ON THE THRESHOLD OF A DISCOVERY.
Alexis goes back to Cheswold Grange, and resumes the even tenor of
his life, a prosperous country gentleman, with very little to occupy
him, and plenty of leisure in which to muse upon destiny, and dream
of the things that might have been. The hunting season has long been
over. It is the time of roses, and he has no temptation to endanger
his neck upon Bayard again just yet awhile. He rides his steady
little brown mare in the shady roads and lanes round Cheswold, while
Bayard stretches his noble limbs in the home paddock, and gathers
strength for the crisp, clear days of October and the chill mists of
November.
It is a pleasant life, but an idle one, and a thought too lonely.
True that there is plenty of society in the neighbourhood, and Mr.
Secretan, of Cheswold, is popular; but life cannot be a succession
of dinner parties, and Alexis has little inclination for croquet
and garden parties, archery, fancy fairs, or any of those small
amusements which beguile the long days of a country summer.
The two young men have scarcely returned to the Grange when Richard
Plowden declares that he must go home.
‘I’ve been with you nearly a year, Alexis,’ he says. ‘I am sure you
must be sick of my society.’
‘When I am, be sure I’ll let you know it, Dick,’ answers the other,
laughing. ‘You’re the best company in the world to me, for you’re a
kind of second self. I can talk to you as I talk to no one else. You
know all my secrets.’
‘All of them?’ asks Dick, gravely.
‘Yes, Dick, all--or if there is a vague, undeveloped thought or dream
I have not shared with you, it has not been for want of confidence in
your fidelity.’
‘I believe that,’ replies Dick, deeply moved. ‘But I must go home all
the same. This kind of life is all very well for a short time, but it
can’t go on--it would spoil me for the rough work-a-day world.’
‘Let it spoil you, Dick. Why should you ever go back to the
work-a-day world? You are my adopted brother, as dear to me as if we
had slept in the same cradle, or lain in the same mother’s arms. My
home is yours, my income yours, and if Fate cuts me off untimely you
will not find yourself unprovided for. Your mother is happy with her
lodgers and her housekeeping, to say nothing of the fernery, which
she tells you has flourished under her care. Why talk of leaving me,
Dick?’
‘You are too good; and I am more grateful than any words of mine can
tell. But I must go all the same.’
‘You are not happy with me, Dick?’
‘I have been most happy with you.’
‘Have been. That means you are not happy now. It is you who are tired
of my company. That long illness of mine wore you out. You had too
much of me at Dorley Mill.’
At the name of Dorley Mill a spasm of pain passes across Richard
Plowden’s face--so faint that it might have escaped a less watchful
observer than Alexis. But Alexis is sorely puzzled by Dick’s desire
to leave him, and is watchful of his friend’s countenance.
‘Too much of your company--no, Alexis. You know that your company is
like the wine of life for me.’
‘And yet you persist in leaving me. There must be some reason.’
‘There is a reason--one that I can never tell you. A foolish reason.
But strong enough to send me away from Cheswold.’
‘And the roses, and the ferns, and all those bright things of summer
you love so well--you to whom the hills and woods and wandering
streams are new. You would exchange all the pleasures of the country
for the Brompton Road and the ever-flowing stream of many-coloured
omnibuses, the cry of the hawker, the reek of the ham and beef shop,
the glare of the gin-palace? The reason must be a strong one, Dick.’
‘It is as strong as Fate.’
‘And you will not trust me with it?’
‘I cannot tell you my reasons. You would laugh at me, despise me.’
‘Try me, Dick. Suppose I can guess your secret.’
‘Oh no, no!’ cries Dick, with alarm.
‘Those days at Dorley Mill, when my broken ribs were slowly knitting
themselves together again--peaceful, happy days, were they not,
Dick? That quaint Elizabethan homestead seemed more like home to
both of us than this good old house of mine. It had the atmosphere
of home, which this has not. There is no such thing as home without
the presence of a woman. We were very happy--in a tranquil, sleepy
fashion--at Dorley, weren’t we, Dick?’
