HOW HEATHER TOOK IT.
The secretaryship was duly accepted, although not by letter; Arthur
Dudley thought it best to call upon Mr. Stewart, and express in person
his willingness to fill up the post offered.
Probably a secret pride influenced this determination. After a fashion,
he was going to be the man’s servant; but that was no reason why he
should not return Mr. Stewart’s call, and place himself on a footing of
social equality with him.
For this reason, also, he did not walk from Dowgate Hill to King’s Arm
Yard, and take his chance of seeing Mr. Stewart at his office, as
anybody else, standing less upon his dignity, might have done; but, at
considerable inconvenience, repaired next afternoon to the great
director’s house, where, of course, he did not find him.
This, however, was a matter of secondary importance. The Squire had done
the proper thing in the proper manner, and, having left his card, went
back to Mr. Black’s abode satisfied.
The same evening a messenger arrived in Stanley Crescent with a note
from Mr. Stewart, expressive of regret at having missed seeing Mr.
Dudley, and begging him to breakfast with the writer the following
morning at ten o’clock.
“A business fellow,” observed Mr. Black, approvingly, “and worth such a
lot of money; I wonder who will have it when he dies. Croft, likely as
not. Is there not some scripture about people who have much, getting
more?”
Very heartily Arthur Dudley secretly anathematised this Croft, who
seemed to be now, as he thought, for ever under his nose.
Already he was beginning to have personal experience of the truth Mr.
Raidsford had mentioned to Lord Kemms—namely, that people always meet
again; that, let the circle in which they revolve be large or small,
still they ultimately come back to the point whence they started, and
are brought once more into contact with the men and the women they knew
at that period in their career.
If he please, a man may, like Arthur Dudley, curse the old ties, and
strive to break away from them; but, like Arthur Dudley also, he will
find after the years that there is no severance possible.
Friends and acquaintances; those whom we once knew well; those whom we
have merely met, crop up continually in our path. We come across them in
unlikely places; we encounter them in strange houses; we are thrown
against them under the most singular circumstances. We leave them, as we
think, behind, and behold, we discover, when the years roll by, that
they have been travelling also; that, during all the time which seemed
to be increasing the distance between us, we have really been traversing
gradually converging lines, which bring us, after the springs, and the
summers, and the autumns, and the winters, face to face at last.
Here, after years, for instance, was Squire Dudley brought into contact
once again with the people he had known and dwelt among in his earlier
manhood; here, also, he was going to breakfast with the bachelor of
Scotch proclivities, who had so long ago influenced the name bestowed
upon Heather at her baptism. Once more there was a likelihood of Mrs.
Dudley reviving the associations of her childhood, and meeting with some
of the members of her own kith and kin.
The Bells of Layford—amongst whom figured prominently a Sir Wingrave
Bell—had long been friends of Mr. Allan Stewart.
Scottish people all, come southward, they hung together after the goodly
manner of their country; and, very probably, had it not been for the
unhappy quarrel which ended in utter alienation between the Rector of
Layford, and his cousin and patron’s eldest friend and ally, Mr. Stewart
would have done well for his god-child when she was left an orphan, and
not relinquished her without a struggle into the hands of Mrs. Travers,
who had proved herself, perhaps, a little unduly anxious to be rid of
such a trust.
As it was, when Mr. Bell died, Mr. Stewart chanced to be abroad. On his
return he casually inquired what had become of the daughter, and being
informed that her aunt had taken the orphan to her own home, let the
matter drop out of his recollection. Of Heather’s connection with Arthur
Dudley he was completely ignorant, and Arthur was not the man to
acquaint him with it.
But yet, while the Squire sat opposite to his host at breakfast, he was
wondering whether in due course of time, if the fact did by any chance
come to Mr. Stewart’s knowledge, it might not prove beneficial to
himself; induce the director to withdraw his opposition concerning the
purchase of that “desirable house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, with yard at
the back, over which a large room could be built (see advertisement),
and the right of walking in the gardens of the Square.”
