_, it does
not seem to strike you. And Edie is out, the child, so that there is no
one to be glad but me.’
‘It does not strike me at all,’ said Laurie. ‘If she had a dozen cows, I
think I could bear it. But some day I must take you to see Dovecote,
padrona, since you like it so much.’
‘I wish they had had Feliciello,’ said Mrs. Severn, ‘if one had known
you were all to be so well off,--it would have pleased Frank.’
‘Frank will like some of those vile chromos just as well,’ said Laurie.
‘I’ll buy him a few, I think. And I mean to bring Ben to see you
to-night; then you will know us all. Not that there will be any intense
gratification in that; but you’ll like Ben. He is made of different
stuff from the rest of us. There is more in him. He is not so cheeky as
Frank; and he is another sort of fellow, to be sure, from a
good-for-nothing like me.’
‘Laurie, there is something the matter,’ said the padrona, turning upon
him with her palette in her hand. She knew all his tones like the notes
in music, and heard the far-off quiver of one of his fits of despondency
already vibrating in the quiet. ‘Is not this as good for you as for the
rest?’
‘Oh, yes, quite as good,’ he said abruptly, with his eyes on her work.
‘You are putting too much yellow in that light.’
‘Am I? but that is not the question. Laurie, never mind the light, but
tell me what is wrong.’
‘I must mind the light,’ he said. ‘If I can’t put you right when you get
into a mess, what is the good of me? It’s all wrong and it’s all right,
padrona mia, and I don’t know that it matters much one way or another;
but I don’t quite like your shadows. With that tone of light they should
have more blue in them,’ he went on, gazing at the picture and shading
his eyes with his hand.
‘But it will make a great difference in your life,’ said Mrs. Severn,
putting down her tools and drawing a chair near to where he sat.
‘That is just it,’ he said; ‘it will make no difference to speak of. It
is a great thing for Ben; and for Frank, too, it will be everything. You
can see that clearly. But what difference will it make to me? More money
to spend, perhaps, and better rooms to live in; but no sort of expansion
or widening-out of life. That’s not possible, you know. It was put a
stop to once, and no change that I know of can effect it now.’
‘You cannot mean to reproach me, Laurie?’ said the padrona.
‘No,’ he said, still fixedly gazing at the picture; ‘I don’t reproach
you. Being you, perhaps you could have done nothing else. I am not
complaining of anybody; but this is how it is,--you see it for
yourself.’
‘Laurie, listen to me,’ she said, with eagerness, laying her hand on his
arm. ‘I have wanted to speak to you for long, and never liked to begin
the subject. You must make an effort to break this spell. I did not say
a word as long as you were poor,--for what could you do?--and I thought
I was always some consolation to you; but now that you have money
enough, and can make a new beginning,--Laurie, do you know, I think it
would be better for you to go away from me.’
‘What, go away again?’ he said, with a half-smile, ‘as I did when I went
to Rome? No, there is no such occasion now.’
‘Of course there is no such occasion now,--that dream has passed away,
as all dreams do,--but, Laurie, for that very reason I speak. Even what
you were so foolish as to wish then you don’t wish now.’
She made a momentary pause, but he gave no answer. It was quite true. He
was not in love with her any longer,--though she was the creature
dearest to him in the world. Nor did he any longer want to appropriate
or bind her closer to himself. He would not have admitted this change in
words, but it was true.
‘I don’t think in the least that you have ceased to care for me,’ she
continued; ‘but it is different,--it is not in that way. And you are
getting not to care much what happens. We talk over it, and come to our
conclusions; and after that, good and evil are much the same to you.
That is why I think you should go away,--not to Italy, as you did
before, but out of this neighbourhood, to some place like the one you
used to live in, and go back into the world.’
‘Why, I wonder?’ said Laurie. ‘The world and I had never much to say to
each other. And at least I have some comfort in my life here.’
‘Too much, a great deal,’ said the padrona, with a smile. ‘You know you
can always come to me, whether it is a pin that pricks, or a storm that
overtakes you. I am fond of you; and you can always reckon on my
sympathy.’
‘Always!’ said Laurie, stooping to kiss the hand she had laid on his
arm.
‘Yes; but that is not good for you,’ said Mrs. Severn, hastily
withdrawing her hand. ‘Now is the moment to preach you Helen Suffolk’s
little sermon. She says you will never marry so long as you are
constantly here.’
‘Marry!’ said Laurie, looking at her, and then turning his head away
with a half-contemptuous impatience.
‘Well, marry. Why should not I say so? If I have stood in your way,
unwillingly, unfortunately, once, why should that shut up all your life?
Laurie, if I were to ask you to reconsider all this, and make a
difference,--for my sake?’
‘I could not marry even for your sake,’ he said, turning to her with a
sudden laugh; ‘though there is no other inducement I would do so much
for. Tell me something else to do to show my devotion, and let
everything go on as it was before.’
‘Not as it was before,’ said Mrs. Severn. ‘This atmosphere might be good
enough for you when you were poor. At least, it did you no harm; but now
I want you to go back into the world.’