‘Very happy,’ answers Dick, looking down at an open book, the leaves
of which he turns over restlessly, as if looking for some particular
passage.
‘And now I begin to fear that Dorley Mill was an unlucky place for
both of us. Neither of us came away heart-whole.’
‘Alex,’ cries Dick, looking up.
‘No half-confidences, old friend. You see I am not afraid to trust
_you_. Such a confession comes amiss from me, you think--from me
who am bound fast by an old tie--which, if the marriage tie could be
broken by a wife’s unkindness, might well have been cancelled for me
last December, when I stood before that mercenary wife of mine and
pleaded the cause of love against money. Do not be alarmed, Dick, I
am not going to sophisticate. The old tie is binding, and the old
bond shall be honoured, though it should keep me a lonely man for the
rest of my days. But I may be forgiven if I have had my dream of what
might have been--if I have thought how fair and perfect my life might
be made in this good old home of mine, were I but free to seek Linda
Challice for my wife.’
‘Yes,’ murmurs Dick, ‘I thought so.’
‘You thought that I was human, Dick, and that it was not easy for me
to feel all the sweetness of Linda’s society--to be sheltered and
cherished by her kindness--to know that I owed my life to her patient
tenderness, and withhold my heart from her altogether. My heart went
out to her, Dick, unawares, but by not so much as a word or look did
I ever betray my secret. I woke one day to a full knowledge of my
peril, and the next day I left Dorley Mill.’
‘You acted nobly,’ cries Dick, clasping his friend’s hand. ‘Yes, I
suspected the truth, and it made my own thoughts all the more bitter.
How could she think of me? What a worm I must seem to her beside you!’
‘She shall think of you, Dick. She shall learn to know your noble
heart--your talents--your love of all that is lofty and lovely in
life. She shall learn to understand you and appreciate you as I do.
Trust to time, Dick, and me. It shall be my task to win her for you.’
‘Impossible,’ sighs Dick. ‘She is won already, and not by me.’
‘Silence, Dick. There is treason against her in such an insinuation.
She knew that I was married.’
‘She must have known it at the last, but I am not quite sure that she
knew it at first, unless anything you said when you awoke from your
delirium may have enlightened her. I don’t think, somehow, that she
did know it. Remember, you were a perfect stranger to her. You came
to Dorley Mill as if you had dropped from the clouds. How should she
know anything of your domestic history, which has only been whispered
amongst your neighbours?’
‘You might have told her my painful story, Dick.’
‘It was not my business. It would have been an impertinence in me to
gabble about your affairs. I felt assured that you would tell her.’
‘Why should I do so, Dick? I am not a coxcomb. I foresaw no peril
to myself in my association with that sweet girl, still less did I
imagine danger to her. I accepted all her bounties as if she had been
verily a ministering angel lent to this lower world for a little
while to be my comfort. Upon my word, Dick, I think there is a spice
of folly--or unconscious jealousy, perhaps--in your notion that I am
any more to Miss Challice than the traveller who fell by the wayside.’
‘I can read her face,’ answers Dick, sorrowfully, ‘and it has told me
her secret.’
Alexis is moved by this conviction of Richard Plowden’s. For so
little he could be glad. He sees the fair young face, the bended
brow, the soft eyes which have so often avoided his own. Dare he
interpret those signs--those little looks which he remembers so
well--as the tokens of a hidden passion? Dare he suffer himself to
believe that while Linda Challice ministered to him pity grew to love
in her heart, as gratitude widened into love in his? The thought
that it is so can bring him nothing but sorrow; yet he finds himself
encouraging the fancy notwithstanding.
‘I am a weak fool, Dick,’ he cries at last, after pacing the firelit
library for some time; ‘and you ought not to say these things to me.
