HEATHER’S DARLING.
It was late in the autumn, as I have said; the leaves were falling
rapidly, and, but for the constant sweeping and supervision of “the
boys,” the walks and lawns at Berrie Down would have been littered with
the decaying foliage.
As it was, barrowful after barrowful of dead leaves disappeared from the
grass in front of the drawing-room windows, and often as not Lally sat
on the top of the load which Alick or Cuthbert wheeled away to a corner
of the kitchen-garden, and there deposited in a great heap to make
leaf-mould for the next year’s geraniums.
No more pride than Lally had these young Dudleys. If work were not to
them prayer, it was, at all events, pleasure. It would have been a weary
life to those lads, lounging about the Hollow, taking purposeless walks,
rising in the morning to do nothing, going to bed at night after having
performed no task, executed no duty; but, as matters stood, each season
brought its labours with it to them. They loved the place, and they
loved Heather, and they loved work.
What need is there to say more? because of all these reasons, Berrie
Down looked the Berrie Down we have visited.
But a change was coming, and Heather knew it—knew Alick was going away,
that her best helper was about to be taken from her. Many a talk had the
pair held together over the inevitable parting; many a word had they
exchanged in the twilight, under the shadow of those dear old trees;
and, if Alick thought Bessie’s words and talk had been more sad and more
attractive, still he knew Heather’s discourse was the best, and so
listened to it attentively.
“You have been my very right hand, Alick,” she repeated over and over
again; “and I do not know what I shall do without you.”
“Nor I without you, mother,” he answered, sadly.
“And you are going all alone, my boy, to a place which every one says is
very, very wicked. I do not know much about wickedness myself, Alick,”
she added, with that sweet simplicity that made her seem so
inexpressibly innocent to people who _did_ know much about that wicked
world, which was a _terra incognita_ to Heather Dudley; “but I hope,
dear, that a person may be as good in London as in the country; that you
will not be led away, nor fall into expensive habits, nor associate with
undesirable people, if only for my sake, Alick.”
“You darling mother!”
“If ever anyone asks you to do what is wrong, it you are ever tempted to
extravagance, to folly, or to sin,” she added, “think of me at Berrie
Down, and of how your trouble would grieve me, Alick, will you?”
“Mother, there is no need for fear; I hope there is no need.”
“I hope not, either,” she answered; “but yet who, setting out to travel
a strange road, can tell what companions he may meet with by the
way—what troubles may assail him? More than all, Alick,” and the sweet
voice which was never hurried, never much excited, grew low and pleading
as she spoke, “If ever you do fall into any trouble, promise to come and
tell me; promise, whether I can help you or not, to come and talk it
over. If you cannot come to me, I will go to you; and do not think any
sin or sorrow—however bad it may seem to you—too bad to tell me. If you
have to bear its consequences, I can bear to hear of it. Promise me,
Alick! If I think you mean to keep no great sorrow from me, I can let
you go—not otherwise.”
“Mother—Heather—what are you afraid of?” he asked.
“I am afraid of nothing except the indefinite,” she answered, through
her tears. “It is a new country to me this life on which you are
entering. Were I going to explore it myself, probably it would not seem
so terrible. Promise, Alick.”
“I promise,” he answered; and then their talk flowed on to calmer
ground—to such commonplace affairs as, “where he should lodge, what
amount of worldly belongings he should take with him, what edibles it
would be advisable for Heather to send for him to his London home.”
In all these minor matters Mrs. Dudley was intensely interested; not
that the other subjects on which she had touched lay farther from her
heart, but only that they seemed less within her province than such
homely affairs as seeing that his linen was in proper order, that he had
flannels for the winter, and an abundant supply of towels and soap; to
say nothing of more animal luxuries, in the shape of fresh butter,
preserves, poultry, and eggs.
It was arranged how all these necessaries, which Mrs. Piggott believed
were to be had genuine nowhere out of Hertfordshire, could be forwarded
periodically to London; and then Heather set to work on Alick’s
wardrobe—condemning socks, examining shirts, turning over collars, and
so forth.
