A WALKING PARTY.
Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite
Beyond it blooms the garden that I love;
News from the teeming city comes to it,
In sound of funeral or marriage bells.
The young people were starting for another walk that afternoon. Rhoda
and Dolly were holding up their parasols and their white dresses out of
the dust. They were half-way down the sunshiny lane when they met Frank
Raban (of whom they had been speaking) coming to call at Church House.
'You had much better come along with us, Frank,' said George, who was
always delighted to welcome his friends, however soon he might quarrel
with them afterwards.
'I have an appointment at five o'clock,' said Raban, hesitating, and
with a glance at Miss Vanborough, who was standing a little apart, and
watching the people passing up and down the road.
'Five o'clock!' said George; 'five o'clock is ever so far away--on board
a steamer, somewhere in the Indian Ocean; the passengers are looking
over the ship's side at the porpoises. Where is your appointment?'
'Do you know a place called Nightingale Lane?' said Frank.
'I know Nightingale Lane; it is as good a place as any other. Come, we
will show you the way;' and, putting his arm through Frank's, George
dragged him along.
'I wish George had not asked him,' said Robert, in a low voice. 'There
were several things I wanted to consult you about, Dolly! but I must get
a quiet half-hour. Not now, at some better opportunity.'
'Why, Robert!' said Dolly; 'what can you have to say that will take
half-an-hour! 'She was, however, much flattered that Robert should wish
to consult her, and she walked along brightly.
It was a lovely spring afternoon: people were all out in the open air;
the little Quaker children who lived in the house at the corner of the
terrace were looking out of window with their prim little bonnets, and
Dolly, who knew them, nodded gaily as she passed. She was quite happy
again. Robert had looked at her so kindly. She was in charity with the
whole world. She had scarcely had a word of explanation with George, but
she had made it up with him in her heart. When he asked her for a second
help of cold pie at luncheon, she took it as a sign of forgiveness. They
went on now by the brown houses of Phillimore Terrace, until they
reached a place where the bricks turn into green leaves, and branches
arch overhead, and two long avenues lead from the ancient high road of
the Trinobants all the way to the palatine heights of Campden Hill.
When they were in the avenue, the young people went and stood under the
shade of a tree. George was leaning against the iron rail that separates
the public walk from the park beyond. They were standing with their feet
on the turf in a cris-cross of shadow, of twigs, and green blades
sprouting between. Beyond the rail the lawns and fields sloped to where
the old arcades and the many roofs and turrets of Holland House rose,
with their weather-cocks veering upon the sky. Great trees were
spreading their shadows upon the grass. Some cows were trailing across
the meadow, and from beyond the high walls came the echo of the streets
without--a surging sound of voices and wheels, a rising tide of life, of
countless feet beating upon the stones. Here, behind the walls, all was
sweet and peaceful afternoon, and high overhead hung a pale daylight
moon.
'Are not you glad to have seen this pretty view of the old house, Mr.
Raban?' said Dolly to Frank, who happened to be standing next to her.
'Don't you like old houses?' she added, graciously, in her new-found
amenity.
'I don't know' said Frank. 'They are too much like coffins and full of
dead men's bones. Modern lath and plaster has the great advantage of
being easily swept away with its own generation. These poor old places
seem to me all out of place among omnibuses and railway whistles.'
'The associations of Holland House must be very interesting,' said
Robert.
'I hate associations,' said Frank, looking hard at Dolly. 'To-day is
just as good as yesterday.'
Dolly looked surprised, then blushed up.
It is strange enough, after one revelation of a man or woman, to meet
with another of the same person at some different time. The same person
and not the same. The same voice and face, looking and saying such other
things, to which we ourselves respond how differently. Here were Raban
and Dolly, who had first met by a grave, now coming together in another
world and state, with people laughing and talking; with motion, with
festivity. Walking side by side through the early summer streets, where
all seemed life, not death; hope and progress, not sorrow and
retrospect--for Dolly's heart was full of the wonder of life and of the
dazzling present. After that first meeting, she had begun to look upon
the Raban of to-day as a new person altogether, a person who interested
her, though she did not like him. Even Dorothea in her softest moods
seemed scarcely to thaw poor Frank. When he met her, his old, sad,
desperate self used to rise like a phantom between them--no wonder he
was cold, and silent, and abrupt. He could talk to others--to Rhoda, who
wore his poor wife's shining cross, and had stood by her coffin, as he
thought, and who now met him with looks of sympathy, and who seemed to
have forgotten the past. To Miss Vanborough he rarely spoke; he barely
answered her if she spoke to him; and yet I don't think there was a word
or look of Dolly's that Raban ever forgot. All her poor little faults he
remembered afterwards; her impatient ways, and imperious gestures, her
hasty impulse and her innocent severity. What strange debtor and
creditor account was this between them?