Why this last clause always presented itself to Arthur Dudley’s mind, it
would be somewhat difficult to say, since a board of directors is not
usually alive to the advantages of a “key to the Square;” but still,
that it did present itself is unquestionable, and he thought about it
while Mr. Stewart said he was glad to hear his visitor had decided not
to press the matter on the Company, but to accept the secretaryship, and
take up his residence in Lincoln’s Inn.
“A very good situation for a dwelling,” finished Mr. Stewart, who would
as soon have thought of living in Lincoln’s Inn as he would have thought
of flying; “and a good house too. You are married, I presume?”
Arthur admitted the correctness of Mr. Stewart’s supposition.
“That is right; every man ought to marry,” said the bachelor. “Have you
any children?”
“Two—a boy and girl,” said the Squire; “one of them is in very bad
health. I do not know what her mother will think about bringing her to
town.”
“You have not mentioned your intentions, then, to Mrs. Dudley?” said Mr.
Stewart, apparently surprised.
“I thought it would be time enough to tell her when the matter was
settled,” answered Arthur.
“Evidently, then, you will not consider it necessary to take your wife
into your confidence concerning all the affairs of our Company?”
suggested the director.
“I do not think women ever understand anything of business matters,”
Arthur replied; then, noticing Mr. Stewart smile, he added, “and I am
positive my wife would not wish me to tell her any of the affairs of my
principals.”
“I have heard of Mrs. Dudley as a lady of an excellent discretion,” said
Mr. Stewart.
“You do not expect me to praise my own wife,” answered Arthur,
deprecating this praise; and the evasion was really rather a clever one
for him. If he had praised her at all, however, it would simply have
been as his wife, and because she belonged to him, not in her mere
capacity as a woman.
Mr. Stewart felt curious about this Mrs. Dudley, whose husband so
decidedly refused to speak of her. Miss Baldwin had been by no means so
reticent. She had described Heather to her cousin, and told him all
about the brothers and sisters who used to run wild before the young
wife’s arrival at Berrie Down. Lally also was not left out of the
narrative. “The sweetest little creature in the world,” the Honourable
Augusta declared; “just the child you would love, Mr. Stewart.”
“I never saw the child I loved yet,” said the old bachelor, somewhat
incredulously, “and I do not think I ever shall.”
Notwithstanding this speech, however, Mr. Stewart had been secretly
touched by Miss Baldwin’s description of mother and child, which
description caused him to form a mental picture of Mrs. Dudley that did
not exactly frame in the setting Arthur now provided for her.
“Is this fellow such a weak fool as to be envious of his wife,” thought
the director; “or is there really some flaw in his pearl of which the
little world of South Kemms is not cognisant?” Mr. Stewart could not
understand his companion’s domestic relations, so he thought he would
try him on another tack—his children.
“I heard something, when I was at Kemms Park, about your little girl
having met with an accident,” he began.
“Yes, she fell into that mill-pond at the bottom of my farm, and was
nearly drowned,” Arthur replied, shortly.
“She has been very ill since that, though, has she not?” asked Mr.
Stewart, who was beginning to think his visitor carried his ideas of
politeness a little too far.
“Very ill; but she is now out of danger.”
“Do you think of bringing her up to town?”
“That will be a question for her mother to decide.”
“Was there ever such a prig before!” thought the director; but he said
out loud, “Then you take nothing to do with such minor matters?”
“Nothing,” answered Arthur, decidedly; “my wife has had a vast amount of
anxiety concerning the child, and I should not like to interfere;
though, I should think,” added the Squire, “that if once we could get
her up to London and under better medical treatment, she would soon be
well again.”
“Why do you not take a doctor down to see her?” asked Mr. Stewart.
“The expense,” murmured his guest.