“Alick had better take everything new with him,” she said to Agnes, “and
leave these for Cuthbert;” and the poor soul sighed.
Perhaps she felt intuitively Alick would never require her again to
furnish him with an outfit—that from the day his foot passed forth from
Berrie Down he would never need hosen nor shirt from her more.
The great change was at hand, such as arrives to the mother when her
darling marries a husband able to provide her with her heart’s desire,
and more than her heart’s desire, if such a thing were possible; to the
sister, whose brother’s wife takes from that day forth to all eternity
charge of the mending, airing and making of an idol’s linen, and it was
natural at such an hour Heather should desire “her boy’s” wardrobe to be
unexceptionable, that she should wish the very stitches in his collars,
the very marking of his clothes, to remind him of the “far-away home,”
where she would never cease praying he might be kept from all the
temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil.
Dear Heather; oh! dear, dear Heather! I know cleverer women do greater
things than your imagination ever compassed—that they write books and
paint pictures, that they compose music and preach sermons, that they
scribble reviews and manage warehouses, that they are owners of various
business establishments in the City, and serve writs to unsuspecting
debtors; and yet I doubt if all these mementoes of women’s work and
women’s talents would rest so long in the mind as one sweet word from
you!
All this time she had full leisure to devote to Alick, for Arthur was
away, staying at no other place than Copt Hall, where, through the
instrumentality of Miss Alithea Hope, both he and Heather had been
invited to spend a week.
Of his cousin, Arthur had hitherto known as little as his cousin knew of
him; but on her return to Copt Hall, after many years of absence, it
became the desire of Miss Hope’s life to promote an intimacy between the
respective families.
“He is your own cousin,” she said to Walter Hope, “and it is really
scandalous that you do not visit each other;” acting on which hint,
often repeated, Mrs. Walter Hope wrote a very gracious note to Heather,
trusting she and her husband would spare them a few days before all the
fine weather was gone. Mrs. Walter Hope laid considerable stress on the
point, that she and Mr. Hope were much distressed at the fact of such
near relations and neighbours remaining for so long a time comparative
strangers. She hoped for the future they should see more of each other.
She had heard so much about Mrs. Dudley from dear Miss Hope that she
felt as if she (Heather) were quite an old acquaintance. She described
the best railway route from Palinsbridge to Foldam (the station nearest
to Copt Hall), just as if Arthur had never journeyed there in days gone
by, and begged to know on which day and by what train Mr. and Mrs.
Dudley were likely to arrive, in order that the carriage might meet
them.
Never was a more cordial letter penned, and Arthur, with new prospects
of wealth before him, did not read it ungraciously.
On the contrary, he extracted an augury of success from these overtures
of friendship, and urged upon Heather the advisability of accepting Mrs.
Hope’s invitation.
But Heather did not wish to go, at least not at that particular
juncture. She had much to do, she told Arthur. She had to set her
household in order after the summer visiting; she had to make and to
mend; she wanted to be with Alick during the latter part of his sojourn
at Berrie Down; she was tired, really tired, of talking and company, and
desired rest; all of which reasons only provoked Arthur, and caused him
to declare that she thought of every person except him, and acceded to
every person’s wishes except his.
Then Heather, with a smile, told him she knew he was not in earnest, and
added that she had another reason for wishing to remain at home, viz.,
the state of her wardrobe.
“Dress which is quite sufficient for me at Berrie Down,” she said,
“would scarcely he suitable at Copt Hall.”
Upon that Arthur gave his wife a fifty-pound note, and bade her get what
she wanted; but Heather, turning very white, folded up the note, and
handed it back to him, saying, “I would rather not, dear; I would,
indeed——”
“And why not?” he demanded.
“Because I do not think we can afford it,” she answered, “at least not
yet,” she added, seeing how vexed he looked.
“Not yet! Will you tell me what you mean, Heather?”
