HOW CERTAIN CHARACTERS FOUND THEMSELVES, AT DEAD OF NIGHT, UPON THE
FIVE LANES ROAD.
Panting, slipping, with aching sides, but terror at his heels, Sam
Buzza tore up the hill. Lights danced before him, imaginary voices
shouted after; but he never glanced behind. The portmanteau was
monstrously heavy, and more than once he almost dropped it; but it
was tightly packed, apparently, for nothing shook inside it.
Only the handles creaked in his grasp.
He gained the top, shifted the load to his left hand, and raced down
the other side of the hill. How he reached the bottom he cannot
clearly call to mind; but he dug his heels well into the turf, and
arrived without a fall. At the foot of the slope a wire fence had to
be crossed; next the railway line, then, across the embankment,
another fence, which kept a shred of his clothing. A meadow
followed, and then he dropped over the hedge into the high road.
Here he stopped, set down the portmanteau, and looked about him.
All was quiet. So vivid was the moonlight that as looking down the
road he could mark every bush, every tuft of grass almost, on the
illumined side. Not a soul was in sight.
The night was warm, and his flight had heated him intolerably.
He felt for his handkerchief to mop his brow, but snatched his hand
away.
His coat was burning. It was the lantern. Like a fool he had
forgotten to blow it out, and an abominable smell of oil and burning
cloth now arose from his pocket. He stifled the smouldering fire,
pulled out the lantern, and looked at his watch.
It wanted twenty minutes to eleven.
He had plenty of time; so, having extinguished the lantern, and
bestowed it in another pocket, he caught up his burden and began to
walk up the road at a leisurely pace.
His terrors had cooled, but nevertheless he wished himself well out
of the scrape. The report of the gun still rang in his ears and in
fancy he could hear again the buzz of that bullet by his ear. More
than once a shadow lying across the white road gave him a twinge of
fear; and when a placid cow poked its nose over the hedge above him,
and lowed confidentially, he leapt almost out of his skin.
The task before him, too, gave him no small anxiety. The directions
in the letter were plain enough, but not so the intention of Mrs.
Goodwyn-Sandys. Did she mean him to elope with her? He did not care
to face the question. The Admiral, though an indulgent father, was
not extravagant; and Sam had but seven-and-sixpence in his pocket.
This was an excellent sum for long whist at threepenny points, but
would hardly defray the cost of an elopement. Besides, he did not
want to elope.
"No _words_ of mine will repay you." Now he came to consider, these
words wore an awkward look. Good Heavens! he had a mind to drop
the portmanteau and run home. What had he done to be tempted so?
And why had these people ever come to Troy?
Ah! Sam, that was the question we should have asked ourselves months
ago. Some time before, at a concert in the Town Hall, I remember
that Mr. Moggridge sang the line--
"Too late the balm when the heart is broke!"
And a Trojan voice at the back assented--
"A durn sight."
Why had we been denied that perspicacity now?
So with a heavy burden, and heavier conscience (both of Mrs.
Goodwyn-Sandys' packing), he trudged forward, kicking up clouds of
dust that sparkled in the moonlight. Presently the ascent grew more
gradual, the hedges lower, and over their tops he could feel the
upland air breathing coolly from the sea. And now the sign-post hove
in sight, and the cross-roads stretching whitely into distance.
If we take the town of Troy as a base, lying north and south, this
sign-post forms the apex of a triangle which has two high-roads for
its remaining sides--the one road entering Troy from the north by the
hill which Sam had just ascended, the other running southwards and
ending with a steep declivity at no great distance from "The Bower."
It was by this southern road, of course, that Mrs. Goodwyn-Sandys
would come. Sam looked along it, but all as yet was silent.
He pulled out his watch again, and, finding that he had still twenty
minutes to spare, set down his load at the foot of the signpost, and
began to walk to and fro.
So gloomy were his reflections that, to soothe his nerves, he pulled
out a cigar, lit it, and then, for lack of anything better to do,
rekindled his lantern, and resumed his walk.
The cigar was barely half smoked when he heard a noise in the
distance.
Yes, there was no doubt. It was the sound of horses. Sam caught up
the portmanteau, and stared down the highway. For a full minute he
listened to the advancing clatter, and presently, around an angle of
the road, a chaise and pair broke into view, and came up at a gallop.
Sam advanced a step or two; a white handkerchief was thrust out at
the window, and the driver pulled up suddenly. Then the face of Mrs.