“True, I had forgotten,” said the director apologetically; but while he
meditatively finished his tea, he remembered the money Arthur had
advanced to Mr. Black, and spent uselessly on the purchase of the house
he now proposed occupying.
“I presume that, whether or not Mrs. Dudley come to town at once, you
can enter on the duties of your new post immediately?” Mr. Stewart said,
at length.
“Certainly; if my wife be afraid of leaving home, one of my sisters must
come up and keep house for me.”
“You have sisters, then?”
This was enough; that question speedily loosened Arthur’s tongue; on
that portion of his family history he was never—the chance of speaking
being given to him—dumb.
“Yes, he had sisters, but they were not his own, they were sisters by a
second marriage. His father had made a most imprudent choice of a wife
without money or connection, who brought five children into the world
that I,” said Arthur, “have had to clothe, educate, and support. That is
what has kept me a poor man. For thirteen years I have had that burden
to carry. You cannot wonder at my being as I am. One of the boys has now
got a situation, but he is only earning thirty pounds a year, and that
will not do much towards keeping him. You perceive how necessary it is
for me to add to my income. With my own children growing up, it is
impossible for me to avoid feeling uneasy.”
“Your sisters will marry?” suggested Mr. Stewart.
“I do not know who is to marry them,” said Arthur, ruefully.
“People do not know generally, until the right man comes,” said the
bachelor, laughing.
Arthur struck him as being eminently absurd. It was long since he had
come in contact with a man he more thoroughly despised; but, all
unconscious of the impression he was producing, Arthur went on talking
of his grievances, of how badly fortune had treated him, and Mr. Stewart
encouraged such talk. He wanted to know of what stuff his companion was
made; and so Arthur proceeded, without the faintest idea crossing his
mind that he was revealing himself all the while in a most unfavourable
light; that there was not a speck, or flaw, or weak point, in his most
weak character, which his host was not examining critically and
cynically.
Away from Heather, away from that most beautifying influence, which made
even his faults seem errors, to be lightly viewed and tenderly treated
for the sake of the love she bore him; away from the wife, who was unto
him as a crown giving some faint semblance of man’s royalty to that poor
weak brow, Arthur stood confessed for what he was—a feeble, impulsive,
wearisome, selfish egotist, who had a quarrel with the world, because,
while it contained rich and poor, and he did not stand amongst the
former; who laid the burden of his ill-success on every back save his
own; who would not look on the bright side of his actual existence, but
had suffered himself to be led away after a will-o’-the-wisp by Mr.
Black, and who lacked, as Mr. Stewart delicately implied to him, sense
and energy sufficient to make a good thing of his life, and a good
income out of Berrie Down.
“You have no rent to pay,” said the director; “it seems to me you might
have got a fortune out of that lovely place of yours, had you only gone
to work thoroughly.”
“How?” asked Arthur, helplessly.
“How? why, how do other people make money out of land—make money and pay
heavy rents into the bargain? Do not think me impertinent, if I say I
would rather have trusted to the sense and gratitude of Berrie Down
Hollow than of Mr. Black.”
Arthur could not help thinking Mr. Stewart not merely impertinent but
foolish, although he replied,
“I do not think there is much money to be made by farming.”
“Don’t you!” said Mr. Stewart. “I fancy I have made more money by
farming than by anything else; but, however, no doubt you know your own
business best—every man does.”
Arthur imagined he did, at any rate; nevertheless, he left Mr. Stewart
with a certain depression of spirit, which was, however, in due time
chased away by Mr. Black.
