IN THE PARK.
As the days and weeks went on, and Lord and Lady Hartledon continued at
Calne, there was one circumstance that began to impress itself on the
mind of the former in a careless sort of way--that he was constantly
meeting Pike. Go out when he would, he was sure to see Pike in some
out-of-the-way spot; at a sudden turning, or peering forth from under
a group of trees, or watching him from a roadside bank. One special day
impressed itself on Lord Hartledon's memory. He was walking slowly along
the road with Dr. Ashton, and found Pike keeping pace with them softly on
the other side the hedge, listening no doubt to what he could hear. On
one of these occasions Val stopped and confronted him.
"What is it you want, Mr. Pike?"
Perhaps Mr. Pike was about the last man in the world to be, as the saying
runs, "taken aback," and he stood his ground, and boldly answered
"Nothing."
"It seems as though you did," said Val. "Go where I will, you are sure to
spring up before me, or to be peeping from some ambush as I walk along.
It will not do: do you understand?"
"I was just thinking the same thing yesterday--that your lordship was
always meeting _me_," said Pike. "No offence on either side, I dare say."
Val walked on, throwing the man a significant look of warning, but
vouchsafing no other reply. After that Pike was a little more cautious,
and kept aloof for a time; but Val knew that he was still watched on
occasion.
One fine October day, when the grain had been gathered in and the fields
were bare with stubble, Hartledon, alone in one of the front rooms, heard
a contest going on outside. Throwing up the window, he saw his young son
attempting to mount the groom's pony: the latter objecting. At the door
stood a low basket carriage, harnessed with the fellow pony. They
belonged to Lady Hartledon; sometimes she drove only one; and the groom,
a young lad of fourteen, light and slim, rode the other: sometimes both
ponies were in the carriage; and on those occasions the boy sat by her
side, and drove.
"What's the matter, Edward?" called out Lord Hartledon to his son.
"Young lordship wants to ride the pony, my lord," said the groom. "My
lady ordered me to ride it."
At this juncture Lady Hartledon appeared on the scene, ready for her
drive. She had intended to take her little son with her--as she generally
did--but the child boisterously demanded that he should ride the pony for
once, and she weakly yielded. Lord Hartledon's private opinion, looking
on, was that she was literally incapable of denying him any earthly thing
he chose to demand. He went out.
"He had better go with you in the carriage, Maude."
"Not at all. He sits very well now, and the pony's perfectly quiet."
"But he is too young to ride by the side of any vehicle. It is not safe.
Let him sit with you as usual."
"Nonsense! Edward, you shall ride the pony. Help him up, Ralph."
"No, Maude. He--"
"Be quiet!" said Lady Hartledon, bending towards her husband and speaking
in low tones. "It is not for you to interfere. Would you deny him
everything?"
A strangely bitter expression sat on Val's lips. Not of anger; not even
mortification, but sad, cruel pain. He said no more.
And the cavalcade started. Lady Hartledon driving, the boy-groom sitting
beside her, and Eddie's short legs striding the pony. They were keeping
to the Park, she called to her husband, and she should drive slowly.
There was no real danger, as Val believed; only he did not like the
child's wilful temper given way to. With a deep sigh he turned indoors
for his hat, and went strolling down the avenue. Mrs. Capper dropped a
curtsey as he passed the lodge.
"Have you heard from your son yet?" he asked.
"Yes, my lord, many thanks to you. The school suits him bravely."
Turning out of the gates, he saw Floyd, the miller, walking slowly along.
The man had been confined to his bed for weeks in the summer, with an
attack of acute rheumatism, and to the house afterwards. It was the first
time they had met since that morning long ago, when the miller brought up
the purse. Lord Hartledon did not know him at first, he was so altered;
pale and reduced.
"Is it really you, Floyd?"
"What's left of me, my lord."
"And that's not much; but I am glad to see you so far well," said
Hartledon, in his usual kindly tone. "I have heard reports of you from
Mr. Hillary."
"Your lordship's altered too."
"Am I?"
"Well, it seems so to me. But it's some few years now since I saw you.
Nothing has ever come to light about that pocket-book, my lord."
"I conclude not, or I should have heard of it."
"And your lordship never came down to see the place!"
"No. I left Hartledon the same day, I think, or the next. After all,
Floyd, I don't see that it is of any use looking into these painful
things: it cannot bring the dead to life again."
"That's, true," said the miller.
He was walking into Calne. Lord Hartledon kept by his side, talking to
him. He promised to be as popular a man as his father had been; and that
was saying a great deal. When they came opposite the Rectory, Lord
Hartledon wished him good day and more strength, in his genial manner,
and turned in at the Rectory gates.