“Why, I mean, Arthur, that though you have not told me anything of what
you are doing, still, I cannot be blind. I see the stock gone, the crops
sold. I know you are engaged in some business with Mr. Black, and that
there is money needed for it. You would never have sold the crops so
soon, had there not been a necessity for selling them; and then, Arthur,
perhaps, when Christmas comes, you may want all the money we can save,
and I should not like to spend any unnecessarily now.”
“I shall have money long before Christmas,” he answered.
“You may,” she said, “but you may not. I cannot tell what it is you are
doing or expecting, but——”
“Hang it!” broke in Arthur, “is a man bound to tell his wife everything?
When you can’t help me—when you would only be trying to dissuade me from
my purpose, and keep me from ever rising out of the slough of poverty in
which I have passed year after year—why should I talk to you about what
I am doing or expecting? Women’s ideas are so contracted; they take such
short views; they are so cautious, and so fearful, and so fond of
certainties, that there is no use in even trying to make confidantes of
them. Because you are happy yourself here, Heather, you think I ought to
be so too; because you can endure the cursed monotony of such a life,
you would keep me bound to the wheel for ever.”
“I think you are a little mistaken,” she answered. “I have been very
happy here; I do love Berrie Down very much; but I would leave it
to-morrow, and go with you anywhere in the world, if I thought by so
doing I could contribute to your comfort, happiness, or prosperity.”
“If you thought,” he repeated. “Ay, there’s just the rub; you never
could think so.”
“If _you_ thought that leaving Berrie Down would make you happier, I
would do it. I would do anything for you. I have tried to please you,
Arthur,” she went on, speaking almost entreatingly. “I have never
contradicted your will. I have never put myself in opposition to you. I
have never teazed you with questions. I have striven to do my best; but,
as you are not satisfied, tell me how I can do better; and it shall not
be my fault if I fail. Only, Arthur, only don’t let us drift away from
one another; don’t let us begin to have secrets, and treat me as though
I had done something to shake your trust and confidence in me.”
Never before had Arthur Dudley seen his wife so moved; never before had
he heard such a sentence from her lips. For a moment he felt tempted to
tell her all; to make a full and ample confession; to explain to her not
merely that his stock was gone, and his crops also, but that he had put
his “name” on paper, to an extent which, if the Protector Bread and
Flour Company failed to fulfil the hopes of its promoters, would
certainly cripple his resources seriously.
Of course his name was only “lent;” but occasionally misgivings would
cross his mind that in the event of any hitch occurring, he might be
liable for the whole amount of every bill which was at that moment
wandering about London, passing from hand to hand.
If the Protector “smashed up,” to use Mr. Black’s concise phrase, Arthur
Dudley would be smashed up with it; he had gone on little by little,
till he was afraid of reckoning how much of Berrie Down was set up in
type at Printing House Square, and in various newspapers throughout the
country.
If the Protector failed—but then the Protector could not fail—and
because it could not fail, and because if it did fail, so much must go
with it, Arthur decided not to tell his wife (who would be certain to
look on the worst side of things), but to humour her, as Mr. Black
recommended, and answer—
“I do not know, Heather, what you mean by drifting away; you and the
children are never out of my thoughts by day or night. I have gone into
a very good thing with Mr. Black, in company with Lord Kemms, Mr. Allan
Stewart, Mr. Aymescourt Croft, and a number of other persons, all
gentlemen of position and fortune, not likely to rush into any foolish
speculation. I hope to be a wealthy man yet. I hope to get rid of this
eternal worry about money—which makes life not worth the having. I know
you would help me, Heather, if you could; there, there, don’t look
pitiful. I can’t bear it. There is nothing you can do for me now, except
buy yourself some handsome dresses, and come over to Copt Hall.”
She put her hand out to take the money, then a second time she returned
it to him, saying, “Let me have my own way this time, Arthur; when you
have made your fortune, I will spend as much money as you like; only
till you have made it, I should not feel happy to be extravagant. Don’t
be angry, love!” she pleaded; “don’t be vexed because I ask to have my
own will for once in a way.”