‘You want me to be wretched, I think,’ said Laurie. ‘I have got used to
this atmosphere, as you call it; and it suits me. But I have forgotten
all about the world. What have I done that I should be sent back among
people who have forgotten me, to mix myself up with things in which I
take no interest? Padrona, in this you do not show your usual wisdom.
Let us return to the question of the light.’
‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘It is because I am anxious about you that I speak.
This is such a point in your life; a new beginning,--anything you please
to make it,--and you feel yourself how hard it is to think that it will
make no difference. Laurie, what I want you to do is to break this
thread of association, and turn your back upon the past.’
He turned and looked at her as she spoke, and their eyes met;--hers
earnest and steady; his with a smile, which was full of tenderness, and
a kind of playful melancholy dawning in them. ‘But that is not what I
want you to do,’ he said, the smile growing as he met her gaze. She
turned away with a little impatient exclamation. It was not the kind of
reply she had looked for.
‘You are provoking, Laurie,’ she said. ‘You have regained the ground you
stood on seven years ago, and why should you refuse to recall the
circumstances too?’
‘And make the seven years as if they had never been?’
‘I think you might, in a great measure,’ said the padrona, with a little
flush on her cheek, ‘though you laugh. Nothing has happened in those
seven years. Yes, I grant you, you have felt some things as you never
did before, and learned a great many things. But nothing has happened,
Laurie. Nothing has occurred either to tie up your freedom in any way,
or to leave rankling recollections in your mind. There has been no fact
which could fetter you. Indeed,--for all that has come and gone,--your
life might be safer to begin anew than that of any man I know.’
‘Well, that is hard!’ said Laurie, with more energy than he had yet
shown; ‘the present is not much, the future I take no particular
interest in, and you ask me to agree that there is nothing in the past!
What has been the good of me altogether, then? Nobody will say that it
has been worth a man’s while to live in order to produce ‘Feliciello.’
Padrona, this is very poor consolation,--the poorest I ever knew you to
give.’
‘I did not mean it so, Laurie.’
‘No, you did not mean it,’ he said; ‘you did not think that the
past,--such as it is,--is all I have. Of course I might now go back to
Kensington Gore, as you tell me, or somewhere else; and go to a few
parties next season, perhaps. Fine fate! Didn’t I tell you how I used
to anticipate people finding my name in the Academy catalogue, and
standing and staring at Laurie Renton’s picture? and now I can’t, for
the life of me, remember who the people were I so thought of! That’s
encouraging for a return to old ways. Let’s say no more about it,’ said
Laurie, getting up and following his friend to her easel. ‘After all,
the boys and Edie shall have some pleasure out of the money, and then it
will not be quite lost.’
‘The boys and Edie must not get into the way of looking to you for
pleasure,’ said the padrona, quickly; ‘neither for you nor them would
that be good.’
‘There it is now!’ cried Laurie, ‘proof upon proof how little I am the
better for what has happened. You cannot work for ever, padrona; but if
I had all the gold-mines that ever were dreamt of you would not take
anything from me; and what is the good of my having it, I should like to
know?’
‘No, I would not take anything from you,’ she said, with a momentary
smile; but it was a suggestion that made her tremble in her fortitude
whenever it was made. ‘Laurie,’ she said, with a little gasp, turning to
him for sympathy, ‘when I cannot work I hope I shall die.’
‘But one cannot die when one pleases, that is the worst of it,’ said
Laurie. ‘I hope you will, padrona mia,--and I too,--and then, perhaps,
one might have a better chance for a new life.’
This was not cheerful talk for a new beginning; but the amusing thing
about Laurie, and, indeed, about the pair thus strangely united, was,
that after all this had been uttered and done with they both became
quite cheerful; and, a quarter of an hour afterwards, were planning an
expedition to Dovecote, taking Renton by the way, with all that
enjoyment of the idea of a country excursion which is so strong in the
laborious dweller in towns. The vision of gliding rivers and autumnal
trees swept over Mrs. Severn’s mind like a refreshing wind, carrying
away all the vapours. For a time, she thought no more either of that
twilight life which Laurie had chosen for himself, and of which she felt
herself partly the cause, nor of her own anxieties, but went on
painting, reducing the yellow tone in her light, and modifying her
shadows, and full of cheerful discussion of the day and the way of
going. To the moment its work or its thought; and to the next, why,
another thought, another piece of work; and so forth, as pleases God.