About once a week he was in the habit of calling upon Mrs. Ashton. Peace
was between them; and these visits to her sick-chamber were strangely
welcome to her heart. She had loved Val Elster all her life, and she
loved him still, in spite of the past. For Val was curiously subdued; and
his present mood, sad, quiet, thoughtful, was more endearing than his
gayer one had been. Mrs. Ashton did not fail to read that he was a
disappointed man, one with some constant care upon him.
Anne was in the hall when he entered, talking to a poor applicant who was
waiting to see the Rector. Lord Hartledon lifted his hat to her, but did
not offer to shake hands. He had never presumed to touch her hand since
the reconciliation; in fact, he scarcely ever saw her.
"How is Mrs. Ashton to-day?"
"A little better, I think. She will be glad to see you."
He followed the servant upstairs, and Anne turned to the woman again.
Mrs. Ashton was in an easy-chair near the window; he drew one close to
her.
"You are looking wonderful to-day, do you know?" he began in tones almost
as gay as those of the light-hearted Val Elster. "What is it? That very
becoming cap?"
"The cap, of course. Don't you see its pink ribbons? Your favourite
colour used to be pink, Val. Do you remember?"
"I remember everything. But indeed and in truth you look better, dear
Mrs. Ashton."
"Yes, better to-day," she said, with a sigh. "I shall fluctuate to the
end, I suppose; one day better, the next worse. Val, I think sometimes
it is not far off now."
Very far off he knew it could not be. But he spoke of hope still: it was
in his nature to do so. In the depths of his heart, so hidden from the
world, there seemed to be hope for the whole living creation, himself
excepted.
"How is your wife to-day?"
"Quite well. She and Edward are out with the ponies and carriage."
"She never comes to see me."
"She does not go to see anyone. Though well, she's not very strong yet."
"But she's young, and will grow strong. I shall only grow weaker. I am
brave to-day; but you should have seen me last night. So prostrate! I
almost doubted whether I should rise from my bed again. I do not think
you will have to come here many more times."
"Oh, Mrs. Ashton!"
"A little sooner or a little later, what does it matter, I try to ask
myself; but parting is parting, and my heart aches sometimes. One of my
aches will be leaving you."
"A very minor one then," he said, with deprecation; but tears shone in
his dark blue eyes.
"Not a minor one. I have loved you as a son. I never loved you more,
Percival, than when that letter of yours came to me at Cannes."
It was the first time she had alluded to it: the letter written the
evening of his marriage. Val's face turned red, for his perfidy rose up
before him in its full extent of shame.
"I don't care to speak of that," he whispered. "If you only knew what my
humiliation has been!"
"Not of that, no; I don't know why I mentioned it. But I want you to
speak of something else, Val. Over and over again has it been on my lips
to ask it. What secret trouble is weighing you down?"
A far greater change, than the one called up by recollection and its
shame, came over his face now. He did not speak; and Mrs. Ashton
continued. She held his hands as he bent towards her.
"I have seen it all along. At first--I don't mind confessing it--I took
it for granted that you were on bad terms with yourself on account of the
past. I feared there was something wrong between you and your wife, and
that you were regretting Anne. But I soon put that idea from me, to
replace it with a graver one."
"What graver one?" he asked.
"Nay, I know not. I want you to tell me. Will you do so?"
He shook his head with an unmistakable gesture, unconsciously pressing
her hands to pain.
"Why not?"
"You have just said I am dear to you," he whispered; "I believe I am so."
"As dear, almost, as my own children."
"Then do not even wish to know it. It is an awful secret; and I must bear
it without sympathy of any sort, alone and in silence. It has been upon
me for some years now, taking the sweetness out of my daily bread; and it
will, I suppose, go with me to my grave. Not scarcely to lift it off my
shoulders, would I impart it to _you_."
She sighed deeply; and thought it must be connected with some of his
youthful follies. But she loved him still; she had faith in him; she
believed that he went wrong from misfortune more than from fault.
"Courage, Val," she whispered. "There is a better world than this,
where sorrow and sighing cannot enter. Patience--and hope--and trust in
God!--always bearing onwards. In time we shall attain to it."
Lord Hartledon gently drew his hands away, and turned to the window for a
moment's respite. His eyes were greeted with the sight of one of his own
servants, approaching the Rectory at full speed, some half-dozen idlers
behind him.
With a prevision that something was wrong, he said a word of adieu to
Mrs. Ashton, went down, and met the man outside. Dr. Ashton, who had seen
the approach, also hurried out.
There had been some accident in the Park, the man said. The pony had
swerved and thrown little Lord Elster: thrown him right under the other
pony's feet, as it seemed. The servant made rather a bungle over his
news, but this was its substance.
"And the result? Is he much hurt?" asked Lord Hartledon, constraining his
voice to calmness.