Linda Challice does know that I have a wife. She learned it directly
from my own lips; but only on the morning before I left Dorley. But
she shall know all my wretched story. She shall know that I deserve
her pity, though I dare not ask for her love. I am bound to pay one
more visit to Dorley Mill, if it is only to repeat my thanks for all
her goodness to me. I will go to-morrow. I have ordered a little
present for her from London which I think she will like.’
‘She is not a girl to care for presents,’ says Dick.
‘You sulky old bear! women love souvenirs and keepsakes.’
‘Yes, when they love the giver.’
‘You know that shabby silver watch she wears.’
‘It was her father’s,’ growls Dick; ‘he wore it to the day of his
death, or had it under his pillow on his death-bed. He died in Rome,
you know, in something like impoverished circumstances. I dare say he
had a fine gold hunter when his pictures were the fashion.’
‘Poor fellow! it was his watch, was it? Then I’m afraid Lin----Miss
Challice won’t care for the one I’ve bought her.’
Alexis takes a neat little morocco case out of a drawer in the
library table, a dainty case lined with white velvet, on which
reposes the most fascinating of watches--about the size of a florin.
The case is dark purple enamel, with Linda’s monogram in pearls, and
round the watch is coiled a slender gold chain set with pearls.
‘Rather too pretty for a miller’s granddaughter,’ says Dick. ‘But
I’ve no doubt she’ll be pleased. Did you buy anything for Mr.
Benfield?’
‘Yes, Dick, I didn’t forget the miller;’ and from another drawer
Alexis produces a splendid meerschaum pipe. ‘The old gentleman can
smoke his tobacco in that when he sits by the fire after supper.’
‘I don’t suppose it will draw as well as his clay,’ murmurs Dick.
The drawing-room at the Grange seems more than usually empty that
evening when the two young men leave the dining-table. It is a wet
night, and they lack the amusement which the gardens and stable
yard afford them in fine weather. Alexis has read all the magazines
and newspapers, and is hardly in the humour for serious literature,
although all his favourite authors, newly bound and newly arranged
upon the shelves in the library, invite him to study. His mind is
disturbed, he knows not why. He takes up a volume of Tennyson from
the table and turns the leaves idly till he comes to that exquisite
poem called ‘Love and Duty.’ This he reads aloud, Richard Plowden
listening intently.
‘That was written by a MAN, Dick,’ he says when he has finished.
‘Byron-worshipper as I am, I confess that there is more stamina in
that than in all Childe Harold’s wailing against destiny. But then
Byron died in the flower of his manhood. We know not what noble fruit
the tree might have borne had it grown to maturity. Byron never came
to the age at which Scott began to be a poet, or at which Goethe
wrote his masterpiece. What would have been the aftermath of Byron
and Shelley had inexorable death spared so much genius?’
After this Alexis and his friend talk of their favourite poets, and
both brighten a little as their thoughts drift away from their own
individual sorrows.
Soon after breakfast next morning, Alexis mounts Titmouse and rides
down to Dorley, through the perfumed lanes where the dog-roses and
woodbine make a tangle of flowers among the young oak saplings and
the sturdy hawthorn bushes. Dorley Mill is looking its prettiest as
he rides along the winding track that leads to it. Trot is sitting in
the porch playing with a very fat black and white puppy with a round
stupid-looking head, a puppy that has not long been added to the
population of Dorley.
At the sight of Alexis, Trot lets fall his pinafore, and gives the
puppy a sudden drop in the world. It is the youthful animal’s first
experience of the uncertainty of friendship, and he yelps out his
remonstrance against life’s delusions.
‘Mammie!’ yells Trot, ‘mammie, come out, it’s the genlamum.’ In spite
of their familiarity, Trot has never learnt to call Alexis anything
but the ‘genlamum.’
Linda is not forthcoming, and Trot remembers presently that mammie
has gone down to the village.
‘She not be long,’ says Trot. ‘I’ll show oo my noo puppy;’ and he
introduces that animal, held firmly by the tail.
