TIDED OVER.
It was the fifth morning after George Dallas's arrival in Amherst, the
day on which his mother had appointed by letter for him to go over to
Poynings, and there receive that which was to set him free from the
incubus of debt and difficulty which had so long oppressed him. An
anticipation of pleasure crossed his mind so soon as he first opened
his eyes; he soon remembered whence the satisfaction sprung, and on
going to the window and looking out, he found that nature and he were
once again in accord. As at the time of his misery she had worn her
blackest garb, her direst expression, so now, when hope seemed to
gleam upon him, did nature don her flowery robes and array herself in
her brightest verdant sheen. Spring was rapidly ripening into summer;
into the clean and comely little town, which itself was radiant with
whitened door-steps, and newly painted wood-work, and polished brass
fittings, came wafted delicious odours from outlying gardens and
uplands, where the tossing grass went waving to and fro like the
undulations of a restless sea, and in the midst of which the sturdy
old farm-houses, dotted here and there, stood out like red-faced
islands. Dust, which even the frequent April showers could not lay,
was blowing in Amherst streets; blinds, which had been carefully laid
by during the winter (the Amherst mind had scarcely arrived at spring
blinds for outside use, and contented itself with modest striped
sacking, fastened between hooks on the shop fronts, and poles socketed
into the pavement), were brought forth and hung up in all the glory of
cleanliness. It was reported by those who had been early astir, that
Tom Leigh, the mail-cart driver, had been seen with his white hat on
that morning, and any Amherstian who may have previously doubted
whether the fine weather had actually arrived, must have been
flinty-hearted and obdurate indeed not to have accepted that
assurance.
The sunshine and the general brightness of the day had its due effect
on George Dallas, who was young, for a nineteenth-century man almost
romantic, and certainly impressible. His spirits rose within him, as,
his breakfast finished, he started off to walk to Poynings. Drinking
in the loveliness of the broad sun-steeped landscape, the sweet odours
coming towards him on the soft breeze, the pleasant sound, were it
chink of blacksmith's hammer, or hum of bees, or voice of cuckoo
hidden deep in distant bright-leaved woods, the young man for a time
forgot his baser associations and seemed to rise, in the surroundings
of the moment, to a better and purer frame of mind than he had known
for many years. Natural, under such circumstances, was the first
turning of his thoughts to his mother, to whose deep love and
self-sacrifice he was indebted for the freedom which at length was
about to be his. In his worst times there had been one bright spot of
love for her in all the black folly of his life, and now the
recollection of her disinterestedness and long suffering on his behalf
made her as purely dear to him as when, in the old days that seemed so
long ago, he had said his prayers at her knee. He recollected walking
with her in their garden on mornings like these, when they were all in
all to each other, soon after his father's death, when that chastening
memory was on them both, and before there was any thought of Mr.
Carruthers or his niece--or his niece!--and straightway off went his
thoughts into a different channel. What a pretty girl! so soft and
quiet, so fresh withal, and frank, and guileless, so different
from--Well, he didn't know; with similar advantages Harriet might have
been very much the same. But Miss Carruthers was certainly specially
charming; the talk which they had had together showed that. The talk
which they had together? Was he not entering her own domain? What if
she were to meet and recognize him there? That would spoil all their
plans. A word from her would--O no! Though Mrs. Carruthers might not
have been intended as a conspirator by nature, George felt by his
recent experience of his mother's movements that she would have
sufficient foresight to prevent Clare from leaving the house, just at
that time, lest she might discover the rendezvous in the shrubbery.
The tact that had so rapidly shifted the venue of their last meeting
from the bustle of the draper's to the calm solitude of the dentist's
would assuredly be sufficient to prevent a young girl from intruding
on their next appointment.
Busy with these thoughts, and ever and anon pausing to look round him
at the fair scenes through which he was passing, George Dallas pursued
his way along the high road until he gained the summit of the little
hill whence is obtained the first view of Poynings and its grounds.