“Once in a way!” repeated Arthur. “Always, you mean, don’t you? No, I’m
not angry; stay at home, if you like. I do not think that there are many
husbands who would press their wives so much to accompany them;” and
with this undeniably true remark, Arthur Dudley strode out of the room,
leaving Heather to think over the matter at her leisure.
Very patiently she did so—very resolutely she took up the facts of her
married life, and looked at them from beginning to end. There was
nothing new in what she saw—nothing. It had been coming upon her for
months past, that she did not possess—had never possessed—her husband’s
love. When she beheld Gilbert Harcourt’s devotion to Bessie, she knew
Arthur had never been similarly devoted to her. She was not the love of
his life, and neither was she the friend of his heart. He trusted in
others; he confided in others. What was the reason of all this? Was it a
fault in herself, she wondered. If it were, how did it happen that the
boys and the girls, the men-servants and the maid-servants, and the
stranger who came within their gates, all turned to her for sympathy and
companionship? Without any undue vanity, it was still impossible for
Heather not to know that she was greatly beloved by those with whom she
came in contact; and yet, what was the use of being beloved, if the one
person on earth she cared for threw her off?
Threw her off! Had they ever been near enough for him to do so; were not
they quite as near now as ever they had been? Was it not only the
blessed darkness of her mental vision which had hitherto kept her from
discovering this fact? “He never loved me,” Heather decided—“never; and
he has found it out too late.”
And then there came over her soul a terrible pity for him, which
swallowed up all sense of personal wrong—all anger—all selfishness. She
could not unmarry him; she could not give him the woman he might have
loved, the wealth that might have made him contented. She was no
heroine—this Heather of mine; tragedy was not in her nature. The idea of
freeing him from the yoke under which he had voluntarily put his neck,
never occurred to her. To flee to the ends of the earth, to part from
him, leaving a note of insufficient explanation behind; to rush off with
the first man who whispered a few civil words to her, and let her
husband walk through the Divorce Court to liberty; to purchase a little
bottle of poison and kill first her children and then herself—these very
feasible and proper courses, were ideas which never even crossed Mrs.
Dudley’s mind.
Outside of lunatic asylums, amongst the decorous and unexcitable people
to be met with in society, or when we take our walks abroad, we are
told, by those who profess to know their fellow-creatures thoroughly,
that such impulsive, devoted, unselfish creatures exist; but Heather’s
imagination never soared to such heights of passionate self-sacrifice.
They were married, and the time for even thinking of parting with Arthur
being past for ever, all she could do was to try to make him as happy as
possible.
For who could tell? Like David, she thought that the Lord might yet be
gracious to her, that some day, perhaps, Arthur would know how much she
loved him, and give her back a portion of love in return.
But, meantime, she never blinded herself—from the hour knowledge began
to dawn, she never refused to open her eyes and see the dull grey
morning-sky of reality which had broken for her. Though she did not sit
down and weep, still she made no attempt to fly from the presence of her
trouble. There came no change over her face, unless it might be that the
look of which I have previously spoken, oftener sat like a brooding
shadow across her eyes. She did not weary her husband with her
affection, or load him with caresses; yet, although an ordinary observer
could have detected no difference in her manner, Arthur had long felt
there was a change; that his comfort was more considered, if that were
possible, than formerly; that his every wish was anticipated; that his
caprices were more attended to, his complainings more rarely combated,
than of old. He felt there was a change, though he could not have put a
name on that change; and as it irritates sick people to be humoured, so
it irritated Arthur to find that even the faint opposition of old was
withdrawn—that, let his commands be as unreasonable, as fretful, as
provoking as they would, they were still obeyed implicitly.
Never, excepting where some question of right and wrong was involved,
did Heather lift up her voice in opposition to his, and he was,
therefore, the more annoyed and surprised when Heather ventured to demur
about going to Copt Hall.
“So deucedly provoking, too, when I wanted her, and just at this time,”
he remarked to Mr. Black, whom he met in London—that being the route he
took to Copt Hall—whereupon Mr. Black said, consolingly—
“That, perhaps, it was as well; Mrs. Dudley might have put her foot in
it.”