‘Daddie says he grow big--ever so big--bigger than Trot,’ says the
boy, opening his eyes tremendously wide. They are hazel eyes, with
lashes of gold, which time will darken to brown.
‘I’ll come in and wait, Trot,’ says Alexis, dismounting, and tying
Titmouse to the gatepost. She is a lazy animal, and has no objection
to stand there nibbling the grass by the wayside.
He goes in at the familiar porch, beneath which he was carried
unconscious on the day of his accident, and seats himself by Linda’s
work-table. How pleasant the room is to his sight! how homelike!
There are the books Linda read to him--the books that seemed to
breathe a deeper pathos and holier tenderness when she read. There
is her drawing-board with an unfinished landscape, a wind of the
river overshadowed by willows. There are the flowers her hand has
arranged; there the sofa on which he passed so many reposeful hours
of unthinking happiness.
‘Why did I permit myself to be so happy?’ he thinks, in
self-reproach. ‘It was a pleasant dream, but the return to life’s
dull reality is a little hard to bear.’
He rouses himself from his musing mood, and begins to talk to Trot,
taking Trot and the puppy on his knee together. Trot stops tolerably
quiet; but the puppy begins a perambulation--a voyage of discovery up
and down Mr. Secretan’s coat sleeves and collar, and even on to his
head, which is more familiar than agreeable.
‘Well, Trot, you haven’t forgotten me, I hope?’
‘I not forgotten oo, but I don’t love oo no more,’ replies Trot,
decisively.
‘Not love me any more? Oh, Trot, that is cruel. Why not?’
‘Why oo go ’way and make mammie cry?’ demands Trot, facing the
accused with magisterial severity.
Alexis crimsons at the interrogation.
‘I never made mammie cry,’ he falters.
‘That’s a tory. Oo did. She cried the day oo went,--she cried a
little every day, she said it was a headache,--Trot knows better, she
not such a coward as to cry for a headache. Trot doesn’t cry when his
head aches, he’s a man!’
‘Yes, but mammie’s only a woman, Trot, and a headache might make her
cry if it was a very bad one. Mammie wouldn’t tell a story.’
‘She says _I_ mustn’t,’ responds Trot, ‘but I think she did. Grown-up
people may do anything. Mayn’t they tell tories?’
‘No, Trot, not good people. Only wicked people tell stories.’
A shadow flits across the threshold, and the subject of their
conversation enters. Trot scrambles off Mr. Secretan’s knee and runs
to his adopted mother.
‘I told him he was naughty to go away and make oo cry,’ says Trot,
‘and he says he didn’t.’
‘Foolish Trot. What silly notions you get into your head!’ says
Linda, bending over the child and blushing deeply.
Alexis sees the blush, and he sees something more than that. He sees
that Linda has changed within the ten days that have gone by since he
left Dorley Mill. A settled pallor succeeds that fleeting red. Her
eyes are sunken, and there is a dark line beneath them, which deepens
their colour, and gives a pathetic expression that touches him to
the heart. She has cared for him, she has been sorry for him, and
he, poor fettered wretch, dare say no word of his care or his sorrow
for her. She must drink the cup of humiliation to the dregs, and
know that the man to whom her innocent heart has gone forth is the
property of another.
‘I have been anxious to come and tell you once more how gratefully
I shall ever remember your goodness to me,’ says Alexis, after they
have talked about Trot and Trot’s puppy for a few minutes. The puppy
is to grow up into a Newfoundland if it realizes the expectations of
its friends, but there is an element of uncertainty in these things,
and Alexis has a lurking conviction that this puppy will develop into
the most mongrel of mongrels.
‘Believe me, neither my grandfather nor I consider our care of you
a matter for gratitude, Mr. Secretan,’ replies Linda. ‘Providence
brought you to our door. We should have been very unchristian-like if
we had not cared for you. I think you must know that if you had been
the poorest tramp that ever dropped down on the road-side we should
have done the same.’
‘I am quite sure of that,’ replies Alexis, ‘and that is why I have
never ventured to speak about the expense that my illness must have
entailed upon you.’