“Come up again!” said that gentleman. “No, you need not; deuce a bit of
necessity for anything of the kind. Leave all to me. I’ll see the house
is ready for you; Mrs. Black will send in a charwoman, and all that sort
of thing. I shouldn’t move even a table from Berrie Down; nothing but
plate and linen. No use breaking up a home. You’ll want to run down
there occasionally from Saturday till Monday. We’ll all run down. Should
not go to the expense; you will furnish as cheaply as you could move
your sticks. Leave all to me. I’ll not put you to unnecessary expense;
but you know you must have decent furniture about you. Servants! Oh,
better let Mrs. Dudley see to them—whatever messenger we have can be
made useful as footman also, remember. You’ll charge him to the Company,
as well as coals, gas, taxes, and so forth. By Jove! Dudley, it will be
a first-rate thing for you. Living free, as one may say, and drawing a
thousand a year. I’ll get the painters and paper-hangers in at once, and
report progress. The place shall be ready for you in a fortnight. There,
there, no thanks; tut, tut, man, don’t make a fuss over such a trifle.
Good-bye! Remember me to Mrs. Dudley. Good-bye!” and, amid much waving
of hands and excited adieux, the train steamed out of the station, and
Arthur was off for Palinsbridge, while Mr. Black returned to the City.
All the way down Arthur thought how he should best break the news to
Heather. It seemed to him now, that if he had only made a confidante of
her all along, his way would have proved easier. He should now have to
tell her the whole from the beginning, or at least as much of the whole
as he ever meant to tell her. How he had listened to the voice of the
charmer; how the charmer had given him shares in the Protector Bread
Company, Limited; how he had been offered the secretaryship of that
thriving company; how he thought a thousand a year much too good a
chance to be refused; how he had promised Mr. Stewart to enter on his
duties at once; how there was a house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, rented by
the Company, which they were to inhabit.
He would have to tell her all this, but he need tell her no more; he
need not add how foolish and trustful he had been; he need make no
mention of bills or money; there was no necessity for him to say
anything about the house in Lincoln’s Inn, which he had purchased.
As for Berrie Down, to which some one must see, could not Mrs. Piggott
take charge of it? Mrs. Piggott and Ned. Suppose Ned and Mrs. Piggott
made a match of it.
Mrs. Piggott had, indeed, if all accounts were to be believed, led her
deceased husband such a “devil of a life,” that he was glad, after three
years’ patient endurance of her temper, to skulk under ground to get rid
of it; but then those days lay very far back in the woman’s life; she
had been forced to struggle with the world; she had buried two children;
she had “supped sorrow with the spoon of grief,” and there are some
natures to whom sorrow taken in any form proves a very wholesome
medicine.
It had done so in Mrs. Piggott’s case; the years had softened her, tamed
her spirit, subdued her temper. She would have made a very good wife to
any one wanting an elderly managing woman to cook his dinner and keep
his house tidy; a very good wife indeed for Ned, who had worshipped his
lost and lamented Polly—a “fine woman,” large, well-developed, and
handsome, whose only fault was mildly represented by Ned to have been,
that her delicate health obliged her to take more gin than was always
good for her.
Like Mr. Piggott, Polly had long been slumbering where gin is not
procurable; and thus Squire Dudley’s idea concerning a match being got
up between the pair was perfectly feasible, and likely, so he thought,
to meet the views of all parties interested in the matter.
Mrs. Piggott was faithful and trustworthy. So also was Mr. Edward Byrne,
a gentleman of Irish extraction on his father’s side—a soft, willing,
hardworking fellow, full of odd sayings, and possessed of unfailing
spirits, which kept him continually at high pressure, and ready at all
times for anything, “from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter.”
Byrne could saddle a horse, and ride it afterwards; harness one or a
pair, and drive it or them likewise; he could churn and he would pump;
he darned his own stockings, and he cobbled his own shoes. He was always
up betimes in the morning, and could be depended on to see to the
feeding of the sheep and the foddering of the cattle. To Ned was
intrusted the key of the oat-bin, and he always presided over the
brewing of the ale. It was he who had the mowers at work by four o’clock
in the summer’s mornings, whilst the grass was still wet and heavy with
dew; he who stacked the oats and went to market for Squire Dudley. And
yet, Ned was not proud. Mrs. Piggott objected to young men and boys
about the house, so he did not disdain cleaning the knives and polishing
the boots, singing to himself all the while like a perfect nightingale,
or else talking to Mrs. Piggott or the servants, and recounting to them
tales of a far remote period in his life when he was “devil” in a
printing-office, and had to “cut about” with proof.