This blessing of temperament,--special gift of heaven to its
beloved,--belonged more or less to both. The artist-woman had it in its
perfection, which was the reason why she had got through so much hard
labour and so many struggles with eye undimmed and spirit unbroken; and
Laurie had it in a degree which had done much to lead to the
unsatisfactoriness and imperfection of his life, which is a strange
enough paradox, and yet true. For in the padrona, this power of
dismissing care and living in the hour was accompanied, as it often is,
by the strongest vitality and energy of constitution, by a natural
delight and pleasure in exertion, and by the perpetual, never absent
spur of necessity. Whereas in Laurie’s case it was associated with the
meditative, contemplative soul; the mind that is more prone to thinking
than to doing; a slower amount of life in the veins, and an existence
disengaged from necessities and responsibilities. Temperament had more
to do with the matter than had that early blunder in his life for which
the padrona never forgave herself. ‘If I had not stood in his way he
would have made a life for himself, like other men,’ she would say to
herself, with an ache in her heart, yet with that touch of tender
gratitude to the man who had it in him to pour himself out like a
libation on her path, which a woman cannot but feel, however undesired
the sacrifice may be. I am afraid to acknowledge it, but the truth is
that such a libation is very grateful to a woman. There is in it the
most exquisite, tragical, heart-rending pleasure. Not that one would not
regret it with all one’s heart and soul, and do everything that one
could, like Lancelot, to turn aside the rising passion. But even to
Lancelot was not that self-offering of the lily-maid, though he would
have given his life to prevent it, an exquisite sweetness and
sorrowfulness, a combination of the deepest pain and gratification of
which the soul is capable? Such an act raises the doer of it,--be it man
or woman,--out of the level of ordinary humanity, and envelopes the
receiver of the offering in the same maze of tenderest, most melancholy
glory. Something of this feeling the padrona had for her Laurie, who had
given her his life like a flower, without price or hope of price in this
world. And yet, I think, temperament was at the bottom of it, and the
sacrifice, and the sweetness of it, and all the subdued tones of his
existence which had followed, were more to him than the brighter
daylight colours of ordinary existence, even though he might feel the
absence of those fuller tones now and then, once in a way.
But to some extent Laurie acted upon Mrs. Severn’s advice. As luck would
have it, his old rooms at Kensington Gore, having passed through many
hands in the interval, proved to be vacant about this time. And Laurie
secured them, and fitted up all his old fittings, his carved brackets
and velvet hangings, and all the contrivances that had been so pleasant
to him; and had his bow-window once more full of flowers, and looked out
once more upon the gay park and the stream of carriages as from an
opera-box. But the ladies who looked up at his window once had passed
away and given place to others, who knew not Laurie, or had forgotten
him, and asked each other who was the man who stared so from that
window? And from Kensington Gore to Fitzroy Square is a very long walk
to be taken every day. And though, to be sure, there are plenty of
studios about Kensington, into which an amateur may drop, yet these are
grand studios, flanked by drawing-rooms, with ladies to be called upon,
and the flavour of society about. It is true that Suffolk lives in that
refined neighbourhood now, having made very rapid progress since the
days when Mr. Rich bought ‘The Angles,’ and Laurie put the studio in
order for the reception of the patron, and got cobwebs on his coat.
‘They were very nice, those old days, after all!’ Mrs. Suffolk says,
when they talk it over; but they have now a spruce man-servant,--more
spruce, though not so well instructed as old Forrester, Mr. Welby’s
man,--to move a picture that has to be moved, and open the door to the
patrons and patronesses. And Laurie for one, to whom a man-servant is
not the badge of grandeur and success which it is to Mr. Suffolk, rather
preferred, I fear, the state of things in the old days, when they all
clustered about Fitzroy Square.
But the padrona has not removed from No. 375, though she has been
tempted and plagued to do so on all sides. Frank, who would prefer to
have a mother-in-law (since such a thing he must have) in a habitable
part of the town, is very energetic as to the advantage it will be to
Edie when she grows up. And Alice recommends it with wistful eyes, as so
much nicer for the air, not liking to say a word against the home of her
youth. Mrs. Severn thinks it would be unkind to Mr. Welby to withdraw
from him; and it would cost a great deal of money; and then there would
be new carpets wanted for new rooms, and quantities of things; and, last
of all, would not it be a still greater clog upon Laurie and hindrance
to him, in the possibility of his heart disengaging itself from all the
pleasant bonds of the past? I think, however, that the thing which will
finally resolve the point will be Frank’s success in the competition for
a Foreign Office clerkship, for which he is going in. None of his people
have any doubt of his success; and, in that case, the boy may be trusted
to make his mother’s life a burden to her so long as she remains in
Fitzroy Square. But what is to be done with Mr. Welby, and Forrester, to
whom it would now be impossible to live out of sight of Edie and the
boys, and withdraw themselves from the gradually increasing authority of
the padrona, I don’t know.
Laurie’s sketch of the ‘Three Fairy Princes’ turned up out of a
packing-box when he took back his belongings to Kensington Gore; and he
hung it in the placer of honour over his mantelpiece. There anybody may
see young Frank pushing forth towards the Indian towers and minarets,
with a coronet hanging in a haze over the distant prospect; and Laurie
himself, with his goods and chattels hung about him, and his lay-figure
gazing blank over his shoulders, trudging towards the pepper-boxes of
the National Gallery; and Ben scaling the rocks, like Mr. Longfellow’s
Alpine hero, with the nymph on the summit beckoning him,--not to eternal
snows and supernatural excellence, but to Renton and the House of
Commons. Frank has not got the coronet; nor Laurie, except in the very
mildest accidental way, the glories of the Academy. But who is to tell
what is waiting for Ben? At least, there is only another chapter to do
it in, and the story is all but told.
