Dick Cavendish went out for a walk. It was a little chilly after the
beautiful day; there was rain in the air, and neither moon nor stars,
which in the country, where there are no means of artificial lighting,
makes it unpleasant for walking. He went right into the big clump of
laurels, and speared himself on the prickles of the old hawthorn before
he emerged from the Rectory gates. After that it was easier. Many of the
cottage people were indeed going to bed, but by the light which remained
in a window here and there he was able to preserve himself from accident
as he strolled along. Two or three dogs, sworn enemies to innovation,
scented him, and protested at their loudest against the novelty, not
to say wickedness, of a passenger at that hour of the night. It was,
perhaps, to them what Lizzie Hampson's independence was to Mrs.
Wilberforce,--a sign of the times. He made his way along, stumbling here
and there, sending into the still air the odour of his cigar, towards
the spot where the window of the little shop shone in the distance like
a low, dim, somewhat smoky star, the rays of which shaped themselves
slightly iridescent against the thick damp atmosphere of the night.
Cavendish went up to this dull shining, and stared through the window
for a moment through the sticks of barley sugar and boxes of mustard
and biscuits. He did not know there was any special significance in
the sight of Lizzie Hampson seated there within the counter, demurely
sewing, and apparently unconscious of any spectators, but it was enough
to have startled any of the neighbours who were aware of Lizzie's ways.
The old grandmother had gone to see her daughter in the village, who
was ill; but in such cases it was Lizzie's way to leave the door of the
room in which she sat open, and to give a very contemptuous attention
to the tinkle of the little bell attached to the door which announced a
customer. Now, however, she sat in the shop, ready to supply anything
that might be wanted. Dick strolled past quietly, and went a little way
on beyond, but then he came back. He did not linger at the window, as
one of Lizzie's admirers might have done. He passed it twice; then, with
a somewhat anxious gaze round him, went in. He asked for matches, with
a glance at the open door of the room behind. Lizzie said nothing, but
something in her look gave him as well as words could have done an
assurance of safety. He had closed the door of the shop behind him. He
now said quickly, "Then I was not mistaken, and it is you, Lizzie."
There was not the slightest appearance in her of the air of a rustic
flirt waiting for a lover, still less of anything more objectionable.
Her look was serious, full of resistance and even of defiance, as if the
encounter was against her will, though it was necessary that it should
be. "Yes, sir," she said shortly, "you were not mistaken, and it is me."
"And what are you doing here?"
"Nothing that isn't right," said Lizzie. "I'm living with my grandmother,
as any one will tell you, and working at my trade."
"Well--that is all right," he said, after a moment's hesitation.
"I don't suppose that you sought me out just for that, sir--to give me
your approbation," the girl said quickly.
"For which you don't care at all," he said, with a half laugh.
"No more than you care for what I'm doing, whether it's good or bad."
"Well," he said, "I suppose so far as that goes we are about even,
Lizzie: though I, for one, should be sorry to hear any harm of you. Do
you ever hear anything--of your mistress--that was?"
She gave him a keen look. All the time her hands were busy with a
little pile of match-boxes, the pretence which was to explain his
presence had any one appeared. "She is--living, if that is what you
mean," Lizzie said.
"Living! Oh yes, I suppose so--at her age. Is she--where she was?"
Lizzie looked at him, again investigating his face keenly, and he at
her. They were like two antagonists in a duel, each on his guard, each
eagerly observant of every point at which he could have an advantage. At
last, "Where was that, sir?" she said. "I don't know where you heard of
her last."
Dick made no answer. It was some moments before he spoke at all. Then,
"Is she in England?" he said.
"I'm not at liberty, sir, to say where she is."
"You know, of course. I can see that in your face. Is she----But perhaps
you don't intend to answer any question I put to you."
"I think not, sir," said Lizzie firmly. "What would be the good? She
don't want you, nor you----"
"Nor I her: it is true," he said. His face became very grave, almost
stern. "I have little reason to wish to know. Still you must be aware
that misery is the end of such a way of life."
"Oh, you need give yourself no trouble about that," cried Lizzie, with
something like scorn; "she is a deal better off and more thought upon
than ever she would have been if----"
"Poor girl!" he said. These words and the tone in which they were spoken
stopped the quick little angry speech that was on Lizzie's lips. She
wavered for a moment, then recovered herself.
"If you please," she said, "to take your matches, sir. It ain't general
for gentlemen like you to come into granny's shop: and we think a deal
of little things here. It is not as if we were--on the other side."
He laughed with a sort of fierce ridicule that offended the girl. "So--I
might be supposed to be coming after you," he said.
She flung the matches to him across the counter. "There may be more
difference here than there was _there_; but a gentleman, if he is a
gentleman; will be civil wherever he is."
"You are quite right," said Dick, recovering himself, "and I spoke like
a fool. For all that you say, misery is the end of such a life; and if I
could help it I should not like her to come to want."
"Oh!" said Lizzie, with exasperation, stamping her foot. "Want yourself!