There he stopped suddenly; from that point he had always intended to
reconnoitre, but he had never anticipated seeing what he did see--a
carriage driving through the open lodge gates, and in the carriage
reclining at his ease no less a person than Mr. Capel Carruthers. It
was he, not a doubt about it, in the respectability of his glossy
broad-brimmed hat, in his white whiskers, in his close-fitting
dogskin gloves, in the very double gold eye-glass with which he was
looking at nature in a very patronizing manner. Even if he had not
been short-sighted, Mr. Carruthers was at such a distance as would
utterly have prevented him from recognizing any one on the top of the
hill; but George Dallas no sooner saw him than instinctively he
crouched down by the hedge-side and waited until the carriage was
rolling down the avenue; then he slowly raised himself, muttering:
"What the deuce has brought him back just now? confound him! What on
earth will she do? It's most infernally provoking, just at this very
nick of time; he might have kept off a few hours longer. She won't
come to the shrubbery now; she's frightened out of her life at that
old ruffian, and, by George, I shall be put off again! After all I've
said to Routh, after all the castles in the air which I've been
building on the chance of getting free, I shall have to slink back to
town empty-handed!" He was leaning over a gate in the hedge, and as he
spoke he shook his fist at the unconscious county magistrate, visible
in the distance now but by the crown of his hat. "Except," continued
George, "knowing how deeply I'm involved, she'll risk all hazards and
come to the shrubbery. Perhaps she's started now, not expecting him,
and when he reaches the house and doesn't find her there--he's always
hanging on her trail, curse him!--he will make inquiries and follow
her. That would be worst of all, for not only should I miss what she
promised me, but she would come to grief herself, poor darling. Well,
I must chance it, whatever happens."
He turned down a by-lane which ran at right angles to the avenue,
pursuing which he came upon a low park paling enclosing the shrubbery.
Carefully looking round him, and finding no one within sight, he
climbed the paling, and dropped noiselessly upon the primrose-decked
bank on the other side. All quiet; nothing moving but the birds
darting in and out among the bright green trees, and the grasshoppers
in myriads round his feet. The walk had tired him, and he lay down on
the mossy turf and awaited his mother's coming. Mossy turf, soft and
sweet-smelling, the loud carol of the birds, the pleasant, soothing,
slumberous sound of the trees bending gently towards each other
as the mild air rustled in the leaves. It was long since he had
experienced these influences, but he was now under their spell. What
did they recall? Boyhood's days; the Bishop's Wood, where they went
birds'-nesting; Duke Primus, who wore "stick-ups," and was the cock of
the school, and Charley Cope, who used to tell such good stories in
bed, and Bergemann, a German boy, who was drowned in a pond in just
such a part of the wood as this, and--twelve o'clock rings sharply out
from the turret clock in Poynings stables, and at its sound away fly
the ghosts of the past. Twelve o'clock, the time appointed in his
mother's letter for him to meet her in that very spot. He rose up from
the turf, and sheltering himself behind the broad trunk of an old
tree, looked anxiously in the direction of the house. No human being
was to be seen; a few rabbits whisked noiselessly about, their little
white tails gleaming as they disappeared in the brushwood, but they
and the birds and the grasshoppers comprised all the life about the
place. He looked on the big trees and the chequered shade between
them, and the glimpses of blue skylight between their topmost boughs;
he left his vantage ground and strode listlessly to and fro; the
quarter chime rung out from the turret, then the half hour, and still
no one came.
Some one coming at last! George's quick eyes make out a female figure
in the far distance, not his mother, though. This woman's back is
bowed, her step slow and hesitating, unlike Mrs. Carruthers, on whose
matronly beauty Time has as yet laid his gentlest touch. He must stand
aside, he thought, amongst the trees until the new comer had passed
by; but as the woman approached, her gait and figure seemed familiar
to him, and when she raised her head and looked round her as though
expecting some one, he recognized Nurse Brooks. The old woman gave a
suppressed scream as George Dallas stepped out from among the trees
and stood before her.
"I could not help it, George," said she; "I could not help it, though
I was looking for and expecting you at that moment, and that's more
than you were doing for me, isn't it? You were expecting some one
else, my boy?"
"Is anything the matter? Is she ill? Has her husband found out?"
"Nothing! She's--well, as well as may be, poor dear, and--"
"Then she hasn't been able to do what she promised?"
"Oh, George, George, did you ever know her fail in doing what she
promised, from the days when you were a baby until now? Better for
her, poor thing, as I've often told her, if she hadn't--"
"Yes, yes, nurse, I know all about that, of course; but why isn't she
here now?"
"She daren't come, George. Master's come home unexpected, and he and
Miss Clare are with her, and there is no chance for her to make an
excuse to get away. So she just runs into her dressing-room for a
minute, and sends to me--she always sends to me in her troubles, as
you've seen many a time and oft, Master George--and tells me, she
says, 'Take this and go into the shrubbery, and tell George,' she
says, 'why I couldn't come, and that I sent it him with my heart's
love, and God bless him,' she says."