CHAPTER XVII.
CONCLUSION.
The day of Hillyard’s visit was full of trial and excitement to Mary. To
live in a household where everything is talked of freely, with the
consciousness of having various matters of the deepest interest entirely
to yourself, is not an agreeable position in any case; and to feel
yourself thrilling through every vein with the concussion of a recent
shock, while yet you are compelled to put on the most commonplace
composure, is more trying still. Mary, however, had been used to it for
some time back, if that was any alleviation. She only had known, or
rather suspected, the ancient connexion between Ben Renton and the
beautiful Millicent. She alone had had the excitement of watching their
meeting after so long an interval. She only had understood the passage
of arms between the two; and she had witnessed their parting, which to
her was of ten-fold more interest than even the great interest which the
family had in common. And now, her spectatorship in Ben’s romance being
over, here had suddenly sprung up a romance of her own, so completely
beyond all expectation that even now she could scarcely believe it had
been real. Mary could not have betrayed Ben’s secret to any one; but had
her mother been at hand, or even had her godmother been less
pre-occupied, I doubt whether she could have kept poor Hillyard’s to
herself. For it was her own, and in the excitement of the moment she
might not have remembered that it was the man’s also, and a humiliation
to him. But, as it was, poor Mary had not the opportunity of relieving
her mind. Mrs. Westbury was away, and Alice took her share in nursing
Mrs. Renton, entering into it with a certain enjoyment of the task.
There were even moments when she thought Mary unsympathetic, and was
sorry for ‘poor grandmamma,’ bringing with her a fresh interest in the
ailments and the alleviations, such as was scarcely possible to the
nurse who had been going through it all for seven years. Mary
consequently at this extraordinary moment of her existence had lost all
her habitual quiet, and all those possibilities of communication which
had ever been open to her. She herself and her personal being was
floated away, as it were, on the current of ‘the Frank Rentons.’ They
had come into the house like an inundation, and left no room for
anything but their own cheerful beginning of life,--their arrangements,
their new house, their children, what they were going to do. The two
women who had lived there so long in the silence were carried away by
the vigorous young tide; and Mary, hiding her individual concerns in her
own mind, lived for the rest of that evening a strange, abstracted,
feverish sort of existence, like a creature in a dream, hearing the
cheerful voices round her, and the lights shining, and figures flitting
about, but only awaking to take any part in it when she was called upon
energetically to come out of her abstraction. The position altogether
was so strange that she kept asking herself which scene was real and
which was a dream;--either this was the reality,--this evening picture,
with Frank talking to his mother on the sofa, and Alice working in the
golden circle of the lamplight, and the urn bubbling, and gleams of
reflexion shining from the tea-table in the corner; or else the other
scene, with Hillyard standing sunburnt, and bearded, and impassioned,
telling her he had loved before he even saw her,--saying, if some time,
any time she should want a man’s love and support---- One thing was
certain, they could not both be real; she had been dreaming them,--or
else she was dreaming now.
Nor yet was Mary’s excitement over for the night. When the evening post
came in, a letter was brought to her, which at the first glance she saw
was in Ben’s handwriting. Well! there was nothing surprising in that. Of
course Ben would write, though she had not expected it so soon. But the
contents of the note were such as to raise to a climax her sense of
being in some feverish dream. This is what Ben said:--
‘DEAR MARY,--I want to speak half-a-dozen words to you before I go.
I have heard something to-day which has taken me very much by
surprise, and I cannot leave England without seeing you. But I
don’t want to disturb my mother with a hurried visit and another
parting. If you will be at the beech-tree on the river-walk
to-morrow morning at eight, I will come down by the first train and
meet you there. Don’t refuse me. It is of great importance. In
haste,
‘Yours, B. R.’
Mary’s head went round and round as she sat,--hearing Frank’s voice
talking all the while, and Alice pouring out the tea,--and read this
note. The question changed now, and seemed to be,--they or Ben; which
was the phantom? But the paper and the writing were very real,--so real
that she could see it had been written in excitement, and was blurred,
and betokened a scratching and uncomfortable pen, which is a thing that
no imagination would be likely to invent. When she had put the
extraordinary note away in her pocket,--fortunately she had not said out
loud, ‘Here is a letter from Ben,’ as on any other day she would have
done,--Mary’s mind went hopelessly into abstraction. She gave up the
tea-making to Alice gratefully and without an effort, though in general
she did not like her prerogatives invaded. She never uttered a word to
help on the conversation. She had to be recalled as from a distance,
when anybody spoke to her. Things had come to such a pitch that she
seemed to lose her individual consciousness altogether. To have violent
love made her one day by a man whom she scarcely knew, and to meet her
cousin Ben clandestinely the next morning by the great beech, to talk
over something of importance, which concerned only her and him, and
nobody else in the family,--the earth seemed to be going off its pivot
altogether to Mary. She felt that now nothing would surprise her. If
Mrs. Renton had suddenly proposed to her to walk to town, or Frank that
she should swim across the river, it would have seemed to her perfectly
natural. But to meet Ben by stealth at the great beech at eight o’clock!