Then, Ned had acquired literary tastes and a knowledge of minstrelsy,
which made him a perfect treasure at harvest-homes, sheep-shearings, and
such-like. Amongst his class he was considered an orator, and it is
greatly to be questioned whether Mario was ever more warmly applauded
than Mr. Byrne, when at the festive board he “favoured the company” with
“Auld Lang Syne.”
A true diplomatist, he always selected songs which would bear a chorus,
well knowing that the true secret of personal popularity is to induce
every one to believe that some portion of that popularity is reflected
on him or her.
A man is, as a rule, much more heartily clapped when the audience feel
they are clapping themselves at the same time—clapping their own
talents, sentiments, virtues; and Ned’s admirers accordingly stamped
their feet, and hammered on the table with their spoons and knives in
precise proportion as the chorus to Mr. Byrne’s melody had been long,
loud, and discordant.
After leaving the printing-office, which he quitted, because, as he
stated, the hours kept by authors were bad for his constitution, he
obtained a situation with a lawyer residing in the Temple, whose hours
proved to be still worse than those affected by the authors with whom
Ned had previously associated.
“You might get some sleep in the one case, drop off in the hall, or have
forty winks sitting on the stairs, but with Mr. Froom there was rest
neither day nor night,” he said; so, finding that town habits were not
to his mind, that he had to work harder in London than “anybody ever was
asked to work in the country,” Ned, then a stunted, pale-faced, sickly
lad, resolved to cut the undesirable acquaintance of members both of the
literary and legal professions, and return home to those peaceful shades
where, in former days, he had digested fat bacon, cheese in quantity,
and—
“Home-made bread
As heavy as lead;”
to say nothing of various other delicacies: such as batter and Yorkshire
puddings, treacle roll-up, bubble-and-squeak, toad-in-the-hole,
harslet-pie, and liver-and-crow—fearful combinations, which are all as
appetising to the agricultural classes as the daintiest dishes of a
French _chef_ to the upper ten thousand.
Upon this fare, Ned, in the pure country air, throve and grew apace, and
when, in due time, he took service with Major Dudley, of Berrie Down, he
was a fine, strapping fellow, willing and able to do almost anything in
the way of farm labour, and not above putting his hand to whatever his
hand found to do. He had been “odd and useful man” at Berrie Down so
long back as the memory of Arthur Dudley extended. His hair had grown
grey from the passage of years spent at the Hollow, and not, as he
facetiously informed young women, from its having stayed out too long in
the wet one night and got mouldy.
He was faithful and unambitious; but, nevertheless, he had money to the
good in South Kemms Bank,—a fact which it is fortunate Mr. Black never
suspected, or he might, in the course of his wanderings over the farm,
and long discourses with Ned, have induced him to go in for shares, and
inoculated man as well as master with a mania for speculation.
Mrs. Piggott, likewise, had saved money. Why should the pair not marry,
and unite their common earnings against the day when more work for
either would be impossible? Ned would make a good husband to any woman;
Mrs. Piggott would see to his meals and his comforts, and, perhaps, not
be too hard upon him if he did take a pint too much ale at any of the
rustic gatherings.
Why should they not marry? why, at all events, should they not be put in
charge? That is, if Heather objected, as Arthur feared she would, to
leaving the girls and Cuthbert at the Hollow; while he, and she, and
Lally, and Leonard, went up to town.
“Fact is,” was the solemn truth with which Squire Dudley came home after
his mental excursion, “I never ought to have married. See how it ties a
man at the most important crisis of his life!”
Having arrived at which pleasant conclusion, Arthur reached
Palinsbridge, where Ned and a horse awaited him.
