THAT THOU ART BLAMED SHALL NOT BE THY DEFECT.
Yesterday _this_ day's madness did prepare,
To-morrow's silence, triumph, or despair.
Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why;
Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.
--Omar Khayyam.
Once, as Dolly was hurrying away through the passages to the great front
entrance, she looked back, for she thought she heard Robert's step
coming after her. It was only Casimir, the servant, who had been
loitering by a staircase, and had seen her pass. She came to the great
wide doors of the music-hall, where the people were congregated, the
servants carrying their mistresses' carriage cloaks over their arms, the
touters and vendors of programmes. The music was still in her ears; she
felt very calm, very strange. Casimir would have darted off for the
carriage if she had not stopped him.
'Is Mademoiselle indisposed? Shall I accompany her?' he asked.
But although Dolly looked very pale, she said she was not ill; she would
go home alone: and when she was safely seated in the little open
carriage he called for her, the colour came back into her cheeks. She
leant back, for she was very tired. As she drove along she tried to
remember what had happened, to think what more would happen, but she
could not do so. It was a feeling, not an event, that had moved her so;
and the outward events that relate these great unseen histories to
others are to the actors themselves of little consequence. As for the
future, Dolly could scarcely believe in a future. Was anything left to
her now? Her life seemed over, and she was scarcely twenty; she was
sorry for herself. She did not regret what she had done, for he did not
love her. It was Rhoda whom he loved; Rhoda who seemed to have absorbed
everything, little by little. There was nothing that she had spared.
Dolly wondered what they would say at the Court. She thought of Frank
Raban, too. If the Squire's news was true, Frank Raban would be thinking
no more of her, but absorbed in other interests. Even Frank--was any one
faithful in life? Then she thought of George: he had not failed: he had
been true to the end, and this comforted her.
Everything seemed to have failed with her, and yet--how shall I explain
it?--Dolly was at peace with herself. In her heart she knew that she had
tried, almost tried to do her best. No pangs of conscience assailed her
as she drove home through this strange chaos of regrets and
forgetfulness. Her hands fell into her lap as she leant back in the
little carriage: it was bringing her away through the dull rattle of the
streets to a new home, a new life, swept and garnished, so it seemed to
Dolly, where everything was strange and bare--one in which, perhaps,
little honour was to be found, little credit. What did she care! She was
too true a lady to trouble herself about resentments and petty slights
and difficulties. They had both meant to do right. As for Rhoda, Dolly
would not think of Rhoda just then, it hurt her. For George's sake she
must try to think kindly of her; was it for _her_ to cast a stone? Dolly
came upstairs slowly and steadily, opened the door, which was on the
latch, and came in, looking for her mother. Miss Vanborough had never,
not even in the days of her happy love, looked more beautiful than she
did as she came into the little sitting-room at home. A light was in her
face; it was the self-forgetful look of someone who has passed for a
moment beyond the common state of life, escaping the assaults of selfish
passion, into a state where feeling is not destroyed but multiplied
beyond itself. In these moods sacrifice scarcely exists. The vanities of
the world glitter in vain, discord cannot jar, and in the midst of
tumult and sorrow souls are at peace.
Mrs. Palmer was not alone; the Squire was there. He had brought news. He
had been detained by a peremptory telegram from Norah--'_Jonah arrives
Paris to-morrow; mamma says, remain; bring Jonah home_'--and Jonah, who
had come almost at the same time as the telegram, had accompanied the
Squire, and was waiting impatiently enough hoping to see Dolly. He had
been somewhat bored by the little elderly flirtation which had been
going on for the last half-hour between his aunt and his godfather
(which sort of _pot-pourri_, retaining a certain faint perfume of bygone
roses, is not uncommon); but he did not move, except to go and stand out
upon the balcony and stare up and down the street; he was leaning over
the slender railing when Dolly came in, and so it happened that at first
she only saw the Squire sitting by her mother's easy-chair. She gave him
her hand. He stood holding it in his, and looking at her, for he saw
that something had happened.
'Alone!' said Mrs. Palmer. 'Is Robert with you? I have some news for
you; guess, Dolly;' and Philippa looked archly towards the window.
Dolly looked at her mother. 'I left them at the concert,' she said, not
asking what the news was.
