There was nothing to hinder Pierston in calling upon the new Avice's
mother as often as he should choose, beyond the five miles of
intervening railway and additional mile or two of clambering over
the heights of the island. Two days later, therefore, he repeated his
journey and knocked about tea-time at the widow's door.
As he had feared, the daughter was not at home. He sat down beside the
old sweetheart who, having eclipsed her mother in past days, had now
eclipsed herself in her child. Jocelyn produced the girl's boot from his
pocket.
'Then, 'tis YOU who helped Avice out of her predicament?' said Mrs.
Pierston, with surprise.
'Yes, my dear friend; and perhaps I shall ask you to help me out of mine
before I have done. But never mind that now. What did she tell you about
the adventure?'
Mrs. Pierston was looking thoughtfully upon him. 'Well, 'tis rather
strange it should have been you, sir,' she replied. She seemed to be
a good deal interested. 'I thought it might have been a younger man--a
much younger man.'
'It might have been as far as feelings were concerned.... Now, Avice,
I'll to the point at once. Virtually I have known your daughter any
number of years. When I talk to her I can anticipate every turn of her
thought, every sentiment, every act, so long did I study those things in
your mother and in you. Therefore I do not require to learn her; she
was learnt by me in her previous existences. Now, don't be shocked: I am
willing to marry her--I should be overjoyed to do it, if there would
be nothing preposterous about it, or that would seem like a man making
himself too much of a fool, and so degrading her in consenting. I can
make her comparatively rich, as you know, and I would indulge her every
whim. There is the idea, bluntly put. It would set right something in my
mind that has been wrong for forty years. After my death she would have
plenty of freedom and plenty of means to enjoy it.'
Mrs. Isaac Pierston seemed only a little surprised; certainly not
shocked.
'Well, if I didn't think you might be a bit taken with her!' she
said with an arch simplicity which could hardly be called unaffected.
'Knowing the set of your mind, from my little time with you years ago,
nothing you could do in this way would astonish me.'
'But you don't think badly of me for it?'
'Not at all.... By-the-bye, did you ever guess why I asked you to
come?... But never mind it now: the matter is past.... Of course, it
would depend upon what Avice felt.... Perhaps she would rather marry a
younger man.'
'And suppose a satisfactory younger man should not appear?'
Mrs. Pierston showed in her face that she fully recognized the
difference between a rich bird in hand and a young bird in the bush. She
looked him curiously up and down.
'I know you would make anybody a very nice husband,' she said. 'I know
that you would be nicer than many men half your age; and, though there
is a great deal of difference between you and her, there have been more
unequal marriages, that's true. Speaking as her mother, I can say that
I shouldn't object to you, sir, for her, provided she liked you. That is
where the difficulty will lie.'
'I wish you would help me to get over that difficulty,' he said gently.
'Remember, I brought back a truant husband to you twenty years ago.'
'Yes, you did,' she assented; 'and, though I may say no great things as
to happiness came of it, I've always seen that your intentions towards
me were none the less noble on that account. I would do for you what I
would do for no other man, and there is one reason in particular which
inclines me to help you with Avice--that I should feel absolutely
certain I was helping her to a kind husband.'
'Well, that would remain to be seen. I would, at any rate, try to be
worthy of your opinion. Come, Avice, for old times' sake, you must help
me. You never felt anything but friendship in those days, you know, and
that makes it easy and proper for you to do me a good turn now.'
After a little more conversation his old friend promised that she really
would do everything that lay in her power. She did not say how simple
she thought him not to perceive that she had already, by writing to him,
been doing everything that lay in her power; had created the feeling
which prompted his entreaty. And to show her good faith in this promise
she asked him to wait till later in the evening, when Avice might
possibly run across to see her.
Pierston, who fancied he had won the younger Avice's interest, at least,
by the part he had played upon the rocks the week before, had a dread
of encountering her in full light till he should have advanced a little
further in her regard. He accordingly was perplexed at this proposal,
and, seeing his hesitation, Mrs. Pierston suggested that they should
walk together in the direction whence Avice would come, if she came at
all.
He welcomed the idea, and in a few minutes they started, strolling
along under the now strong moonlight, and when they reached the gates of
Sylvania Castle turning back again towards the house. After two or three
such walks up and down the gate of the castle grounds clicked, and a
form came forth which proved to be the expected one.
As soon as they met the girl recognized in her mother's companion the
gentleman who had helped her on the shore; and she seemed really glad to
find that her chivalrous assistant was claimed by her parent as an old
friend. She remembered hearing at divers times about this worthy London
man of talent and position, whose ancestry were people of her own isle,
and possibly, from the name, of a common stock with her own.
'And you have actually lived in Sylvania Castle yourself, Mr. Pierston?'
asked Avice the daughter, with her innocent young voice. 'Was it long
ago?'
'Yes, it was some time ago,' replied the sculptor, with a sinking at his
heart lest she should ask how long.
'It must have been when I was away--or when I was very little?'
'I don't think you were away.'
'But I don't think I could have been here?'
'No, perhaps you couldn't have been here.'
'I think she was hiding herself in the parsley-bed,' said Avice's mother
blandly.
They talked in this general way till they reached Mrs. Pierston's house;
but Jocelyn resisted both the widow's invitation and the desire of
his own heart, and went away without entering. To risk, by visibly
confronting her, the advantage that he had already gained, or fancied
he had gained, with the re-incarnate Avice required more courage than he
could claim in his present mood.