Could she have mistaken the words? For one moment a sort of gleam of
eldritch fear came across her, and a reminiscence of the amazing manner
in which the familiar forms of the nursery arranged themselves in the
mind of little Alice in Wonderland in the story. Could it be that Ben
was to start on his long journey to-morrow by the first train, and could
the great beech be the name of the ship? Mary was so completely thrown
off her balance, that this idea actually occurred to her. And then she
felt that they must all have remarked that she had got a letter, and had
thrust it stealthily into her pocket. Altogether, the evening swam over
her somehow, she could not tell how. And then there was the stir of
Davison’s entrance, and Mrs. Renton’s going to bed. And then Frank
disappeared to smoke his cigar, and Alice, finding her companion
uncommunicative, sat down at the piano, and began to play softly to
herself, as she had been wont in the old days at home; and silence,
broken only by sounds which helped to increase all the mists, and made
her feel a safety and comfort in the retirement of her thoughts, fell
upon the quiet house.
Next morning Mary was awake and up before any one was stirring. She did
not herself think that she had slept all the night; but she was still
young enough to consider an hour or two’s wakefulness a great matter.
And she was as much afraid of Ben’s visit being found out, as if he had
been the most illegitimate of visitors. She was out soon after six,
while the grass was still quite wet with dew, and went wandering up and
down the river-walk like a ghost, under the cloistered shade of those
great trees which, as yet, let no sunshine through. There was something
in the air at that early hour which told that summer was waning, and
Mary was chilly with nervousness, which had all the effect of cold. She
went all the way down to the river-side, and basked in the sunshine
which lay full on the open bit of green bank, by way of overcoming the
shivering which had seized her. The world was so still, the birds so
noisy,--which rather heightens than impairs the stillness,--the paths so
utterly vacant and suggestive, that fancy continually caught glimpses of
something disappearing behind the trees. Now it would seem a gliding
dream-figure, now the last sweep of a robe just getting out of sight.
The ghostliness of the early morning is different, but not less
profound, than that of the night; and at six o’clock the Renton woods
were as mysterious, as dim under the great shadows of the trees, as any
enchanted wood. The sunshine went all round them, drying up the dew on
the open bank, and chasing the mists and chills of night; but the
river-walk was all brown and grey, and full of clear, mystical distances
and windings, broken by upright shafts of trees. Any one might have
appeared suddenly at such an hour in such a place. People out of books,
people out of one’s own straining fancy, people from the other world.
And though it was Ben, and no other, for whom Mary Westbury was waiting,
yet her imagination, over-excited, was ready to see anything. And she
was alarmed by every waving leaf or bough that swayed in the morning
air. If anybody should discover this tryst! If it should be known that
Ben had come in this sweet inconceivable sort of way to see her! Had he
been a tabooed lover, whose discovery would have involved all sorts of
perils, Mary could not have been more afraid.
It was half-past seven before he came,--as indeed she might have
known,--since that was the earliest moment at which any one could come
by the first train. She could see him coming for a long way, making his
way among the trees. He had not come in by any gate, but through some
illegitimate byway known to the Renton boys and the poachers, so lawless
were all the accessories of this extraordinary stealthy meeting. He came
along rapidly, making himself audible by, now and then, the sound of the
gravel sent flying by his foot, or the crackle of a fallen branch on the
path. And then he came in sight, walking very quickly, with a look of
abstraction, wrapped in his own thoughts. He was close upon the bank
before he caught sight of Mary, whose grey gown was easily lost sight of
among the branches,--then he quickened his pace, and came forward
eagerly.
‘You here,’ he said, ‘Mary? I thought I should be too early for you,’
and held out both his hands for her.
‘I was so much surprised,--so anxious to know what it was. I have been
out for nearly an hour, I think,’ said Mary. ‘I could not sleep.’
‘Did I startle you?’ said Ben. ‘Not half so much, I am sure, as I was
startled myself. But if I have made you uneasy I will never forgive
myself,’ he went on, looking closely into her face.
What could have made that difference in his look? He had always been
kind,--certainly he had always been kind,--but he had never looked at
her before in that wistful, anxious way. He had been protecting,
superior, affectionate; but such was not his expression now.
‘Oh, it does not matter!’ said Mary; ‘but, of course, since it is
something important enough to bring you from town like this,--and at
this hour---- Tell me, please, and put me out of pain.’
What he did was to draw her arm closely through his own. ‘Come this
way,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to be seen or interrupted. There is a
corner down here where we shall be quite safe. It was very good of you,
Mary, to come.’