Goodwyn-Sandys looked anxiously out.
"Ah! you are there," she exclaimed with a little cry of relief.
"I have been so afraid. Have you got it?"
In the moonlight, and that pretty air of timidity on her face, she
was more ravishing than ever. Her voice called as a siren's; her
eyes drew Sam irresistibly. In a second all his fears, doubts,
scruples, were flung to the winds. He held up the portmanteau, and
advanced to the carriage door.
"Here it is. Geraldine--"
"Oh! thanks, thanks. How can I show my thanks?"
The perfume of her hair floated out upon the night with the music of
her tone until they both fairly intoxicated him.
He opened the door of the chaise.
"Where shall I stow it?" he asked.
"Here, opposite me; be very careful of it."
In the darkness he saw a huge bundle of rugs piled by Geraldine's
side.
"Where am I to sit?" he asked, as he bestowed the portmanteau
carefully.
He looked up into her face. The loveliest smile rested on him, for
one instant, from those incomparable eyes. She did not answer, but
held out her hand with the grace of a maiden confessing her first
passion. He seized the ungloved fingers, and kissed them.
"Geraldine!"
At this moment a low chuckle issued from the bundle of rugs.
Sam dropped the hand, and started back as if stung. A hateful
thought flashed upon him.
"Moggridge? But no--"
He seized his lantern, and turned the slide. A stream of light shot
into the corner of the chaise, and revealed--the bland face of Mr.
Goodwyn-Sandys!
There was an instant of blank dismay. Then, with a peal of laughter,
Geraldine sank back among the cushions.
"_Good_-night!" said the Honourable Frederic with grim affability;
then, popping his head out at the further window, "Drive on, John!"
The post-boy cracked his whip, the horses sprang forward, and Sam,
with that pitiless laugh still pealing in his ears, was left standing
on the high-road.
In the tumult of the moment, beyond a wild sense of injustice, it is
my belief that his brain accomplished little. He stared dully after
the retreating chaise, until it disappeared in the direction of Five
Lanes; and then he groaned aloud.
There was a patch of turf, now heavy with dew, beside the sign-post.
Upon this he sat down, and with his elbows on his knees, and head
between his hands, strove to still the giddy whirl in his brain. And
as his folly and its bitterness found him out, the poor fool rocked
himself, and cursed the day when he was born. If any one yet doubt
that Mr. Moggridge was an inspired singer, let him turn to that
sublime aspiration in _Sophronia: a Tragedy_--
"Let me be criminal, but never weak;
For weaklings wear the stunted form of sin
Without its brave apparel"--
and considered Sam Buzza as he writhed beneath the sign-post.
_Pat, pat, pat!_
It was the muffled sound of footsteps on the dusty road. He looked
up. A dark figure, the figure of a woman, was approaching. Its air
of timorous alertness, and its tendency to seek the shadow of the
hedge-row, gave him some confidence. He arose, and stepped forward
into the broad moonlight.
The woman gave a short gasp and came to a halt, shrinking back
against the hedge. Something in her outline struck sharply on Sam's
sense, though with a flash of doubt and wonder. She carried a small
handbag, and wore a thick veil over her face.
"Who are you?" he asked gently. "Don't be afraid."
The woman made no answer--only cowered more closely against the
hedge; and he heard her breath coming hard and fast. Once more--and
for the third time that night--Sam pulled the slide of his lantern.
"_Mother!_"
"Oh! Sam, Sam, don't betray me! I'll go back--indeed I'll go back!"
"In Heaven's name, mother, what are you doing here?"
The retort was obvious, but Mrs. Buzza merely cried--
"Dear Sam, have pity on me, and take me back! I'll go quietly--quite
quietly."
The idea of his mother (who weighed eighteen stone if an ounce)
resisting with kicks and struggles might have caused Sam some
amusement, but his brain was overcrowded already.
"It's a judgment," she went on incoherently, wringing her hands;
"and I thought I had planned it so cleverly. I dressed up his
double-bass, Sam, and put it in the bed--oh! I am a wicked woman--and
pinned a note to the pin-cushion to say he had driven me to it,
throwing the breakfast things over the quay-door--real Worcester,
Sam, and marked at the bottom of each piece; and a carriage from the
Five Lanes Hotel to meet me at twelve o'clock; but I'd rather go
home, Sam; I've been longing, all the way, to go back; it's been
haunting me, that double-bass, all the time--with my nightcap,
too--the one with real lace--on the head of it. Oh! take me home,
Sam. I'm a wicked woman!"