As the old woman spoke, she produced from her pocket a round flat
parcel wrapped in writing-paper, which she handed to Dallas. He took
it with a very weak attempt at unconcern (he did not know with how
much of their secret his mother might have intrusted the old nurse),
and thrust it into his breast-pocket, saying at the same time,
"Thanks, nurse. That's all right. Did she say anything else?"
"Nothing, I think. O yes--that of course you would not remain in the
neighbourhood, and that you were to be sure to write to her, and send
your address."
"She need not be afraid--I'm off at once! Good-bye, nurse. Tell my
mother I'll hold to all I promised her. Thank her a thousand times,
bless her! Good-bye, dear old woman; perhaps the next time we meet I
shan't have to skulk in a wood when I want to see my mother!"
He pressed a hasty kiss on the old woman's upturned face, and hurried
away. The last sound he had uttered seemed to have rekindled the old
vindictive feeling in his mind, for as he strode away he muttered to
himself: "Skulking in a wood, hiding behind trees--a pretty way for a
son to seek his mother, and she never to come after all! Prevented by
her fear of that pompous idiot, her husband. To think of her, such as
I recollect her, being afraid of an empty-headed dotard. And yet he is
kind to her. She said so herself--that's nothing; but Nurse Brookes
said so too--that's something--that's everything. If he were not--if
he treated her badly--he should rue it. But he is fond of her, and
proud of her, as well he may be; and Clare, that charming girl, is his
niece. Charming indeed! Ah, Capel Carruthers, you have a wholesome
horror of me, but you little know that two guardian angels plead for
you!"
The sight of the park paling over which he had climbed into the
shrubbery, and over which lay his only way out of it, seemed to change
the tenor of his thoughts. He stopped at once, and looking cautiously
round, stepped in among the trees, and drew from his breast the packet
which Nurse Brookes had given to him. He tore off the outer covering
of writing-paper, and carefully placed it in his pocket, then he came
to a purple morocco case, which he opened, and there before him, set
off by the velvet on which it lay, was the bracelet, a band of dead
gold, set with splendid wreaths of forget-me-nots in diamonds and
turquoises. George Dallas took it up and examined it attentively,
weighed it in his hand, looked closely at the stones in various
lights, then replaced it in its case, as a smile of satisfaction
spread over his face.
"No mistake about that!" said he. "Even I, all unaccustomed to such
luxuries, know that this must be the right thing. She has sent it as
she received it, in the very box, with the swell Bond-street
jeweller's name and all! Not a bad notion of a present, Mr.
Carruthers, by any means. You've money, sir; but, it must be owned,
you've taste also. It's only to be hoped that you've not very sharp
eyesight, or that you'll never be tempted to make a very close
inspection of the Palais Royal bijouterie which is doing duty for this
in the jewel-box! These will set me clear with Routh, and leave me
with a few pounds in my pocket besides, to begin life anew with.
If it does that and I can stick to my employment on the _Mercury_,
and get a little more work somewhere else, and give up that infernal
card-playing--that's the worst of it--I may yet make our friend C. C.
believe I am not such a miserable scoundrel as he now imagines me!"
He replaced the case carefully in his breast-pocket, climbed the
palings, and was once more on the high road, striding in the direction
of Amherst. Ah, the castle-building, only occasionally interrupted by
a return to the realities of life in squeezing the packet in his
breast-pocket, which he indulged in during that walk! Free, with
the chance and the power of making a name for himself in the world!
free from all the debasing associations, free from Routh, from
Harriet--from Harriet? Was that idea quite so congenial to his
feelings? to be separated from Harriet, the only woman whom, in his
idle dissipated days, he had ever regarded with anything like
affection, the only woman who--and then the bright laughing face and
the golden hair of Clare Carruthers rose before his mind. How lovely
she was, how graceful and bred-looking, above all, how fresh and
youthful, how unsullied by any contact with the world, with all the
native instincts pure and original, with no taught captivations or
society charms, nothing but--
"Yoho! Yoho!"
George Dallas started from his reverie at the repeated cry, and only
just in time sprang from the middle of the road along which, immersed
in thought, he had been plodding, as the mail-cart, with its red-faced
driver, a sprig of lilac in his breast and a bunch of laburnum behind
each ear of his horse, came charging full upon him. The driver was a
man choleric by nature, and with a great sense of his position as an
important government officer, and he glared round at George and asked
him a few rapid questions, in which the devil and his supposed
residence were referred to with great volubility. Under less pleasant
circumstances Dallas would probably have returned his greeting with
interest; as it was, he merely laughed, and, waving his hand,
proceeded on his way to the inn, whence, having paid his bill, he
returned to London by the first train.