“She would have come if I had pressed her, you know,” continued Arthur,
not wishing Mr. Black to believe Heather the better horse at Berrie
Down; “but I was not going to do that.”
“You had a bit of a tiff, I suppose, is about the English of the
matter,” commented Mr. Black. “Well, such things will happen, even in
the best-regulated families.”
“We had no tiff,” answered Arthur; “my wife is the last woman on earth
to make a row about anything.”
“I am aware of that, of course,” said Mr. Black, drily; “but still she
does not go to Copt Hall.”
“Oh! damn Copt Hall!” exclaimed Arthur.
“No, no, don’t do that yet—not, at any rate, till we see if Walter Hope,
Esquire, J.P., will appear on our direction—eh!” suggested the promoter,
poking Arthur in the ribs, and winking slyly as he spoke. “Never mind
the wife, Dudley, she’ll come to, no fear, when she sees our spec
succeed, and you keeping your carriage and horses, and having your box
at the Opera, and God knows what besides. Don’t trouble yourself about
any persons’ thoughts now; their thoughts will be all right when you
have a clear five thousand a year, and the chance of adding another five
to that. Never fear; those that win, laugh, you know.”
And with this assurance Arthur departed for Copt Hall, where he was most
cordially received and most hospitably entertained, and where he met
again, after years, Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Aymescourt Croft.
Meanwhile, Heather remained at home, doubtful whether she had done right
in refusing to accompany her husband, in throwing cold water on his
proposal that she should array herself like the Queen of Sheba, and thus
attired, repair to the courts of Arthur’s relatives.
She could not decide the question to her own contentment—she could not
satisfy her understanding as to whether, when a woman promises to obey a
man, she thereby excludes herself ever after from all title to take up
her own parable and express her opinions boldly.
She knew other women had no such qualms of conscience—that to most of
the wives she knew obedience was a dead letter; but this did not prevent
Heather fretting and fidgeting. She had vexed her husband at a time when
she wanted most to please him, and he had told her before he left, when
he saw her busy with preparations for his brother’s departure, that she
“liked Alick better than she did him—that she thought of studying every
person’s pleasure sooner than his.”
“I do not know what to do, I am sure,” she reflected, as she drove over
to South Kemms in an old tumble-down, rattling phaeton, that was the
very shame of Arthur’s life, but which she, nevertheless, preferred to
the, in her opinion, still more dilapidated fly from the Green Man at
Fifield, which was in the habit of conveying visitors to Palinsbridge
Station; “I do not know what to do.” She had written every day to Arthur
since his departure, but never a line did he vouchsafe to her in return,
and she was wondering whether she ought or ought not to write again.
“Of course, if I do not teaze him to answer, if I merely send a line to
say we are all well, it cannot seem like worrying,” she decided; and
having so decided, she made her purchases (which were principally in
Alick’s interest) at South Kemms, returning home with Ned, who was
charioteer, as the evening shadows were settling down upon the Hollow.
When she reached the door, Alick was there to help her alight, and carry
in her shawls, and wraps, and parcels.
She was full of her little purchases: a woman must, indeed, be in a
terrible state of despair—a depth of despondency too great for a
spectator to contemplate calmly—when the prospect of opening a draper’s
parcel fails to send a thrill of expectant pleasure through her heart.
“Take them into the dining-room, Alick,” she said. “Oh! I am very glad
to see that fire, it is so cold out of doors;” and she walked into the
apartment and pulled off her bonnet and threw back her mantle, and stood
with her hands stretched out towards the blazing coals, warming her
numbed fingers.
“Where are the girls?” she asked, at length.
“Upstairs,” Alick answered, stooping over the parcels he had brought in
as he spoke.
“Is anything the matter?” Heather asked, quickly turning from the fire.
He had only uttered one word, and yet his tone filled her with a vague
alarm.
“Is anything the matter?” she repeated, finding he did not reply.
“Alick, look at me; why do you keep your face turned away?”
Then Alick looked up, but his eyes fell under Heather’s scrutiny.