There are some people we only seem to love all the more because they
belong to past sorrow. Perhaps it is that they are of the guild of those
who are initiated into the sad secrets of life. Others bring back the
pain without its consolation; and so Dolly, who was connected with the
tragedy of poor Frank Raban's life, frightened him. When, as now, he
thought he had seen a remembering look in her eyes, the whole
unforgettable past would come before him with cruel vividness. She
seemed to him like one of the avenging angels with the flaming swords,
ready to strike. Little he knew her! The poor angel might lift the heavy
sword, but it would be with a trembling hand. She might remember, but it
was as a child remembers--with awe, but without judgment. The little
girl he had known had pinned up her locks in great brown loops; her
short skirts now fell in voluminous folds; she was a whole head taller,
and nearly seventeen: but if the truth were told, I do not think that
any other particular change had come to her, so peaceful had been her
experience. Frank was far more changed. He had fought a hard fight with
himself since that terrible day he had sat under the arch in the
twilight. He had conquered Peace in some degree, and now already he felt
it was no longer peace that he wanted, but more trouble. Already, in his
heart, he rebelled at the semi-claustration of the tranquil refuge he
had found, where the ivy buttresses and scrolled iron gateways seemed to
shut out wider horizons. But hitherto work was what he wanted, not
liberty. He had made debts and difficulties for himself during that
wild, foolish time at Paris! These very debts and difficulties were his
best friends now, and kept him steady to his task. He accepted the yoke,
thankful for an honest means of livelihood. He took the first chance
that offered, and he put a shoulder to the old pulley at which he had
tugged as a boy with a dream of something beyond, and at which he
laboured as a man with some sense of duty done. He went on in a dogged,
hopeless way from day to day. He is a man of little faith, and yet of
tender heart.
Some one says that the world is a mirror that reflects the faces that we
bring to the surface. Frank's scepticisms met him at every turn. He even
judged his own ideal; and as he could not but think of Dolly every hour
of the day, he doubted her unceasingly. There seemed scarcely a
responsive chord left to him with which to vibrate to the song of those
about him. Until he believed in himself again, he could not heartily
believe in others.
Others, meanwhile, were happily not silent because of his reserve, and
were chattering and laughing gaily. Rhoda was sitting on the shady
corner of a bench, George was swinging his legs on the railing. Dolly
did not sit down. She was not tired; she was in high spirits. By
degrees, she seemed to absorb all her companion's life and brightness.
So Raban thought as he glanced from Rhoda's pale face to Miss
Vanborough's beaming countenance. Dolly's brown hair was waving in a
pretty drift, her violet ribbons seemed to make her grey eyes look
violet. She had a long neck, a long chin; her white ample skirt almost
hid Rhoda as she sat in her corner. The girl shifted gently from her
seat, and slid away when Dolly--Dolly sobering down--began to tell some
of Lady Sarah's stories of Holland House and its inmates.
'There was beautiful Lady Diana Rich,' said Dorothea, pointing with her
gloved hand.
'Don't say Diana,' cries George; 'say Di[=a]na.'
'She was walking in the Park,' continues his sister, unheeding the
interruption, 'when she met a lady coming from behind a tree dressed, as
she was herself, in a habit. Then she recognised herself,' Dolly said,
slowly, opening her grey eyes; 'and she went home, and she died within
a----'
Dolly, hearing a rustle, looked over her shoulder, and her sentence
broke down. A white figure was coming from behind the great stem of the
elm-tree, near which they were standing. In a moment, Dolly recovered
herself, and began to laugh.
'Rhoda!' she said. 'I did not know you had moved. I thought you were my
fetch.'
'No; I'm myself, and I don't like ghost stories,' said Rhoda, in her
shrill voice. 'They frighten me so, though I don't believe a word of
them. Do you, Mr. Raban?'