You are more like to come to it than she is. I could show you in a
moment--I could just let you see----" Here she paused, and faltered, and
grew red, meeting his eyes. He did not ask any further questions. He had
grown pale as she grew red. Their looks exchanged a rapid communication,
in which neither Lizzie's reluctance to speak nor his hesitation in
asking was of any avail. He put down the sixpence which he had in his
hand upon the counter, and went out into the night in a dumb confusion
of mind, as if he had received a blow.
Here, breathing the same air, seeing the same sights, within reach! He
went a little further on in the darkness, not knowing where, nor caring,
in the bewilderment of the shock which had come to him unawares, and
suddenly in the dark was aware of a range of lighted windows which
seemed to hang high in the air--the windows of the Elms appearing over
the high garden wall. He went along towards the house mechanically, and
only stopped when his shoulder rubbed against the bricks, near the spot
where he had seen Lizzie come out, as he walked past. The lights moved
about from window to window; the house seemed full of movement and life;
and within the wall there was a sound of conversation and laughter. Did
he recognise the voices, or any one among them? He did not say so even
to himself, but turned round and hurried back, stumbling through the
darkness which hid and blinded him. In the village he met a woman with
a lantern, who he did not doubt was Lizzie's grandmother, the village
authority; no doubt a gossip, quite disposed to search into other people's
mysteries, quite unaware of the secret story which had connected itself
with his own. She passed him in a little mist of light in the midst of
the dark, raising her head instinctively as he passed with a sense of
something unfamiliar, but of course not seeing who he was. Presently
he found his way again into the Rectory garden, avoiding the prickles
of the tree against which he had spiked himself on his way out. Mrs.
Wilberforce was on her way upstairs with her candle as he came in. She
looked at him disapprovingly, and hoped, with something like irony, that
he had enjoyed his walk. "Though you must have had to grope along in the
dark, which does not seem much of a pleasure."
"The air is delightful," said Dick, with unnecessary fervour. "I like a
stroll in the dark, and the lights in the cottages are pretty to see."
"Dear me, I should have thought everybody was in bed; but late hours
are creeping in with other things," said the rector's wife as she went
upstairs. The rector himself was standing at the door of his study, with
an unlighted pipe in his hand. "Come and have a smoke," he said. For a
moment it occurred to Cavendish, though rather as a temptation than as a
relief, to tell the story which seemed to fill his mind like something
palpable, leaving room for nothing else, to his simple-minded rural
friend, an older man than himself and a clergyman, and therefore likely
to have received other confidences before now. But something sealed
his lips; the very atmosphere of the house, the narrow life with its
thousand little occupations, in which there was an ideal yet prosaic
innocence, an incapacity even to understand those elements of which
tragedy is made. How could he say it--how reveal anything so alien to
every possibility! He might have told the good Wilberforce had he been
in debt or in love, or any light difficulty in which the parson might
have played the part of mediator, whether with an angry father or an
irritated creditor. He would have made an excellent confidant in such
cases, but not in this.
In debt or in love--in love! Dick Cavendish's character was well known;
or so, at least, everybody thought. He was always in love, just as he
was always in good spirits,--a fellow full of frolic and fun, only too
light-hearted to take life with sufficient seriousness; and life must be
taken seriously if you are going to make anything of it. This had been
said to him a great many times since he came home. There was no harm
known of him, as there generally is of a young man who lets a few years
drop in the heyday of life. He liked his fun, the servants said, which
was their way of putting it: and his parents considered that he did not
take life with sufficient seriousness; the two verdicts were the same.
But the people most interested in him had almost unanimously agreed in
that theory, of which mention has been already made, about the "nice
girl." He was himself aware of the plan and had got a great deal of
amusement out of it. Whether it came to anything else or not, it at
least promised him a great deal of pleasure. Scores of nice girls had
been invited to meet him, and all his relatives and friends had laid
themselves out thus to make a reformed character of Dick. He liked them
all, he declared; they were delightful company, and he did not mind how
many he was presented to; for what can be nicer than a nice girl? and to
see how many of them there were in the world was exhilarating to a man
fresh out of the backwoods. As he had never once approached the limits
of the serious, or had occasion to ask himself what might be the end
of any of these pleasant triflings into which his own temperament,
seconding the plots of his friends, carried him lightly, all had gone
quite well and easily, as Dick loved the things about him to go. But
suddenly, on this occasion, when there was an unexpected break in the
pleasant surface of affairs, and dark remembrances, never forgotten, had
got uppermost in his mind; in this night of all others, when those two
words, "in love," floated through his mind, there rose up with them
a sudden apparition,--the figure, light, yet not shadowy, of Chatty
Warrender holding the bowl of roses with both hands, and with that look
of innocent surprise and pleasure in her face. Who can account for such
appearances? She walked into his imagination at the mere passage of
these words through his head, stepping across the threshold of his fancy
with almost as strong a sensation of reality as if she had pushed open
his door and come into the room in which he was to all appearance quite
tranquilly taking off his boots and changing his coat to join the rector
in the study below. He had seen a great many girls more beautiful, more
clever, more striking in every way, than Chatty. He had not been aware,
even, that he had himself distinguished her; yet there she was, with her
look, which was not addressed to him, yet perhaps was more or less on
account of him,--that look of unexpected pleasure. Was it on his account?