‘Oh, Ben,’ she cried, ‘don’t talk so, you frighten me! You never were so
gentle, so soft to me before. Tell me what it is. It must be something
terrible to make you look like this. What is wrong?’
‘I don’t know if there is anything wrong,’ he said. ‘It depends upon
your feelings altogether, Mary; only I never had thought of,--anything
of the kind,--never! It came upon me like a thunder-clap. To be sure. I
might have known. You could not but be as sweet and as pleasant in the
eyes of others as you were in mine----’
‘Ben, don’t talk riddles, I entreat of you,’ said Mary. ‘I cannot make
this out to-day. A shadow would frighten me to-day. I have had too much
to bear,--too much,--‘
‘Sit down here,’ he said, tenderly; ‘you must not be frightened. There
is nothing to hurt you. It is only me that it can hurt. Mary, Hillyard
came to me yesterday, and said,--I suppose by this time you must know
what he said?’
‘Yes,’ she answered, first with a violent blush, and then growing
suddenly hot.
‘Of course, I ought to have known it,’ said Ben. ‘I used to read him
your letters, like an ass, never thinking. I was furious yesterday; I
thought it presumption and insolence. But, of course, that was nonsense.
The man is as good as I am. The fact is, I suppose I thought that no
other man but myself had any right to think of you.’
‘Ben!’ Mary cried, trembling with a sudden passion, ‘you never thought
of me! How can you say so? or what is it you would have me understand? I
feel as if you were mocking me,--and yet you would not come all this
way, surely, to mock me!’
‘Then, I did not think at all,’ he went on, without any direct answer.
‘I felt that no man had any right,--and I was a fool for thinking so.
Mary, the fact is, it ought to be you and I.’
‘What ought to be you and I?’ she faltered, lost in confusion and
amazement.
He was standing before her, not lover-like, but absorbed, pressing his
subject, and paying no special regard to her. ‘It ought to be you and I
to build up the old house. No. I cannot think any man has a right to
come in and interfere. But only just there is this one thing to be said.
Whatever is for your happiness, Mary, I will carry out with all my
might. If you should set your heart on one thing or another, it shall be
done; but still that does not affect the question,--it ought to be you
and me.’
‘For what?’ she asked again.
‘For what? Oh, for more than I can tell,’ said Ben; ‘to build up this
old house, as I told you,--to get through life. I must always have felt
it, though I did not know. And here is this fellow come in with his wild
backwoods way, and thinks he can win you off-hand. I don’t say a word if
it is for your happiness; but I know it should be you and me.’
And then there was a pause, and Ben walked up and down the little vacant
space in front of the seat he had placed her in, with his eyes bent on
the ground, and his face moody and full of trouble. As for Mary, she sat
and gazed at him, half-conscious only, worn out by excitement and
wonder, and the succession of shocks of one kind and another which she
had been receiving, but with a soft sense of infinite ease and
consolation stealing over her confused heart. It was that relief from
pain which feels to the sufferer like positive blindness. She had not
even known how deep the pain in her was until she felt it stealing in
upon her,--this ineffable ease and freedom from it, which is more sweet
than actual joy.
‘Ben,’ she said at last, when she could get breath. ‘It is very
difficult for me to follow you, and you confuse me so that I don’t know.
But, about Mr. Hillyard you are all wrong. I never saw him till Monday.
I never thought about him at all. I was very sorry. But it is not as if
I could blame myself. I was not to blame.’
‘To blame! How could you be to blame?’ said Ben, and he came and stood
before her again, gazing at her with that strange look which Mary did
not recognise in him, and could not meet.
‘I should never have mentioned it to any one,’ she said. ‘I would not
now, though you question me so. But only it is best you should not have
anything on your mind. Is,--that,--all?’
It was not coquetry which suggested the question; it was her reason that
began utterly to fail her. She did not seem to know what it was he had
said besides,--though he had said something.
‘Ah!’ he cried vehemently, and then paused and subdued himself, ‘all
except my answer, Mary,’ he said, softly stooping over her.
‘Your answer? You have not asked me anything. Oh, Ben,’ she cried,
suddenly getting up from her seat, with her cheeks burning and her eyes
wet, ‘let there be no more of this. It was all the feeling of the
moment. You thought something had happened which never, never could
happen, and you felt a momentary grudge. Don’t tell me it was anything
else. Do you think I forget what you told me once up at the beech about
her?’ Mary cried, waving her hand towards The Willows. ‘You did not mean
to tell me; but I knew. And the other day---- When you say this sort of
thing to me it is unkind of you; it is disrespectful to me. I have my
pride like other women. Let us speak no more of it, but say good-bye,
and I shall go home.’