As he rode homeward he pondered over and over how he should best “break
the news” to Heather. Any one following his train of reflection might
have thought Mrs. Dudley was a perfect virago, so much did her husband
dread her reception of the intelligence that he had accepted the
secretaryship, and meant, for the future, to reside in London.
Almost he wished he had asked Mr. Black to come down and make the
communication for him. He knew Heather would not scold, or nag, or
strive to render him miserable about the matter, but he knew also she
would feel hurt at his reserve, his secrecy, his want of trustfulness.
Long ago she had asked him not to let them drift away one from the
other—what had she meant by that? Was it possible Heather should ever
become reserved towards him? that her love should ever grow less? her
devotion ever dwindle and die away altogether? Was what his aunt had
told him at Copt Hall true?—“You will not be able to retain Heather’s
affection for ever, Arthur, if you give her none in return. You have got
a wife such as no man ever found before; take care lest you sustain a
loss such as no man ever can repair.”
What did it mean? Arthur Dudley pulled up his horse to a walk, and asked
himself this question as he entered Berrie Down Lane.
He had heard men say they never valued a mother’s love till it could be
given to them never more. Was this what Miss Hope desired to imply? Did
she think Heather delicate? Did she imagine there was any fear of her
fading away and leaving him? What would his life be without Heather? Who
would ever again bear with him, think for him, love him, like the woman
whom he now feared to face,—whom he now rode slowly on to meet, slowly
though he knew she was waiting and watching for his arrival?
What a game of cross-purposes love is altogether! What a stake some
people throw down on the board, what despairing losers many walk forth
again into the world!
Make your game, gentlemen, make your game, it is all a matter of
business! The world must not stand still, even though hearts be broken.
Make your game! The game is made, and here is the result: a great
intellect mated to a fool, a fond woman mismatched with a weak, or
brutal, or unloving husband!
What, complaining? You played for happiness and you have lost. There are
other gamblers coming forward—pray stand aside.
Or it is a lottery, and the people come up to draw. Only a doll, only an
idiot, a shrew, a tyrant, a faithless husband, a coquettish wife, a
plausible pretender: a woman all paint and padding, all affectation and
extravagance,—a man polished enough in his manners, yet coarse and
repulsive in the ordinary course of every-day domestic life!
And you grumble? Pray, Sir, and Madam, did you not pay your money and
take your chance? Have you not drawn _something_ out of the matrimonial
lottery? It does not suit you? Oh! we can have no exchanges here! there
are your goods, take them. “Here’s a lottery in which no man draws a
blank!” and so forth till the end of time; so forth, while the men and
the women go home with their purchases, and shrine them or curse them,
according as the goods suit or their tempers incline.
What a game of cross-purposes! what a lottery of incongruous chances!
What a singular thing that Arthur and Heather should ever have married!
What a still more marvellous affair, that only after the years, the
possibility should occur to him of her affection weakening, of her love
decaying!
What an awful mistake it is men and women alike make, when they imagine
that because love has been, love will be, always!
As though there were any human attachment which constant dropping could
not wear away; as though the devotion existed which neglect and
distrust, unkindness and coldness, would not ultimately alienate!
Can the tendrils go on for ever feeling after a support which is removed
from them? Will there not come a day when they will either wither away,
or otherwise turn elsewhere for something around which to twine? Was
that what Miss Hope meant? or did she only intend to imply that one day,
when he wanted the love, and the help, and the companionship he now
spurned, he should stretch forth his hands in vain to meet only vacancy?
Strange things often ride beside a man, keep his company in the night
watches, walk with him along the familiar paths; strange things the
ghosts of “what has been,” the shadows of “what is to be;” and it was
most probably a mixture of both these phantoms that caused Squire Dudley
to spur his horse, shying in the moonlight—on—and to push forward more
rapidly under the elms and the beeches, beside the hedgerows, bare of
flower and leaf, across the gleaming brook—home.