"Well, no; not hurt at all, my lord. He was up again soon, saying he'd
lash the pony for throwing him. He don't seem hurt a bit."
"Then why need you have alarmed us so?" interrupted Dr. Ashton,
reprovingly.
"Well, sir, it's her ladyship seems hurt--or something," cried the man.
Lord Hartledon looked at him.
"What have you come to tell, Richard? Speak out."
Apparently Richard could not speak out. His lady had been frightened and
fainted, and did not come to again. And Lord Hartledon waited to hear no
more.
The people, standing about in the park here and there--for even this
slight accident had gathered its idlers together--seemed to look at Lord
Hartledon curiously as he passed them. Close to the house he met Ralph
the groom. The boy was crying.
"'Twasn't no fault of anybody's, my lord; and there ain't any damage to
the ponies," he began, hastening to excuse himself. "The little lord only
slid off, and they stood as quiet as quiet. There wasn't no cause for my
lady's fear."
"Is she fainting still?"
"They say she's--dead."
Lord Hartledon pressed onwards, and met Mr. Hillary at the hall-door. The
surgeon took his arm and drew him into an empty room.
"Hillary! is it true?"
"I'm afraid it is."
Lord Hartledon felt his sight failing. For a moment he was a man groping
in the dark. Steadying himself against the wall, he learned the details.
The child's pony had swerved. Ralph could not tell at what, and Lady
Hartledon did not survive to tell. She was looking at him at the time,
and saw him flung under the feet of the other pony, and she rose up in
the carriage with a scream, and then fell back into the seat again. Ralph
jumped out and picked up the child, who was not hurt at all; but when he
hastened to tell her this, he saw that she seemed to have no life in her.
One of the servants, Richard, happened to be going through the Park,
within sight; others soon came up; and whilst Lady Hartledon was being
driven home Richard ran for Mr. Hillary, and then sought his master, whom
he found at the Rectory. The surgeon had found her dead.
"It must have been instantaneous," he observed in low tones as he
concluded these particulars. "One great consolation is, that she was
spared all suffering."
"And its cause?" breathed Lord Hartledon.
"The heart. I don't entertain the least doubt about it."
"You said she had no heart disease. Others said it."
"I said, if she had it, it was not developed. Sudden death from it is not
at all uncommon where disease has never been suspected."
And this was all the conclusion come to in the case of Lady Hartledon.
Examination proved the surgeon's surmise to be correct; and in answer to
a certain question put by Lord Hartledon, he said the death was entirely
irrespective of any trouble, or care, or annoyance she might have had in
the past; irrespective even of any shock, except the shock at the moment
of death, caused by seeing the child thrown. That, and that alone, had
been the fatal cause. Lord Hartledon listened to this, and went away to
his lonely chamber and fell on his knees in devout thankfulness to Heaven
that he was so far innocent.
"If she had not given way to the child!" he bitterly aspirated in the
first moments of sorrow.
That the countess-dowager should come down post-haste and invade
Hartledon, was of course only natural; and Lord Hartledon strove not to
rebel against it. But she made herself so intensely and disagreeably
officious that his patience was sorely tried. Her first act was to insist
on a stately funeral. He had given orders for one plain and quiet in
every way; but she would have her wish carried out, and raved about the
house, abusing him for his meanness and want of respect to his dead wife.
For peace' sake, he was fain to give her her way; and the funeral was
made as costly as she pleased. Thomas Carr came down to it; and the
countess-dowager was barely civil to him.
Her next care was to assume the entire management of the two children,
putting Lord Hartledon's authority over them at virtual, if not actual,
defiance. The death of her daughter was in truth a severe blow to the
dowager; not from love, for she really possessed no natural affection at
all, but from fear that she should lose her footing in the house which
was so desirable a refuge. As a preliminary step against this, she began
to endeavour to make it more firm and secure. Altogether she was
rendering Hartledon unbearable; and Val would often escape from it,
his boy in his hand, and take refuge with Mrs. Ashton.
That Lord Hartledon's love for his children was intense there could be no
question about; but it was nevertheless of a peculiarly reticent nature.
He had rarely, if ever, been seen to caress them. The boy told tales of
how papa would kiss him, even weep over him, in solitude; but he would
not give him so much as an endearing name in the presence of others. Poor
Maude had called him all the pet names in a fond mother's vocabulary;
Lord Hartledon always called him Edward, and nothing more.
A few evenings after the funeral had taken place, Mirrable, who had been
into Calne, was hurrying back in the twilight. As she passed Jabez Gum's
gate, the clerk's wife was standing at it, talking to Mrs. Jones. The two
were laughing: Mrs. Gum seemed in a less depressed state than usual, and
the other less snappish.
"Is it you!" exclaimed Mrs. Jones, as Mirrable stopped. "I was just
saying I'd not set eyes on you in your new mourning."