‘Pray relieve your mind upon that score. Your housekeeper sent all
the broths and jellies, hothouse fruits, poultry, game, and wines
from the Grange. I think you only cost us a few new-laid eggs and a
little milk. Mrs. Bodlow kept our larder almost too well supplied in
her anxiety that you should have nourishing diet.’
‘Mrs. Bodlow only did her duty. But lightly as you regard the
obligation, Miss Challice, it is one which I shall carry to my dying
day. If ever I am inclined to make a bad use of this life of mine,
I will remember how hard you strove to win it back from the grave.
I have ventured to bring you something--a little gold watch, with
your initials on the back, which I hope you will wear sometimes in
remembrance of the many weary hours you spent by the stranger’s sick
bed.’
‘I will wear it always,’ replies Linda, with tears in her eyes.
‘Oo can’t wear two wathes,’ exclaims Trot. ‘Oo wear oor fazer’s wath.’
‘I shall keep that among my treasures, Trot; but it is nearly worn
out, poor old watch, and I am sure this will keep better time.’
‘Oo like this best ’cause the genlamum give it oo,’ cries the
far-seeing Trot.
Alexis pretends not to hear this last observation, and produces
the meerschaum pipe, which Linda admires amazingly, and which Trot
wants to have in his mouth and to make believe to smoke, as he does
sometimes with daddie’s homelier clay.
‘Dear little Trot,’ exclaims Alexis, ‘how your small voice would
enliven us at Cheswold Grange. You cannot imagine how dull it is
there, Miss Challice, in the long summer evenings.’
‘No? And yet I think I know how long the summer evenings can be.
But Trot would not do much to enliven them. He is worn out by seven
o’clock. Oh, by the way, talking of Trot, I have made one little
discovery since you left us.’
‘What is that?’ cries Alexis, eagerly.
‘Don’t let me raise false expectations. It is such a trifle, scarcely
worth mentioning, but you seemed anxious to find out our little
darling’s parentage, and this seems a clue, however small.’
‘What is it? Pray tell me. I am most anxious, more anxious than I can
explain.’
‘Pray do not excite yourself, Mr. Secretan. I was looking over some
papers in my desk, the other day, when I came upon the blank sheet of
note-paper which contained that last remittance for Trot,--I remember
it on account of the peculiar way in which it was folded,--and I
noticed for the first time that there was a name stamped upon it in
the corner, the name of the stationer who supplied it, no doubt.’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘I have saved the sheet of paper to show you. The name is Morgan,
Redcastle.’
Alexis starts from his chair and seizes Trot as if he would take
possession of him on the instant. He is speechless with surprise.
‘You know the name of that place.’
‘Know it? yes. I have reason, bitter reason, to know it. A small town
in Yorkshire. And that money, obviously sent by the child’s mother,
was sent from Redcastle?’
‘One would suppose so.’
‘There can be no doubt of it. Tell me, Miss Challice, if I were to
show you a photograph of the woman you sheltered, the mother of this
boy, would you recognise her? The picture I shall show you was taken
in the bloom of her beauty. You saw her--should it indeed be the same
woman--faded, worn by care and deprivation. Should you know the face
under such altered conditions?’
‘I should know it anywhere. But why should you be so agitated? Why
should the mere name of this place excite you so much?’
‘Ask me no questions till I come back to you with the photograph,’
says Alexis. ‘I shall go and return as fast as my horse will carry
me.’
‘Pray be careful. Remember----’
‘That I have been thrown! Trust me, dear Miss Challice. I will run no
risks. I am too anxious to settle the question of Trot’s parentage.’
He takes the child in his arms, kisses him as he has never kissed him
yet in all their friendly companionship, gives him back to Linda, and
runs out at the gate.
He has mounted Titmouse and is out of sight before Linda has
recovered from her astonishment at his agitation.
‘Genlamum’s in a hurry!’ exclaims Trot.