‘Then you do not even think me worthy of an answer?’ said Ben; and the
two stood confronting each other in that supreme duel and conflict of
the two existences about to become one, which never loses its interest;
she flushed, excited, suspicious; he steadily keeping to his point,
refusing to be led away from it. And why Mary should have resisted,
standing thus wildly at bay,--and why, when she could stand no longer,
she should have sunk down on the seat from which she had risen, in a
passion of tears, is more than I can tell. But that finally Ben did get
his answer, and that it was, as anybody must have foreseen, eminently
satisfactory to him at last, is a matter about which there can be no
doubt. I do not know even whether he offered any explanations, or
justified himself in the matter of Millicent. I am inclined to think,
indeed, that at that moment he took no notice of it whatever; but only
insisted on that reply, which, when nature was worn out and could stand
against it no longer, came. But the victor did go into certain
particulars, as with Mary’s arm drawn closely through his he led her
again up that bank which, in so much excitement and uncertainty,
half-an-hour before he had led her down.
‘I can’t tell you the fright I was in yesterday,’ he said. ‘It suddenly
flashed upon me in a moment how mad I had been. To leave you here so
long, open to any assault, and to be such an ass as to bring a man down
who had eyes in his head, and was not an idiot?’
‘I wish you would not swear,’ said Mary. ‘The strange thing is that you
should like me, and yet think me of so small account that any man,--a
man I had only known for three days----’
‘Hush!’ he said, drawing her to him. ‘When a man’s eyes are opened first
to the thought that another man has gone off express to rob him of his
jewel, do you think he pauses to be reasonable?’ and then they looked at
each other and were silent, there being more expression in that than in
speech.
‘But the jewel was no jewel till yesterday,’ said Mary, making the kind
of objection which women love to make, ‘and who knows but it may be
paste to-morrow?’
‘My dear,’ said Ben, ‘my only woman in the world! might not a man have
been beguiled to follow a Will-o’-the-wisp till he cursed and hated
such lights, and chose darkness instead,--and then all at once wake up
to see that his moon had risen, and that the night was safe and sweet as
day?’
I suppose it was the only bit of poetry which Ben Renton was ever guilty
of in his life; and it was perfectly successful. And they went on and
continued their walk to the beech-tree. Mary’s eyes were blind with
sweet tears; but then, what did it matter? was not he there to be eyes
to her, through the winding of the tender morning path? And as they
reached the trees, the sunshine burst into the wood all at once with
something like a shout of triumph. If it was not a shout, it came to
precisely the same thing, and caught a branch here and a twig there, and
made it into burnished gold, and lit up the far distance and cloistered
shade into all the joyous animation and moving stir of life.
‘Must you go now?’ Mary said, clinging to him a little closer, ‘must it
still be secret? is no one to see you now?’
‘I must still go away,’ he said, ‘no help for that, Mary; but in the
meantime I am going home with you to tell them all about it. I shall
still catch my ship if I go by the next train.’
He was received with subdued consternation by the household, which
jumped instantly to the conclusion that something had happened; but
there is an instinct in the domestic mind which is almost infallible in
such matters; and before Mrs. Renton had even been told of the
unexpected arrival of her son, Davison had said to the housekeeper,
‘He’s come down at the last to settle it all with Miss Mary. Now didn’t
I tell you?’ and Willis had recorded his opinion that, on the whole,
there wasn’t nothing to say again it. ‘A little bit of money never comes
amiss,’ he said; ‘but she was used bad in the will, never to have no
compensation. And, on the whole, I agrees with Ben.’
Such was the decision of the house, conveyed in language, kind, if
familiar, just five minutes after the entry by the window into the
dining-room, where the breakfast-table was prepared for the family, of
the betrothed pair. Mary’s gown was wet with the dew, and she ran
up-stairs to change it, leaving Ben alone to receive the greetings of
his brothers, who appeared at the same moment. ‘I thought you couldn’t
resist coming down again, old fellow, before you left for good,’ Frank
said in her hearing, as she rushed to the covert and sanctuary of her
own room. He was not so discriminating as the intelligent community
below stairs.
And then, in that strange golden forenoon, which seemed at the same time
one hasty moment and a long day, full of events, Mrs. Renton, amazed,
found her son again stooping over her, and received the astonishing
news. It was some time before she could take it in. ‘What,’ she said,
‘Mary? I will never believe it is Mary. You are making fun of me, Ben.’
‘It is a great deal better than fun, mother,’ he said. ‘I could not go
till it was settled; and now there is only ten minutes or so to kiss us
and bless us, and thank me for giving you such a daughter. She has been
a daughter to you already for so long.’
‘Of course she has,’ said the bewildered woman. ‘Mary! it’s like your
sister. I can’t think it’s quite right, do you know, Ben. I should as
soon have thought of you marrying Alice, or----’
‘Frank might object to that, my dear mother,’ said Ben.
‘But, Mary--you are sure you are not making one of your jokes? And after
all, I can’t think what you see in her, Ben,’ Mrs. Renton said, with a
little eagerness. ‘She was never very pretty,--not like that beautiful
Mrs. Rich, you know, or those sort of women,--and not even very young.
She must be seven-and-twenty, if she is a day. Let me see, Frank was
born in July, and she in the December after. She will be
seven-and-twenty on her next birthday. And nothing to make up for it----
’
‘Except that there is nobody else in the world,’ said Ben, smiling at
Mary, who had just come into the room.