'Not believe!' cries George, putting himself in between Frank and Rhoda.
'Don't you believe in the White Lady of Holland House? She flits through
the rooms once a year all in white satin, on the day of her husband's
execution. They cut off his head in a silver nightcap, and she can't
rest in her grave when she thinks of it.'
'Poor ghost!' said Dolly. 'I'm so sorry for ghosts. I sometimes think I
know some live ones,' the girl added, looking at Frank unconsciously,
and with more softness than he had believed her capable of.
'The first Lord Holland was a Rich,' said Henley, tapping with his cane
upon the iron bars. 'He must have been the father of Lady Diana. He
married a Cope. The Copes built the house, you know. I believe Aubrey de
Vere was the original possessor of the property. It then passed to the
monks of Abingdon.'
'What a fund of information!' said George, laughing. 'Raban is immensely
impressed.'
Raban could not help smiling; but Dolly interposed. She saw that her
cousin was only half pleased by the levity with which his remarks were
received. 'What had Lord Holland done?' she asked.
'He betrayed everybody,' said Robert; 'first one side, then another. He
earned his fate--he was utterly unreliable and inconsistent.'
'How can an honest man be anything else?' cried George, with his usual
snort, rushing to battle. 'No honest men are consistent. Take Sir Robert
Peel, take Oliver Cromwell. Lord Holland joined the Commonwealth, and
then gave his head to save the King's. It was gloriously inconsistent.'
'For my part,' Robert answered, with some asperity, I must confess that
I greatly dislike such impulsive characters. They are utterly
unscrupulous....'
'Some consciences might have been more scrupulously consistent than Lord
Holland's, and kept their heads upon their shoulders,' said Raban,
drily.
Dolly wondered what he meant, and whether he was serious. He spoke so
shortly that she did not always understand him.
'I am sure I shall often change my mind,' she said, to her cousin.
'You are a woman, you know,' answered Henley, mollified by her sweet
looks.
'And women need not trouble themselves about their motives?' said Frank,
speaking in his most sententious way, and ignoring Henley altogether.
'Their motives don't concern anybody but themselves, cried Dolly, rather
offended by Frank's manner. He seemed to look upon her as some naughty
child, to be constantly reproved and put down. Why did he dislike her?
Dolly wondered. She couldn't understand anybody disliking her. Perhaps
it says well for human nature, on the whole, that people are so
surprised to find themselves odious to others.
Just then some church-bell began to ring for evening service. Five
o'clock had come to Kensington, and George proposed that they should
walk on with Raban to the house in Nightingale Lane.
'This way, Rhoda,' he said; 'are you tired? Take my arm.'
Rhoda, however, preferred tripping by Dolly's side.
A painter lived in the house to which Raban was going. It stood, as he
said, in Nightingale Lane, within garden-walls. It looked like a
farm-house, with its many tiles and chimneys, standing in the sweet
old garden fringed with rose-bushes. There were poplar-trees
and snowball-trees, and may-flowers in their season, and
lilies-of-the-valley growing in the shade. The lawn was dappled with
many shadows of sweet things. From the thatched porch you could hear the
rural clucking of poultry and the lowing of cattle, and see the sloping
roof of a farm-house beyond the elms. Henley did not want to come in;
but Dolly and Rhoda had cried out that it was a dear old garden, and had
come up to the very door, smiling and wilfully advancing as they looked
about them.
The old house--we all know our way thither--has stood for many a year,
and seen many a change, and sheltered many an honoured head. One can
fancy Addison wandering in the lanes round about, and listening to the
nightingale 'with a much better voice than Mrs. Tofts, and something of
Italian manners in her diversions;' or Newton, an old man with faded
blue eyes, passing by on his way from Pitt House, hard by. Gentle Mrs.
Opie used to stay here, and ugly Wilkes to come striding up the lane in
the days of Fox and Pitt and fiery periwigs. Into one of the old
raftered rooms poor Lord Camelford was carried to die, when he fell in
his fatal duel with Mr. Best in the meadows hard by. Perhaps Sir Joshua
may have sometimes walked across from Holland House, five minutes off,
where he was, a hundred years ago, painting two beautiful young ladies.
