UNDER THE CLOCK-TOWER.
I will tell you when they parted.
When plenteous autumn sheaves were brown,
Then they parted heavy-hearted.
The full rejoicing sun looked down
As grand as in the days before:
Only to them those days of yore
Could come back nevermore.
--C. Rossetti.
An archway leads out of the great thoroughfare from Westminster Bridge
into the sudden silence of Dean's Yard, where Sir Thomas had taken the
house of a country neighbour. It stood within the cloisters of the
Abbey, over-towered, over-clocked, with bells pealing high overhead
(ringing the hours away, the poor mother used to think). Dolly found
time one day to come for half-an-hour to see Jonah before he left. She
had a great regard for him. She had also found a staunch friend in Norah
with the grey eyes like her own. Bell told Dolly in confidence that her
mother had intended Robert to marry Norah, but this had not at all
interfered with the two girls' liking for one another. Mrs. Palmer, who
was going on farther, set Dolly down at the archway, and as the girl was
crossing the Yard she met Robert coming from the house. He was walking
along by the railing, and among the dead leaves that were heaped there
by the wind. Dolly's heart always began to beat now when she saw Robert.
This time he met her, and, with something of his old manner, said, 'Are
you in a hurry? Will you come with me a little way? I have something to
say.' And he turned into the cloister: she followed him at once.
From Dean's Yard, one gateway leads to common life and to the day's
work, struggling by with creaks and whips and haste; another gateway
brings you to a cloister arched, silent. The day's work is over for
those who are lying in the peaceful enclosure. A side door from this
cloister leads into the Abbey, where, among high piles and burning
windows, and the shrill sweet echoes of the Psalms, a silent voice
sometimes speaks of something beyond rest, beyond our feeble mode of
work and praise, and our music and Gothic types--of that which is, but
which we are not.
The afternoon service was pealing on and humming within the Abbey as
Dolly and Robert walked slowly along the cloister. He was silent a long
time. She tried to ask him what he had to say, but she found it
difficult to speak to him now. She was shy, and she scarcely knew upon
what terms they were: she did not care to know. She had said that he
should be free, and she meant it, and she was too generous to seek to
extort unwilling promises from him, or to imply that she was
disappointed that he had given none.
At last Robert spoke. 'Dolly, shall you write to me?' he said.
'Yes, Robert, if you wish it,' she answered, simply. 'I should like to
write to you.'
As she looked at him, fair and blushing, Robert said suddenly, 'Tell me,
Dora, have you never regretted your decision?'
Dolly turned away--she could not meet his eyes. Hers fell upon a slab to
the memory of some aged woman, who had, perhaps, gone through some such
experience before she had been turned into a stone. Dolly was anything
but stone. Tears slowly gathered in her eyes, and Robert saw them, and
caught hold of her hand, and at that minute there came some pealing echo
of an organ, and of voices bursting into shrill amens. All her life
Dolly remembered that strange moment of parting, for parting she felt it
to be. She must tell him the truth. She turned. 'No, Robert--never
once,' she said; 'although it is even harder than I thought to let you
go.'
They were standing by the door at the end of the first cloister. For the
last time he might have spoken then, and told her that he only loved her
the more, that distance was nothing to him, that time was nothing; but
the service had come to an end, and while he hesitated a verger came out
in his black gown, and the congregation followed--one or two strangers,
then Jonah and Bell, with red eyes both of them, looking foolish
somehow, and ashamed of being seen; then more strangers, and then with
the last remaining verger, came Rhoda and Zoe Morgan, who sometimes went
to church at the Abbey. They all joined the young couple and walked back
to the house with them.
This was Dolly's last chance for an explanation with her cousin. The
time was drawing to an end, fate came in between them now, for this very
afternoon it was settled rather suddenly, at Sir Thomas's request, that
Robert and Jonah should go as far as Marseilles together. This was
Thursday, and the young men were to start on the Saturday evening.
Lady Henley bore up very well at first, and clenched her teeth, and said
they should all come to dinner on Friday.
'It is no use sitting alone and crying one's eyes out,' said the poor
woman valiantly, and she made Sir Thomas ask a couple of Yorkshire
friends to the feast. One was a county hero, in great favour with Bell.
The other was Mr. Anley, Jonah's godfather. He had a great affection for
the family, and regularly dined with them upon grave crises and great
occasions.