'What made you leave them? Why do you stare at me like that?' cried Mrs.
Palmer, forgetting her news. 'Have you had another quarrel? Dolly, I
have only just been saying so to Mr. Anley; under the circumstances you
really should _not_--you _really_ should----'
'It has all been a mistake, mamma,' said Dolly, looking up, though she
did not see much before her. 'Everything is over. Robert and I have
parted, quite parted,' she repeated sadly.
'Parted!' exclaimed the Squire; 'has it come to this?'
'Parted!' cried poor exasperated Philippa. 'I warned you. It is your own
fault, Dolly; you have been possessed all along. Mr. Anley, what is to
be done?' cried the poor lady, turning from one to the other. 'Is it
your doing or Robert's? Dolly, what is it all about?'
Dolly did not answer for an instant, for she could not speak.
The Squire began muttering something between his teeth, as he strode up
and down the room with his hands in his pockets.
'Take care, you will knock over the jardiniere,' cried Mrs. Palmer.
Dolly's eyes were all full of tears by this time. As he turned she laid
her hand upon the old man's arm. 'It is my doing, not his,' she said.
'You must not be hard upon him; indeed it is all my doing.'
'It is your doing now, and most properly,' said the Squire, very
gravely, and not in the least in his usual half-joking manner. 'I can
only congratulate you upon having got rid of that abominable prig; but
you must not take it all upon yourself, my poor child.'
Dolly blushed up. 'You think it is not my fault,' she said, and the glow
spread and deepened; 'he was not bound when he left me, only I had
promised to wait'--then with sudden courage, 'You will not blame him
when I tell you this,' she said: 'I have not been true to him, not quite
true--I told him so; it was a pity, all a pity,' she said, with a sigh.
She stood with hanging hands and a sweet, wistful, tender face; her
voice was like a song in its unconscious rhythms, for deep feeling gives
a note to people's voices that is very affecting sometimes.
'You told him so--what will people say?' shrieked poor Mrs. Palmer; 'and
here is Jonah, whom we have quite forgotten.'
Jonah was standing listening with all his honest ears. It seemed to the
young soldier that he also had been listening to music, to some sweet
sobbing air played with tender touch. It seemed to fill the room even
after Dolly had left it; for when she turned and suddenly saw her cousin
it was the climax of that day's agitation. She came up and kissed him
with a little sob of surprise and emotion, tried to speak in welcome,
and then shook her head and quickly went away, shutting the door behind
her. As Dolly left the room the two men looked at one another. They were
almost too indignant with Henley to care to say what they thought of his
conduct. 'Had not we better go?' said Jonah, awkwardly, after a pause.
But Mrs. Palmer could not possibly dispense with an audience on such an
occasion as this; she made Jonah promise to return to dinner, she
detained the Squire altogether to detail to him the inmost feelings of a
mother's heart; she sent for cups of tea. 'Is Miss Dolly in her room,
Julie?' she asked.
'Yes, Madame; she has locked the door,' said Julie.
'Go and knock, then, immediately, Julie; and come and tell me what she
says, poor dear.'
Then Mrs. Palmer stirs her own tea, and describes all that she has felt
ever since first convinced of Robert's change of feeling. Her experience
had long ago taught her to discover those signs of indifference
which.... The poor Squire listens in some impatience.
* * * * *
Meanwhile Robert and Rhoda are driving home together from the concert,
flattered, dazzled, each pursuing their own selfish schemes, each seeing
the fulfilment of small ambitions at hand, and Dolly, sitting at the
foot of her bed, is saying good-by again and again. The person she had
loved, and longed to see, and thought of day after day and hour after
hour, was not Henley, but some other quite different man, with his face,
perhaps, but with another soul and nature.... That Robert, who had been
so dear to her at one time, so vivid, so close a friend, so wise, so
sympathetic, so strong, and so tender, was nothing, no one--he had never
existed. The death of this familiar friend, the dispersion of this
familiar ghost seemed, for a few hours, as if it meant her own
annihilation. All her future seemed to have ended here. It was true that
she had accused herself openly of want of faithfulness; but the mere
fact of having accused herself seemed to make that self-reproach lighter
and more easy to bear. After some time she roused herself; Marker was at
the door and saying that it was dinner-time, and Dolly let her in and
dressed for dinner in a dreamy sort of way, taking the things, as Marker
handed them to her, in silence, one by one. The Squire and Jonah were
both in the sitting-room when Dolly came in in the white dress she
usually wore, with some black ribbons round her waist, and tied into her
bronze hair. She did not want to look as if she was a victim, and she
tried to smile as usual.