Sam, after all, was a Trojan, and I therefore like to record his
graces. He drew his mother's arm within his with much tenderness,
kissed her, and began to lead her homewards quietly and without
question.
But the poor soul could not be silent; and so, very soon, the whole
story came out. At the mention of Mrs. Goodwyn-Sandys Sam shut his
teeth sharply.
"I shall never be able to face her, Sam."
"I don't think you need trouble about that, mother," he answered
grimly.
"But I do. It was she--"
But at this moment, from the hedge, a few yards in front, there
issued a hollow groan.
They halted, and questioned each other with frightened eyes.
"Geraldine!" wailed the voice. "Cruel, perjured Geraldine!"
"It was going on just like this," whispered Mrs. Buzza, "when I came
along. I shut my eyes, and ran past as hard as I could; but my head
was so full of voices and cries that I didn't know if 'twas real or
only my fancy."
"Geraldine!" continued the voice. "Oh! dig my grave--my shroud
prepare; for she was false as she was fair. Geraldine, my
Geraldine!"
"Moggridge, by all that's holy!" cried Sam.
It was even so. They advanced a few yards, and to the right of the
road, beside a gate, they saw him. The poet reclined limply against
the hedge, and with his head propped upon a carpet-bag gazed
dolefully into the moon's face.
"Thou bid'st me," he began again, "thou bid'st me think no more about
thee; but, tell me, what is life without thee? A scentless flower, a
blighted--"
At the sound of their footsteps he looked round, stared blankly into
Sam's face, and then, snatching up the carpet-bag, leapt to his feet
and tore down the road as fast as he could go.
Sam paused. They had reached the brow of the steeper descent, where
the road takes a sudden determination, and plunges abruptly into the
valley, Below, the roofs of the little town lay white and sparkling,
and straight from a wreath of vapour the graceful tower of St.
Symphorian leapt into the clearer heaven. Beyond, a network of
lights glimmered, like fire-flies, from the vessels at anchor in the
harbour. The Penpoodle Hill, on the further shore, wore a tranquil
halo; and to the right, outside the harbour's mouth, the grey sea was
laced with silver.
"Did you ever see anything more lovely?"
Mrs. Buzza murmured the words with no desire to be answered. It was
the old Trojan formula, and there was peace in the sound of it.
"Do you know," she cried, turning to Sam, "we were very happy
before these people came. We shall never be the same again--never.
Sam, I feel as if our innocence had ended, Oh! I am a wicked woman.
Look below, Sam dear, I have never thought of it before, but how
sweet it would have been to have enclosed the old town in a
ring-fence, and lived our days in quiet! It is too late now; more
will come, and they will build and alter, and no one will be able to
stop it. Even if these people should go, it will never be the same
again. Oh! I am a sinful woman."
Sam looked at his mother. Something familiar, but hitherto
half-comprehended, spoke to him in her words. He drew her arm once
more within his own, and they descended the hill together.
Stealing like ghosts into the front hall of No. 2, Alma Villas, they
were startled to perceive the dining-room door ajar, and a light
shining out into the passage. Creeping forward on tip-toe, they
peeped in.
Beside the table and with his back towards them, sat the Admiral in
his dressing-gown. His right hand grasped the throat of the
double-bass, on the top of which nodded Mrs. Buzza's night-cap.
His left fumbled with a large miniature that lay on the table before
him--a portrait of Mrs. Buzza, taken in the days when she was still
Emily Rogers and the Belle of Portsmouth; and from this to the
instrument and back again the Admiral's gaze wandered, as if
painfully comparing the likeness.
[Illustration: With his back towards them sat the Admiral.]
"Hornaby!" This was the Admiral's Christian name.
"Emily!"
He turned and stared at her stupidly. The look was pitiful.
She flung herself before him.
"Forgive me, Hornaby! I never thought--I mean, it was all a--"
"Practical joke," suggested Sam.
"No, no. I meant to go, but I have come back. Hornaby, can you
forgive me?"
He raised her up, and drew her towards him very tenderly.
"I--I thought it had _killed_ me," he muttered hoarsely. "Emily, I
have treated you badly."
Sam discreetly withdrew.