No; only because in the midst of the dulness some one was asked to
dinner. Bah! he said to himself, and tossed the boot he had taken off
upon the floor--in the noisy way that young men do before they learn
in marriage how to behave themselves, was the silent comment of Mrs.
Wilberforce, who heard him, as she made her preparations for bed, next
door.
Dick was not so jolly as usual, in the hour of smoke and converse which
ensued. It was usually the rector's favourite hour, the moment for
expansion, for confidences, for assurances on his part, to his young
friends, that life in the company of a nice woman, and with your children
growing up round you, was in reality a far better thing than your clubs
and theatres--although a momentary regret might occasionally cross the
mind, and a strong desire for just so many reasonable neighbours as might
form a whist-party. Dick was in the habit of making fun of the rector's
self-congratulations and regrets, but on this evening he scarcely made a
single joke. Three or four times he relapsed into that silence, meditative
or otherwise, which is permitted and even enjoyable in the midst of
smoke, when two men are confidential without saying anything, and are
the best of company without exchanging one idea. But in the midst of one
of those pauses, which was more remarkable, he suddenly sat bolt upright
in his chair, and said, "I am afraid I must leave you to-morrow," taking
away the rector's breath.
"Leave us to-morrow! Why in the name of wonder should you leave us
to-morrow?" Mr. Wilberforce cried.
"Well, the truth is," said Dick, "you see I have been away from home a
considerable time: and my people are going abroad very soon; and then
I've been remiss, you know, in my home duties."
"But you knew all that, my dear fellow, yesterday as well as to-day."
"That's true," said Dick, with a laugh. "The fact is that's not all,
Wilberforce. I have had letters."
"Letters! Has there been a delivery? Bless my soul!" said the rector,
"this is something quite new."
"Look here," said Dick. "I have been out, and I passed by the--the
post-office, and there I got news--Come, don't look at me in that violent
way. I have got news, and there is an end of it, which makes me think I
had better clear out of this."
"If you want to make a mystery, Cavendish," said the rector, slowly
knocking out the ashes of his pipe.
"I don't want to make any mystery," said Dick; then he added, "If I did,
it would be, of course, because I could not help it. Sometimes a man is
mixed up in a mystery which he can't throw any light upon, for--for
other people's sake."
"Ah!" said Mr. Wilberforce. He refilled the pipe very deliberately, and
with a very grave face. Then, with a sudden flash of illumination, "I
make no doubt," he cried, "it's something about those tenants of your
uncle's. He is urging you to go to the Elms."
"Well, since you have guessed, that is about it," said Cavendish. "I
can't carry out my commission, and as I'd rather not explain to him----"
"Why shouldn't you explain to him? I have quite been calculating that
you would explain to him, and get him to take action, and free us of a
set of people so much--so entirely," cried the indignant rector, "out of
our way!"
"Well, you see," said Dick, "it's not such an easy thing to get people
out of a house. I know enough about law to know that; and the old fellow
would be in a terrible way if he knew. I don't want to worry him, don't
you see? so the best thing I can do is to say I left very soon, and had
not the time to call."
"Well, for one thing, I am rather glad to hear you say so," said the
rector; "for I thought at first, by the way you introduced the subject,
that your uncle himself, who has always borne such an excellent
character, was somehow mixed up----"
Cavendish replied by a peal of laughter so violent as almost to look
hysterical. He laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks. "Poor old
uncle," he said,--"poor old fellow! After a long and blameless life to
be suspected, and that by a clergyman!"
"Cavendish," said the rector severely, "you are too bad; you make fun of
things the most sacred. It is entirely your fault if I ever associated
in my mind for a moment---- However," he added, "there is one thing
certain: you can't go away till you have dined at the Warren, according
to Mrs. Warrender's invitation. In her circumstances one must be doubly
particular, and as she made an effort for Theo's sake, and yours as his
friend----"
"Oh, she made an effort! I did not think of that."
"If you are in such a hurry, Emily can find out in the morning whether
to-morrow will suit them, and one day longer will not matter, surely. I
can't conceive why you should feel such an extreme delicacy about it."
"Oh, that's my way," said Dick lightly. "I am extremely delicate about
everything, though you don't seem to find it out."
"I wish you could be a little serious about something," said the rector,
with a sigh. "Things are not all made to get a laugh out, though you
seem to think so, Dick."
"It is as good a use as another," said Dick. But as he went upstairs
shortly after, the candle which he carried in his hand lighted up, in
the midst of the darkness of the peaceful, sleeping house, a face which
revealed anything rather than an inclination to get laughter out of
everything. Nevertheless, he had pledged himself to stay for the dinner
at the Warren which was to cost Mrs. Warrender an effort. It might cost
him more than an effort, he said to himself.