Where Heather was waiting for him with the old glad look of welcome in
her face, with the soft pleading tone in her voice, with the half timid
touch laid on his shoulder, “so pleased to see him home again,” she
said; “so thankful to be able to tell him Lally was better—much better,
and she herself quite rested. Had he been well, and had he settled his
business satisfactorily?” He was seated before the fire by this time
with his top-coat off, and his feet stretched out towards the warmth.
He was at home, and the little bustle of arrival over. The inevitable
moment had come at last—the moment when, if he ever were to tell his
wife of the impending change, the communication must be made.
And yet, looking round, it did seem hard to break up that pleasant home,
to leave the familiar places, and strive to set up the household gods of
Berrie Down on a strange shrine—in strange niches.
The shadows which had pursued him up the Lane must have entered at the
open door and sat down beside the Squire, for there was something, not
merely of dread, but also of regret, in his heart, when turning, he said
to Heather,—
“I have news for you.”
“Good news,” she said; “anything about Bessie?”
“No, nothing to do with any one but ourselves. As for whether my news be
good or bad, I cannot tell, for that will depend somewhat on how you
take it. What should you say if I told you I had added a thousand a year
to our income?”
“I should say it was almost too good to be true,” she answered.
“But it is true,” he said, “only there is one drawback—we must leave
Berrie Down.”
“Leave Berrie Down!” she repeated.
“I do not mean leave it entirely,” he explained; “but still, for a
considerable part of each year, it will be necessary for us to reside in
town. We shall have a large house there, rent free, and——”
“Tell me what it all means, Arthur,” she said, interrupting his confused
sentence. “Begin at the beginning, and explain it to me. Where is this
thousand a year coming from? Why is it necessary we should live in
town?”
She knelt down beside him as she spoke: knelt down, and leaning her
elbows on the arm of the chair he occupied, looked up in his face, with
those lovely, pleading, sad eyes, that had still the brooding sorrow in
them.
For the first time, that expression struck Arthur painfully; that
expression of all not being happy in her life, which it is so bitter a
thing to behold in the face of any one near and dear to us; that
expression of terrible though almost unconscious loneliness, which is so
pitiful, so pathetic, we can scarcely look upon it without tears.
Once more let me paint her for you as she kneels there in the
fire-light,—let me paint her in the very prime of her womanhood, with
the rich warm tints of her hair contrasting against her clear white
skin, with her small ears peeping out from below the heavy braids which
were wreathed round and round her head, with her face uplifted towards
Arthur, her lips parted, her hands clasped, and that pleading look in
her eyes—that look which had in it something of a dumb appeal—of an
entreaty, which, although the heart could conceive, the tongue refused
to utter.
Before he could answer her, Arthur had to turn his head away, and fix
his eyes on the dancing fire-light. Passing through the world’s long
picture gallery, it is oftentimes not the great paintings, not the court
ceremonials, not the huge sea pieces, not the representations of
battle-fields, not the important portraits and the historical incidents
which are photographed on our memories, which are stamped on our mental
retina so indelibly, that through the years they are never forgotten. It
is not the large finished pictures which we went out to see, which we
took, perhaps, much notice of at the time, that stay with us and remain
in our memories longest; rather it is the figure of some beggar child,
the little glimpse of woodland scenery, the barren bleakness of some
desolate moor, the hopeless languor of a dying man’s hand,—these are the
trifles which, God knows why, we carry away with us. The scenes of great
account at which we have been present, on which we have gazed, in which,
perchance, we have been actors, pale and fade away from the canvas of
our brains; but so long as memory remains, there are slight gestures and
passing expressions which recur to us again and again, and which will
recur, till life leave us and the mould be heaped up over the spot where
we lie.
The tone of a voice, the look in a face, the pressure of a hand, a
chance word spoken in love or in anger, a stray sentence in a book—these
things stay with us when, to our thinking, weightier matters are
forgotten, when the passions and the sorrows, the struggles and the
successes of the years departed have come to be in our recollections but
as a flower which has bloomed—a leaf which has faded.