'You must not mind me,' she said presently, in return for the Squire's
look of sympathy. 'It is not to-day that this has happened; it began so
long ago that I am used to it now.' Then she added, 'Mamma, I should
like to see Robert again this evening, for I left him very abruptly, and
I am afraid he may be unhappy about me.'
'Oh, as to that, Dolly, from what the Squire tells me, I don't think you
need be at all alarmed,' cried Dolly's mamma: 'Jonah met him on the
stairs with Rhoda, and really, from what I hear, I think he must have
already proposed. I wonder if he will have the face to come in himself
to announce it.'
Both Jonah and the Squire began to talk together, hoping to stop Mrs.
Palmer's abrupt disclosures; but who was there who could silence Mrs.
Palmer? She alluded a great deal to a certain little bird, and
repeatedly asked Dolly during dinner whether she thought this dreadful
news could be true, and Robert really engaged to Rhoda?
'I think it is likely to be true before long, mamma,' said Dolly,
patiently: 'I hope so.'
She seemed to droop and turn paler and paler in the twilight. She was
not able to pretend to good spirits that she did not feel; but her
sweetness and simplicity went straight to the heart of her two
champions, who would have gladly thrown Robert out of the first-floor
window if Dolly had shown the slightest wish for it.
After dinner, as they all sat in the front room, with wide-evening
windows, Julie brought in the lamp. She would have shut out the evening
and drawn down the blinds if they had not prevented her. The little
party sat silently watching the light dancing and thrilling behind the
house-tops; nobody spoke. Dolly leant back wearily. From time to time
Mrs. Palmer whispered any fresh surmise into the Squire's ear: 'Why did
not Robert come? Was _she_ keeping him back?'
Presently Mrs. Palmer started up: a new idea had occurred to her. She
would go in herself, unannounced: she would learn the truth: the Squire,
he too, must come. The Squire did as he was bid: as they left the room
Jonah got up shyly from his seat, and went and stood out on the balcony.
Dolly asked him whether there was a moon.
'There is a moon rising,' said the Captain, 'but you can't see it from
where you sit; there from the sofa you can see it.' And then he came
back, and wheeled the sofa round, and began turning down the wheel of
the lamp, saying it put the moonlight out.
As the lamp went out suddenly with a splutter, all the dim radiance of
the silver evening came in a soft vibration to light the darkened room.
One stream of moonlight trickled along the balcony, another came lapping
the stone coping of the window: the moon was rising in state and in
silence, and Dolly leant back among her cushions, watching it all with
wide open eyes. Jonah's dark cropped head rose dark against the Milky
Way. As the moon rose above the gable of the opposite roof a burst of
chill light flooded the balcony, and overflowed, and presently reached
the foot of the couch where Dolly was lying, worn out by her long day.
* * * * *
Robert, who had been taking a rapid walk on the pavement outside, had
not noticed the moon: he was preoccupied by more important matters.
Rhoda's speeches were ringing in his ears. Yet it was Dolly's fault all
along; he was ready to justify himself; to meet complaint with
complaint; she might have been a happy woman. He had behaved honourably
and forbearingly; and now it was really unfair that she should expect
anything more from him, or complain because he had found his ideal in
another and more feminine character.
Dolly had heard the roll of the wheels of the carriage that brought
Robert and Rhoda home, but she had not heard the short little dialogue
which was being spoken as the wheels rolled under the gateway. The two
had not said much on the way. Rhoda waited for Robert to speak. Robert
sat gazing at his boots.
'One knows what everybody will say,' he said at last very crossly.
'The people who know you as I do will say that Dolly might have been a
happy woman,' Rhoda answered; 'that she has wrecked her own happiness;'
and then they were both again silent.