Lady Henley, being liberal in her hospitality, ordered in her viands and
her champagne-bottles, and the girls went to Covent Garden and bought
fruit and pineapples and autumn flowers to dress the table, and poor
Jonah brought in a great baked pie from Gunter's.
'It's pate-de-foie-gras,' said he. 'My father likes it. I thought I
might as well have it to celebrate the occasion.' And he held it up
triumphantly.
Poor Lady Henley had almost over-rated her powers of endurance, for she
looked into his honest sallow face, and then suddenly got up and rushed
out of the room.
'Go to her, Jonah,' said the girls, looking very pale.
Jonah came down after a little while with a very red nose, and then he
went out again to buy something else. All day long he kept coming and
going in cabs, bringing home one thing after another--a folding-chair, a
stick to open out suddenly, a whole kitchen battery fitted into a
tea-kettle, brooches for the girls, toys for his eldest sister's
children. As for the contrivances, they served to make one evening pass
a little less heavily, and amused them for the time, and gave them
something to talk about. But soon after, all poor Jonah's possessions
went down in the Black Sea, in an ill-fated ship, that foundered with
far more precious freight on board than tin pans and folding-chairs.
Punctual to her time on the Friday, Lady Henley was there to receive her
guests in her stiffest silks, laces, and jewels, looking like some
battered fetish out of a shrine, as she sat at the head of the table.
Dolly came to dinner sorely against her will, but she was glad she had
come when she saw how Jonah brightened up, and when the poor little
wooden mother held up her face and kissed her.
Lady Henley said, 'How do you do?' to her guests, but never spoke to any
of them. It was a dreary feast. Robert failed at the last moment, and
they sat down to a table with a gap where his place should have been. No
one ate the pie except Sir Thomas, who swallowed a little bit with a
gulp; then he called for champagne, and his face turned very red, and he
looked hard at his son, and drank a long draught.
Jonah quickly filled his glass, and muttered something as he tossed it
off. He had got his mother's hand under the table in his long bony
fingers. Lady Henley was sitting staring fixedly before her. As Jonah
drank their healths, Norah gave a little gasp. Mr. Anley took snuff. One
of the country neighbours, young Mr. Jack Redmayne, whom Miss Bell used
to meet striding, riding, and walking round about Smokethwaite, had
begun a story about some celebrated mare; he paused for an instant, then
suddenly rallying, went on and on with it, although nobody was
listening, not even Miss Bell.
'I thought it best to go on talking,' he said afterwards. 'I hope they
don't think it unfeeling. I'm sure I don't know what I said. I put my
horse a dozen times over the same gate; even old Firefly wouldn't stand
such treatment.' So the dinner went on; the servants creaked about, and
the candles burnt bright, but no one could rally, and Lady Henley was
finally obliged to leave the table.
Immediately after dinner came old Sam with his cab, and Dolly and her
mother got up to go.
'I cannot think what possessed Joanna to give that funeral-feast,' said
Mrs. Palmer, as they were putting on their cloaks.
'Hush, mamma,' said Dolly, for Jonah was coming running and tumbling
downstairs breathless from his mother's room.
'Look here, Dolly,' he said: 'mother wants you to come and see her
to-morrow after I am gone, and don't let her worry too much, and would
you please take this?' he said. 'Please do.'
This was a pretty little crystal watch that he had bought for her, and
when Dolly hesitated and exclaimed, he added, entreatingly, 'It is my
wedding present. I thought in case we never--I mean that I should like
to give it to you myself,' he said.
'Oh! Jonah,' Dolly answered in a low voice, 'perhaps I may never want a
wedding present.'
'Never mind, keep it,' said Jonah, staring at her hand, 'and I'll look
up George the first thing. You know my father has written to his
colonel. Keep a good heart, Dolly; we are all in the same boat.'
He stood watching the cab as it drove away under the stars.
Dolly was not thinking of Jonah any more. She was looking at all the
passers-by, still hoping to see Robert.
'He ought to have come, mamma, this last night?' she said.
'My dear, do you ever expect a man to think of anything but his own
convenience?' said Mrs. Palmer, with great emphasis.
'Oh! mamma, why must one ever say good-by?' said Dolly, going on with
her own thoughts.