Many a time in the after-days, when all the important events and
exciting interviews of that period of his life had become blurred and
indistinct, there would rise up before Arthur Dudley’s mental sight a
vision of a woman kneeling beside him in the fire-light, of a soft,
tender voice entreating him to tell her all—of white hands clasped
tightly, in mute supplication—of eyes uplifted, pleading for a fuller
confidence, for more perfect faith and love.
Did he give her any one of the things she thus silently asked for? Ah!
it is hard for a man who has started on a wrong road to retrace his
steps; it is well-nigh impossible for any one who has been led on, and
on, from less to more, from little to much, to go back to the beginning,
and explain circumstantially how he has gradually become entangled,
deeper and deeper; how, meaning to put forth for only a short sail, he
has drifted away to lands he never intended visiting—to shores where he
encountered strange people and formed undesirable acquaintances,
destined to change the whole course of his life, to make a difference in
his career here, and, it may be—who can tell?—in his state hereafter.
So he was not frank, and the chance of a full and free understanding
between the husband and wife ebbed back among the waves, to be restored
by them no more.
He told her precisely what he had determined to tell: he said he had
been offered the secretaryship; that he considered it too good a
proposal to refuse, and so he closed with it at once. He was eloquent
concerning the relief such a salary must bring; he described all the
advantages a residence in town would ensure; was fluent about the house
in Lincoln’s Inn Fields—the wide staircase, the lofty rooms, the airy
situation, the pleasant gardens of the Square; and then he wound up by
saying, that the only drawback to his perfect happiness and contentment
in the matter, was his fear lest Heather should object to living in
town—lest, being so much attached to Berrie Down, she should dislike
leaving it.
As he said this he took courage and turned and looked at her, and,
behold! the sad, lonely expression was gone, and another, more
difficult, perhaps, to analyze, had come in its place.
“Arthur,” she answered, and the low, sweet voice—in which, as I wrote
once before, there was a great virtue of leisure—was broken neither by
sorrow nor passion, as she spoke, “I love Berrie Down much, but I love
you better; I had not seen this place when I married you. You need not
be afraid of it parting us now.”
And that was all! The dreaded confession was made, and this was how she
took it. Could anything have been quieter, calmer, more satisfactory?
Yes; if she had been vexed and angry, Arthur could have understood her
better. If she had cross-questioned him, and uttered reproaches about
his not having previously made a confidante of her, he would have
escaped that sense of something being amiss which fell like ice upon his
heart.
He could not know what a world of feeling was contained in the short
sentence she had uttered. How should he know? this man who never took
his wife in his arms, when she said she loved him better than Berrie
Down; nor told how she was more to him than houses and lands—than gold
and silver; who allowed her to rise from the ground and stand looking
steadfastly into the fire, and only marvelled what she could be thinking
of—where on earth her mind was wandering.
Already that scene was for both of them a thing of the past; already the
lichens and the mosses of memory were growing around, and taking the
fresh bareness off it, destroying the harshness of the cold, grey
outline.
But half an hour before, and the news had still to be imparted; and now
the tidings were told and received, and all difficulty was over; all
doubt of her concurrence removed.
Down the gallery of Time already the footsteps of the past were echoing,
carrying away that scene from memory, in order to fling it into the
lumberroom containing life’s unused opportunities.
It had been with him but a moment before to be employed as a shield and
a buckler, as a safeguard from trouble, as a sword against the enemy;
and, behold, the man was so blind, so feeble, so incompetent, as to let
it slip from his fingers, and glide away to be seized and borne off, and
recalled no more, save in sorrowful memories with unavailing regrets.
For when return to the land is impossible, even the most reckless will
perceive the extent of the danger he has courted, and stretch forth his
hands despairingly towards that fair shore which is receding from his
gaze for ever.