Rhoda was frightened, and trembled as she looked into Robert's offended
face. She thought that the end of it all might be that he would
go--leave her and all other complications, and Rhoda had not a few of
her own. If he were to break free? Rhoda's heart beat with apprehension;
her feeling for Robert was more genuine than most of her feelings, and
this was her one excuse for the part she had played. Her nature was so
narrow, her life had been so stinted, that the first touch of sentiment
overbalanced and carried her away. Dolly possessed the genius of living
and loving and being to a degree that Rhoda could not even conceive;
with all her tact and quickness she could not reach beyond herself. For
some days past she had secretly hoped for some such catastrophe as that
which had just occurred. She had taken the situation for granted.
'One sometimes knows by instinct what people feel,' she said at last. 'I
have long felt that Dolly did not understand you; but then, indeed, you
are not easy to understand.' And Robert, raising his eyes from his
boots, met the beautiful gloom of her speaking eyes.
One has sometimes watched a cat winding its way between little perils of
every sort. Rhoda softly and instinctively avoided the vanities of
Robert's mind; she was presently telling him of her troubles, money
troubles among the rest. She had spent more than her income; she did not
dare confess to Mr. Tapeall; she felt utterly incapable of managing that
fortune which ought never to have been hers--which she was ready to give
up at any hour.
'Cleverer people than I am might do something with all this money,' said
Rhoda. 'Something worth doing: but I seem only to get into trouble. You
say you will help me, but you will soon be gone.'
'I shall be always ready to advise you,' said Robert. 'If there is
anything at any time----'
'But when you are gone?' said Rhoda, with great emotion.
There was a pause; the horses clattered in under the gateway.
'You must tell me to stay,' said Robert in a low voice, as he helped
Rhoda out of the carriage.
As the two slowly mounted the staircase which Dolly had climbed, Jonah,
coming away from his aunt's apartment, almost ran up against them.
Robert exclaimed, but Jonah passed on. What did Rhoda care that he
brushed past as if he had not seen them? She was sure he had seen them,
and Rhoda had her own reasons for wishing no time to be lost before her
news was made public. She had won her great stake, secured her prize:
her triumph was not complete until others were made aware of all that
had happened. She urged Robert to tell his aunt at once.
'It is only fair to yourself. Dolly will be telling her story--dear
Dolly, she is always so kind; but still, as you have often said, there
are two sides to a question. I am afraid your cousin passed us
intentionally,' said Rhoda. 'Not that I care for anything now.'
'Let us have our dinner in peace,' said Robert; 'and then I will tell
them anything you like,' and he sank down comfortably into one of the
big arm-chairs, not sorry to put after dinner out of her mind. While he
was with Rhoda he was at ease with himself, and thought of nothing else;
but he had vague feelings of a conscience standing outside on the
landing and ready to clutch him as he passed out of the charm of her
presence.
He did not go straight off to his aunt when he left Rhoda, and so it
happened that he missed Mrs. Palmer when she burst in upon Rhoda and
Miss Rougemont. The resolute Robert was pacing the pavement outside and
trying to make up his mind to face those who seemed to him now more like
life-long enemies than friends. He took courage at last and determined
to get it over, and he turned up the street again and climbed the
staircase once more. Philippa had left the hall-door open, and Robert
walked in as he had been used to do; he opened the drawing-room door. He
was angry with Dolly still, angry with her mother, and ready to resent
their reproaches. Robert opened the drawing-room door and stopped short
at the threshold....
The room was not dark, for the bright moonlight was pouring in. Dolly
was still lying asleep. A log burnt low in the fire-place, crimsoning
the silver light. Robert was startled. He came forward a few steps and
stood in the darkened room looking at the sleeping girl: something in
her unconsciousness, in the utter silence, in the absence of reproach,
smote him as no words of blame or appeal could have done. His excuses,
his self-assertions, of what good were they here--who cared for them
here? She scarcely moved, she scarcely seemed to breathe; her face
looked calm, it was almost like the face of a dead person; and so she
was--dead to him.
For an instant he was touched; taken by surprise; he longed to awaken
her, to ask her to forgive him for leaving her; but as he stood there a
dark figure appeared in the open window; it was Jonah, who did not
speak, but who pointed to the door.
At any other time Robert might have resented this, but to-night
something had moved his cold and selfish heart, some ray from Dolly's
generous spirit had unconsciously reached him at last. He turned away
and went quietly out of the room, leaving her sleeping still.
He did not see her again; two days later she left for England.