During the whole of the journey up to town the young man's thoughts
were filled with his intentions for the future, and no sooner had the
train stopped at London-bridge than he determined to go at once to the
_Mercury_ office and announce his readiness to undertake any amount of
work. Accordingly he struck away across the Borough, and, crossing
Blackfriars-bridge, dived among a mass of streets running at right
angles with Fleet-street, until he arrived at a large, solemn, squat
old building, over the door of which glimmered a lamp with the words
"Mercury Office" in half-effaced characters. A small pull at a sharp,
round, big bell brought a preternaturally sharp boy to the door, who
at once recognized the visitor, and admitted him within the sacred
precincts. Up a dark passage, up a steep and regular flight of stairs,
George Dallas proceeded, until on the first floor he rapped at the
door facing him, and, being bidden to come in, entered the editorial
sanctum.
A large cheerless room, its floor covered with a ragged old Turkey
carpet, on its walls two or three book-shelves crammed with books of
reference, two or three maps, an old clock gravely ticking, and a
begrimed bust, with its hair dust-powdered, and with layers of dust on
its highly developed cheek-bones. In the middle of the room a battered
old desk covered with blue books, letters opened and unopened, piles
of manuscript under paper-weights, baskets with cards of invitations
for all sorts of soirées, entertainments, and performances, and
snake-like india-rubber tubes for communication with distant
printing-offices or reporters' rooms, a big leaden inkstand like a
bath, and a sheaf of pens more or less dislocated. At this desk sat a
tall man of about fifty, bald-headed, large-bearded, with sharp gray
eyes, well-cut features, and good presence. This was Mr. Leigh, editor
of the _Mercury_; a man who had been affiliated to the press from the
time of his leaving college, who had been connected with nearly all
the morning journals in one capacity or another, correspondent here,
manager there, descriptive writer, leader-writer, critic, and scrub,
and who, always rising, had been recommended by the Jupiter Tonans of
the press, the editor of the _Statesman_, to fill the vacant editorial
chair at the _Mercury_. A long-headed, far-seeing man, Grafton Leigh,
bright as a diamond, and about as hard, keen as a sword in the hands
of a fine fencer, and as difficult to turn aside, earnest, energetic,
devoted to his work, and caring for nothing else in comparison--not
even for his wife, then sound asleep in his little house in Brompton,
or his boy working for his exhibition from Westminster. He looked up
as George entered, and his features, tightly set, relaxed as he
recognized the young man.
"You, Ward!" said he. "We didn't look for you till to-morrow night.
What rush of industry, what sudden desire to distinguish yourself, has
brought you here to-night, my boy?"
Before George could answer, a young man came forward from an inner
room, and caught him by the hand.
"What, Paul, old fellow, this is delicious! He must be brimming over
with ideas, Chief, and has come down here to ventilate them."
"Not I," said George. "My dear Chief," addressing Leigh, "both you and
Cunningham give me credit for more virtue than I possess. I merely
looked in as I passed from the railway to see how things were going
on."
"This _is_ a sell," said Mr. Cunningham. "I thought I had booked you.
You see that confounded Shimmer has failed us again. He was to have
done us a sensation leader on the murder--"
"The murder! What murder?"
"Oh, ah, I forgot; happened since you went away. Wapping or
Rotherhithe--some waterside place--body found, and all that kind of
thing! Shimmer was to have done us one of his stirrers, full of
adjectives, denouncing the supineness of the police, and that kind of
thing, and he's never turned up, and the Chief has kept me here to
fill his place. Confounded nuisance! I'm obliged to fall back on my
old subject--Regulation of the City Traffic!"
"I'm very sorry for you, Cunningham," said George, laughing; "but I
can't help you to-night. I'm seedy and tired, and I know nothing about
the murder, and want to get to bed. However, I came to tell the Chief
that I'm his now and for ever, ready to do double tasks of work from
to-morrow out."
"All right, Ward. So long as you don't overdo it, I shall always be
delighted to have you with us," said Mr. Leigh. "Now get home to bed,
for you look dog-tired." And George Dallas shook hands with each, and
went away.
"Glad to hear we're going to have a good deal of work out of Ward,
Chief," said Cunningham, when he and his editor were alone again.
"He's deuced smart when he likes--as smart as Shimmer, and a great
deal more polished and gentlemanly."
"Yes," said Grafton Leigh, "he's a decided catch for the paper. I
don't think his health will last, though. Did you notice his manner
to-night?--nervous, agitated, and twitching, like a man who had gone
through some great excitement!"