"And laughing over it," returned Mirrable.
"No!" was Mrs. Jones's retort. "I'd been telling of a trick I served
Jones, and Nance was laughing at that. Silk and crêpe! It's fine to be
you, Mrs. Mirrable!"
"How's Jabez, Nancy?" asked Mirrable, passing over Mrs. Jones's
criticism.
"He's gone to Garchester," replied Mrs. Gum, who was given to indirect
answers. "I thought I was never going to see you again, Mary."
"You could not expect to see me whilst the house was in its recent
state," answered Mirrable. "We have been in a bustle, as you may
suppose."
"You've not had many staying there."
"Only Mr. Carr; and he left to-day. We've got the old countess-dowager
still."
"And likely to have her, if all's true that's said," put in Mrs. Jones.
Mirrable tacitly admitted the probability. Her private opinion was that
nothing short of a miracle could ever remove the Dowager Kirton from the
house again. Had any one told Mirrable, as she stood there, that her
ladyship would be leaving of her own accord that night, she had simply
said it was impossible.
"Mary," cried the weak voice of poor timid Mrs. Gum, "how was it none of
the brothers came to the funeral? Jabez was wondering. She had a lot,
I've heard."
"It was not convenient to them, I suppose," replied Mirrable. "The one
in the Isle of Wight had gone cruising in somebody's yacht, or he'd have
come with the dowager; and Lord Kirton telegraphed from Ireland that he
was prevented coming. I know nothing about the rest."
"It was an awful death!" shivered Mrs. Gum. "And without cause too; for
the child was not hurt after all. Isn't my lord dreadfully cut up, Mary?"
"I think so; he's very quiet and subdued. But he has seemed full of
sorrow for a long while, as if he had some dreadful care upon him. I
don't think he and his wife were very happy together," added Mirrable.
"My lord's likely to make Hartledon his chief residence now, I fancy,
for--My gracious! what's that?"
A crash as if a whole battery of crockery had come down inside the
house. A moment of staring consternation ensued, and nervous Mrs. Gum
looked ready to faint. The two women disappeared indoors, and Mirrable
turned homewards at a brisk pace. But she was not to go on without an
interruption. Pike's head suddenly appeared above the hurdles, and he
began inquiring after her health. "Toothache gone?" asked he.
"Yes," she said, answering straightforwardly in her surprise. "How did
you know I had toothache?" It was not the first time by several he had
thus accosted her; and to give her her due, she was always civil to him.
Perhaps she feared to be otherwise.
"I heard of it. And so my Lord Hartledon's like a man with some dreadful
care upon him!" he went on. "What is the care?"
"You have been eavesdropping!" she angrily exclaimed.
"Not a bit of it. I was seated under the hedge with my pipe, and you
three women began talking. I didn't tell you to. Well, what's his
lordship's care?"
"Just mind your own business, and his lordship will mind his," she
retorted. "You'll get interfered with in a way you won't like, Pike, one
of these days, unless you mend your manners."
"A great care on him," nodded Pike to himself, looking after her, as she
walked off in her anger. "A great care! _I_ know. One of these fine days,
my lord, I may be asking you questions about it on my own score. I might
long before this, but for--"
The sentence broke off abruptly, and ended with a growl at things in
general. Mr. Pike was evidently not in a genial mood.
Mirrable reached home to find the countess-dowager in a state more easily
imagined than described. Some sprite, favourable to the peace of
Hartledon, had been writing confidentially from Ireland regarding Kirton
and his doings. That her eldest son was about to steal a march on her and
marry again seemed almost indisputably clear; and the miserable dowager,
dancing her war-dance and uttering reproaches, was repacking her boxes in
haste. Those boxes, which she had fondly hoped would never again leave
Hartledon, unless it might be for sojourns in Park Lane! She was going
back to Ireland to mount guard, and prevent any such escapade. Only in
September had she quitted him--and then had been as nearly ejected as a
son could eject his mother with any decency--and had taken the Isle of
Wight on her way to Hartledon. The son who lived in the Isle of Wight
had espoused a widow twice his own age, with eleven hundred a year, and a
house and carriage; so that he had a home: which the countess-dowager
sometimes remembered.
Lord Hartledon was liberal. He gave her a handsome sum for her journey,
and a cheque besides; most devoutly praying that she might keep guard
over Kirton for ever. He escorted her to the station himself in a closed
carriage, an omnibus having gone before them with a mountain of boxes,
at which all Calne came out to stare.
And the same week, confiding his children to the joint care of Mirrable
and their nurse--an efficient, kind, and judicious woman--Lord Hartledon
departed from home and England for a sojourn on the Continent, long or
short, as inclination might lead him, feeling as a bird released from
its cage.