“Alick, tell me this instant what is the matter,” she said. In a moment
her fancy conjured up all sorts of horrors—her husband was dead, there
had been a railway collision, perhaps. Thought is sometimes as quick in
our waking moments as in our dreams; and her imagination flew to him
over all the miles that intervened between them. “You have heard bad
news,” she went on. “Is it about Arthur; is he ill?”
“Not that I know of,” Alick answered. “But, mother, we have had an
accident since you went away.”
“An accident!” she repeated. “What kind of an accident—what is it—who is
it? Alick, you will drive me mad if you stand there looking at me
without speaking.”
He tried to speak, but he could not do it; he had been nerving himself
up to tell her, and now, when the moment came for explanation, the words
died away upon his lips.
“Heather,” he began, in a tone of deprecating entreaty,—and then
suddenly the truth flashed upon her.
“It’s Lally,” she cried; “it’s Lally; oh! my child.”
He caught her as she was about to rush past him out of the room.
“Mother, mother,” he said, “listen to me; she fell into the mill-pond,
and they brought her home, and the doctor is here, and we have been
doing everything.”
“And she is dead!” finished Heather.
“No, she is not,” said Agnes, entering at the moment. “She has this
instant opened her eyes;” and she broke out sobbing almost hysterically.
“Thank God!” exclaimed Alick, solemnly, after the manner of a person
rescued from some fearful danger.
Then Heather, looking from one to the other, understood that while she
had been driving to South Kemms, and making her purchases, and never
thinking of evil, her darling had been standing in the very valley of
the shadow—that she had brushed garments with the angel of Death; and
her first feeling, when she did understand all this, was, not one of
gratitude that her child was saved, but of anger and resentment at her
ever having been permitted to get into danger.
She had not encountered the ordeal which the younger Dudleys passed
through while Lally lay seemingly dead before them; she had not fought
for the child as they did, both before and after the doctor’s arrival;
she had not endured the agony—an agony not to be described—which filled
Alick’s heart when he met the little body being carried home across the
fields; she had not ridden for the doctor and followed him from house to
house as hard as the best horse in Arthur’s stables could gallop; she
had not stood in suspense by the bedside; she had not wondered with
them, “How shall we tell Heather—what will Heather say?”
That had been the one thought of every person in and about the
house,—“What will Heather do; what will Mrs. Dudley say!”
The very regret for Lally seemed merged in dread of her mother’s
sufferings.
How should any one face Heather and tell her Lally’s life was still
problematical? Who should prove brave enough to break the tidings to
her, and look upon her agony?
Through the whole of this suspense and anxiety the younger Dudleys had
passed; but how was Heather to understand everything in a moment? The
only certainty she comprehended was that her darling had been left to
get into danger—that she had almost lost her child; and so she cried
aloud in her terror and her anger,—
“Was there not one of you that could have seen to her—not one amongst
you all?”
They never answered her—they could not tell her then how it had come to
pass; they were so thankful at even a chance of life being given to the
child, that they did not mind the mother’s reproaches, though it seemed
strange to them to see Heather angry.
There are times when it appears a less weighty trouble to behold a
friend angry than sorry; and so they bore her blame in silence, and made
way for her to pass out, only remarking—
“She is very ill, remember; had you not almost better stay downstairs
for a little time longer?”
As if she did not hear their words, Heather walked blindly across the
hall, groping her way to the staircase. When Alick would have taken her
by the arm, she thrust his proffered help aside, and guiding herself by
the balusters managed somehow to reach the first floor.
There she paused, and put her hand to her head, seemingly trying to
remember something.
“She is in your room,” Alick said, thinking she wished to know where the
child lay; but it was not that; as she tried to move forward again, she
tottered, and, had Alick not caught her, would have fallen.
“Lay her on my bed,” Agnes whispered; and Alick accordingly carried his
burden into one of the pleasant chambers, the windows of which, however,
now looked forth on lifeless trees and bare brown branches, waving
mournfully to and fro in the night, as the autumn wind rushed across the
deserted fields and over the Hollow.