‘Nobody else in the world! I don’t know what you mean. Not to say a word
against Mary, but you might have done a great deal better, Ben.’
‘And so he might, godmamma,’ said Mary, with the gravity of happiness,
though Ben had her hand in his.
‘Yes, my dear,’ said Mrs. Renton, in perfect good faith, ‘a great deal
better. You always have the sense to see things. If I were you, I would
reflect a little longer before I announced it, or did anything more in
the matter, Ben.’
The answer Ben made to this proposal was to draw his betrothed close to
his mother’s bedside within his own supporting arms. ‘Give her a kiss,
mamma, and say God bless you,’ he said, bending down his own face close
to Mary’s. And the mother, quite confused and bewildered, did as she was
told, crying a little, and not knowing what to think. And before any one
knew, Ben was gone again, off by express to join the steamer which
sailed from Liverpool that night. He had just time; everything belonging
to him having gone on before with poor Hillyard, who knew nothing about
this morning’s expedition. And before noon the episode was all over, and
the Frank Rentons once more in the foreground, and Mary reading the
newspaper as if such a wild inroad of romance into the midst of reality
had never been.
‘My dear, it is not that I am not as fond of you,--fonder of you than of
anybody,’ Mrs. Renton said, when poor Mary, for one moment, owing to a
paragraph about a shipwreck, fairly broke down; ‘but it does not seem
somehow as if it were quite proper. And we can’t shut our eyes to it
that he might have done better. It feels as if there was never to be
any satisfaction in the boys’ marriages. I had a fortune of my own, and
so had your grandmother; but everything now is going to sixes and
sevens----’
‘Don’t say anything more about it, godmamma,’ said Mary, with an
outburst of pent-up agitation, and the nervous panic that seizes a
weakened mind. ‘Oh, how can we tell what may happen in the meantime? Let
us say nothing more till he comes home.’
‘Well, to be sure, he might change his mind,’ said Mrs. Renton, as
Davison came in with her arrowroot. And for half-an-hour or so that
satisfactory conclusion, and the adding of another teaspoonful of port,
on account of the excitement she had been going through, put a stop to
the conversation, and gave Mary time to draw breath in peace.
But if the reader of this history hopes to be humoured by a shipwreck at
this late period of the narrative, it is a vain expectation. The winds
blew, and the sea rose, but Ben Renton got safely out to Canada, and
came safely home. I am sorry to have to say that his last great piece of
work did not pay nearly so well as he had expected it to do; and the
business, which he made over to Hillyard, was, owing to the state of the
colony at that moment, of less value than had been anticipated; but at
the same time patience alone was wanted to realise all possible hopes. I
have been obliged to ask the reader to take Ben’s success for granted
all along, as it would have been simply impossible to introduce details
of engineering enterprise into a work of this description; and, indeed,
to tell the truth, I fear I should not have sufficiently understood them
to set them forth with any distinctness. But whether Hillyard will have
patience, and keep up the energy which Ben put into the business, is a
very doubtful matter; and it is just as likely as not that he may turn
up again at the old club, which is the only luxury he keeps up, as
rough, as _insouciant_, as careless what becomes of him, as on the first
day Ben met him, after the weird of the Rentons had begun. Mary might
have made another man of him perhaps; but who knows? Temperament is
stronger than circumstance,--stronger than fortune,--stronger even than
love.
Ben Renton came home, as I have said, as safely as most men come home
from Canada. And everything occurred as it ought to have occurred. I
would add that they lived happy ever after, if there had been time to
make such a record. But the fact is, that it is too early yet to be
historical on that point; and for anything anybody can tell, the Rentons
may yet come to be very wretched, and give occasion for other chapters
of history; though, in common with all their friends, I sincerely hope
not. Benedict Renton of Renton stood for the county of Berks, in the
late election, with politics perhaps slightly tinged by his life in the
other world, but failed by a few votes, notwithstanding the interest
attaching to him,--Berks, like many other counties, being of the opinion
that a good, steady, reliable bumpkin, who will do whatever he is told,
is a more satisfactory legislator than a man who has spent his youth in
objectionable exercises, such as writing, and thinking, and moving about
the world. Frank Renton, true soldier and constitutional Tory, is one of
those who hold this opinion. But I do not despair of seeing Ben in
Parliament yet.
And thus the story ends; being like all stories, no history of life, but
only of a bit out of life,--the most amiable bit, the section of
existence which the world has accepted as its conventional type of life,
leaving all the profounder glooms and the higher lights apart. As in
heaven there can be no story-telling of the present, for happiness has
no story,--there, perhaps, for the first time, the mouth of the minstrel
may be opened to say or sing what is untellable by the frankest voice on
earth. But till then we must be content to break off after the fairy
chapter of life’s beginning, the history of Youth.
THE END.
LONDON:
Printed by STRANGEWAYS & WALDEN, Castle St. Leicester Sq.