Only yesterday I saw them; one leant from a window in the wall, the
other stood without, holding a dove in her extended hand; a boy was by
her side. Those ladies have left the window long since; but others, not
less beautiful, still come up Nightingale Lane, to visit the Sir Joshua
of our own time in his studios built against the hospitable house. My
heroine comes perforce, and looks at the old gables and elm-trees, and
stands under the rustic porch.
Robert was seriously distressed. 'Do come away,' said he; 'suppose some
one were to see us.'
Rhoda, with a little laugh, ran down one of the garden-walks, and George
went after her. Dolly stood leaning up against the doorway. She paid no
attention to Robert's remonstrance, and was listening, with upraised
eyes, to the bird up in the tree. Frank's hand was on the bell, when, as
Robert predicted, the door suddenly opened wide. A servant, carrying
papers and parcels, came out, followed by a lady in a flowing silk
dress, with a lace hood upon her head, and by a stately-looking
gentleman, in a long grey coat; erect, and with silver hair and a noble
and benevolent head.
'Why is not the carriage come up?' said the lady to the servant, who set
off immediately running with his parcels in his arms; then seeing Dolly,
who was standing blushing and confused by the open door, she said
kindly, 'Have you come to see the studios?'
'No,' said Dolly, turning pinker still: 'it was only the garden, it
looked so pretty; we came to the door with Mr. Raban.'
'I had an appointment with Mr. Royal,' said Raban, also shyly, 'and my
friends kindly showed me the way.'
'Why don't you take your friends up to see the pictures?' said the
gentleman. 'Go up all of you now that you are here.'
'My servant shall show you the way,' said the lady, with a smile, and as
the servant came back, followed by a carriage, she gave him a few
parting directions. Then the Councillor and the lady drove off to the
India Office as hard as the horses could go.
It was a white-letter day with Dolly. She followed the servant up an oak
passage, and by a long wall, where flying figures were painted. The
servant opened a side door into a room with a great window, and my
heroine found herself in better company than she had ever been in all
her life before. Two visitors were already in the studio. One was a lady
with a pale and gentle face--Dolly remembered it long afterwards when
they met again--but just then she only thought of the pictures that were
crowding upon the walls sumptuous and silent--the men and women of our
day who seem already to belong to the future, as one looks at the solemn
eyes watching from the canvas. Sweet women's faces lighted with some
spiritual grace, poets, soldiers, rulers, and windbags, side by side,
each telling their story in a well-known name. There were children too,
smiling, and sketches, half done, growing from the canvas, and here and
there a dream made into a vision, of Justice or of Oblivion. Of Silence,
and lo! Titans from their everlasting hills lie watching the mists of
life: or infinite Peace, behold, an Angel of Death is waiting against a
solemn disc. Dolly felt as though she had come with Christian to some
mystical house along the way. For some minutes past she had been gazing
at the solemn Angel--she was absorbed, she could not take her eyes away.
She did not know that the painter had come in, and was standing near
her.
'Do you know what that is?' said he, coming up to her.
'Yes,' answered Dolly in a low voice; 'I have only once seen death. I
think this must be it; only it is not terrible, as I thought.'
'I did not mean to make it terrible,' the painter said, struck by her
passing likeness to the face at which she was gazing so steadfastly.
Raban also noticed the gentle and powerful look, and in that moment he
understood her better than he had ever done before; he felt as if a
sudden ray of faith and love had fallen into his dark heart.
Before they left, Mr. Royal introduced Dolly to the two ladies who were
in the studio. He had painted the head of one of them upon a little
wooden panel that leant upon an easel by which the two ladies were
standing. One of them spoke: 'How her children will prize your gift, Mr.
Royal; it is not the likeness only, it is something more than likeness.'
'Life is short; one cannot do all things,' said the painter, quietly. 'I
have tried not so much to imitate what I see as to paint people and
things as I feel them, and as others appear to me to feel them.'
Dolly thought how many people he must have taught to feel, to see with
their eyes, and to understand.
All the way home she was talking of the pictures.
'I saw a great many likenesses which were really admirable,' said
Robert. 'I have met several of the people out at dinner.'
Rhoda could not say a single word about the pictures.
'Why, what were you about?' said Dolly, after she had mentioned two or
three one after another. 'You don't seem to have looked at anything.'
'You didn't come into the back room, Dolly. I had an excellent cup of
tea there,' said George; 'that kind lady had it sent up for us.'