* * *
Such evening promenades as these were frequent during the waxing of
that summer moon. On one occasion, as they were all good walkers, it was
arranged that they should meet halfway between the island and the town
in which Pierston had lodgings. It was impossible that by this time the
pretty young governess should not have guessed the ultimate reason of
these rambles to be a matrimonial intention; but she inclined to the
belief that the widow rather than herself was the object of Pierston's
regard; though why this educated and apparently wealthy man should be
attracted by her mother--whose homeliness was apparent enough to the
girl's more modern training--she could not comprehend.
They met accordingly in the middle of the Pebble-bank, Pierston coming
from the mainland, and the women from the peninsular rock. Crossing the
wooden bridge which connected the bank with the shore proper they moved
in the direction of Henry the Eighth's Castle, on the verge of the
rag-stone cliff. Like the Red King's Castle on the island, the interior
was open to the sky, and when they entered and the full moon streamed
down upon them over the edge of the enclosing masonry, the whole present
reality faded from Jocelyn's mind under the press of memories. Neither
of his companions guessed what Pierston was thinking of. It was in this
very spot that he was to have met the grandmother of the girl at his
side, and in which he would have met her had she chosen to keep the
appointment, a meeting which might--nay, must--have changed the whole
current of his life.
Instead of that, forty years had passed--forty years of severance from
Avice, till a secondly renewed copy of his sweetheart had arisen to fill
her place. But he, alas, was not renewed. And of all this the pretty
young thing at his side knew nothing.
Taking advantage of the younger woman's retreat to view the sea through
an opening of the walls, Pierston appealed to her mother in a whisper:
'Have you ever given her a hint of what my meaning is? No? Then I think
you might, if you really have no objection.'
Mrs. Pierston, as the widow, was far from being so coldly disposed in
her own person towards her friend as in the days when he wanted to marry
her. Had she now been the object of his wishes he would not have needed
to ask her twice. But like a good mother she stifled all this, and said
she would sound Avice there and then.
'Avice, my dear,' she said, advancing to where the girl mused in the
window-gap, 'what do you think of Mr. Pierston paying his addresses to
you--coming courting, as _I_ call it in my old-fashioned way. Supposing
he were to, would you encourage him?'
'To ME, mother?' said Avice, with an inquiring laugh. 'I thought--he
meant you!'
'O no, he doesn't mean me,' said her mother hastily. 'He is nothing more
than my friend.'
'I don't want any addresses,' said the daughter.
'He is a man in society, and would take you to an elegant house in
London suited to your education, instead of leaving you to mope here.'
'I should like that well enough,' replied Avice carelessly.
'Then give him some encouragement.'
'I don't care enough about him to do any encouraging. It is his
business, I should think, to do all.'
She spoke in her lightest vein; but the result was that when Pierston,
who had discreetly withdrawn, returned to them, she walked docilely,
though perhaps gloomily, beside him, her mother dropping to the rear.
They came to a rugged descent, and Pierston took her hand to help her.
She allowed him to retain it when they arrived on level ground.
Altogether it was not an unsuccessful evening for the man with the
unanchored heart, though possibly initial success meant worse for him in
the long run than initial failure. There was nothing marvellous in the
fact of her tractability thus far. In his modern dress and style, under
the rays of the moon, he looked a very presentable gentleman indeed,
while his knowledge of art and his travelled manners were not without
their attractions for a girl who with one hand touched the educated
middle-class and with the other the rude and simple inhabitants of the
isle. Her intensely modern sympathies were quickened by her peculiar
outlook.
Pierston would have regarded his interest in her as overmuch selfish
if there had not existed a redeeming quality in the substratum of
old pathetic memory by which such love had been created--which still
permeated it, rendering it the tenderest, most anxious, most protective
instinct he had ever known. It may have had in its composition too much
of the boyish fervour that had characterized such affection when he was
cherry-cheeked, and light in the foot as a girl; but, if it was all this
feeling of youth, it was more.
Mrs. Pierston, in fearing to be frank, lest she might seem to be angling
for his fortune, did not fully divine his cheerful readiness to offer
it, if by so doing he could make amends for his infidelity to her family
forty years back in the past. Time had not made him mercenary, and it
had quenched his ambitions; and though his wish to wed Avice was not
entirely a wish to enrich her, the knowledge that she would be enriched
beyond anything that she could have anticipated was what allowed him to
indulge his love.
He was not exactly old he said to himself the next morning as he beheld
his face in the glass. And he looked considerably younger than he was.
But there was history in his face--distinct chapters of it; his brow was
not that blank page it once had been. He knew the origin of that line in
his forehead; it had been traced in the course of a month or two by past
troubles. He remembered the coming of this pale wiry hair; it had been
brought by the illness in Rome, when he had wished each night that he
might never wake again. This wrinkled corner, that drawn bit of skin,
they had resulted from those months of despondency when all seemed going
against his art, his strength, his happiness. 'You cannot live your life
and keep it, Jocelyn,' he said. Time was against him and love, and time
would probably win.
'When I went away from the first Avice,' he continued with whimsical
misery, 'I had a presentiment that I should ache for it some day. And
I am aching--have ached ever since this jade of an Ideal learnt the
unconscionable trick of inhabiting one image only.'
Upon the whole he was not without a bodement that it would be folly to
press on.