'I believe, even now he might persuade you to run off with him,' said
Mrs. Palmer, laughing....
* * * * *
It was over. He was gone. He had come and gone. Dolly had both dreaded
and longed to be alone with Robert, but her mother had persistently
stayed in the room. It was about four o'clock when he came, and Dolly
left her aunt's bedside and came down to the summons, and stood for an
instant at the drawing-room door. She could hear his voice within. She
held the door-handle, as she stood dizzy and weary. She thought of the
Henleys parting from their son, and envied them. Ah! how much easier to
part where love is a certainty; and now this was the last time--and he
was going, and she loved him, and she had sent him away, and he had
never said one word of regret, nor promised once to come back.
She had offered to set him free; she had said she could not leave them
all. At this moment, in her heart, Dolly felt as if she _could_ have
left them; and as if Robert, in going and in ceasing to love her, was
taking away all the light and the strength of her life. He seemed to be
making into a certainty that which she had never believed until now, and
proving to her by his deeds that his words were true, although she had
refused to believe them. She had given him a heart out of her own tender
heart, a soul out of her own loving imagination, and now where were her
imaginations? Some dry blast seemed to her to be beating about the
place, choking her parched throat and drying her tears. Her eyes were
dull and heavy-lidded; her face looked pale and frightened as she opened
the door and walked in. 'Dolly is so strong,' Mrs. Palmer was saying,
'she has courage for us all. I do not fear for her.'
'Perhaps it is best as it is,' Henley answered a little hurriedly. 'I
shall go out solely with a view to making money, and come home all the
sooner. It is certainly better not to disturb Lady Sarah with
leave-takings.'
He looked up and saw Dolly coming across the room, and was shocked by
the girl's pale face.
'My dearest Dora,' said Henley, going to meet her, 'how ill you look;
you would never have been fit for the journey.'
'Perhaps not,' said Dolly. She was quite passive, and let him hold her
hand, but a cold shadow of bitterness seemed to have fallen upon her. It
was a chilly August day. They had lit a small wood fire, and they now
brought some coffee to warm Robert before he left. Robert was very much
moved, for him.
He put down his coffee-cup untasted, and stood by the tall chimney
looking down into the fire. Then he looked at his watch, and went up to
his aunt and said good-by, and then he came and stood opposite Dolly,
who was by the window, and looked her steadily in the face. She could
not look up, though she felt his eyes upon her, and he kissed her. 'God
bless you,' he said, deserting his post with a prayer, as people do
sometimes, and without looking back once, he walked out of the room.
Robert left the room. Dolly stood quite still where he had left her; she
heard the servants' voices outside in the hall, the carriage starting
off, some one calling after it, but the wheels rolled on. She stood
dully looking through the window at some birds that were flying across
the sky. There were cloud heaps sailing, and dead leaves blowing along
the terrace, the bitter parching wind was still blowing. It was not so
much the parting as the manner of it. She had thought it so simple to
love and to be loved; she had never believed that a word would change
him. Was it her fault? Had she been cold, unkind? She was very young
still, she longed for one word of sympathy. She turned to her mother
with a sudden impulse.
'Oh, mamma!' she said, piteously.
'I cannot think how you can have been so hard-hearted, Dolly,' said her
mother. '_I_ could not have let him go alone. How long the time will
seem, poor fellow! Yes, you have been very tyrannical, Dolly.'
Was this all the comfort Mrs. Palmer had to give?
Something seemed choking in Dolly's throat; was it her hard heart that
was weighing so heavily?
'Oh! mamma, what could I do?' she said. 'I told him he was free: he
knows that I love him, but indeed he is free.'
Mrs. Palmer uttered an impatient exclamation. She had been wandering up
and down the room. She stopped short.
'Free! what do you mean. You have never said one word to me. What _have_
you been about? Do you mean that he may never come back to you?'
But Dolly scarcely heard her mother's words. The door had opened and
some one came in. Never come back? This was Robert himself who was
standing there. He had come to say one more farewell. He went straight
up to her and he caught her in his arms. 'There was just time,' he said.
'Good-by once more, dearest Dora!' It was but a moment; it was one of
those moments that last for a lifetime. Dolly lived upon it for many a
day to come. He loved her, she thought to herself, or he would never
have come back to her, and if he loved her the parting had lost its
sting.