SOUTHBOURNE.
Right in the middle of the road stood Holdsworth, casting his eyes
first to the right, then to the left, then letting them rest fixedly on
the house at the extremity.
Here was the scene, the place at last, that was to roll back the
curtains which hid the past from him, and to proclaim the resurrection
of the life within him that for years had slept a sleep as deep as
death.
There he stood, brought by God’s hand from a far-off world into
the little Kentish village, where his memories lay heaped, where
association made a beacon of every humble house to lead him with
unerring step backward and backward to the sweetest, the dearest of all
his memories.
How remembered, how deeply remembered, the scene! The old tavern on the
right, with its swinging signboard, its burnished latticed windows,
the great elm tree spreading its branches, like soft fingers, over the
red-tiled roof; the farmhouse facing it, with the clamour of hidden
poultry all about it, softened by the cooing of doves; and the cherry
and apple trees stretching forth their fruit over the wooden railing,
and the strings of white linen drying in the open spaces among the
trees; the vista of gable-peaked houses, the old shops, the grassy land
between the houses, the blacksmith’s shed, the hens in the roadway,
the children on the doorsteps, the women working at the open windows,
and the little house at the extremity, backed by soft masses of green
trees and the delicate blue of the afternoon sky.
He knew his life’s history as he surveyed this scene, as though a
voice in his ear were whispering it all to him. The chain was too
complete not to suggest the unseen links; the throng of associations
was too manifold and pregnant not to reveal to his mind the things
which his eyes beheld not. Swiftly and fiercely--a very whirlwind of
logic--thought flew over each stepping-stone to the hidden past; and
then he knew what he had left, what he was now to seek, and what had
been the WANT which his instincts--that deeper life of his of which the
movements were independent of the senses--had never lost sight of.
When his faintness had passed, a great joy took possession of him--an
impulse so keenly exhilarating, that he could have cried aloud in his
rapture. But then came a revulsion--a deadly fear--of what he knew not,
save that its presence turned him into ice, and damped his forehead
with sweat.
He was all unconscious of the eyes that were upon him; but some one
approaching made him turn his head, and he saw several persons watching
him curiously from the door of the inn, while others, plain country
people in smocks and highlows, muttered to one another as they stared
from the pavement.
“Won’t you please to step in, sir?” said the man who came forward, a
short, square-faced individual, in a black calico apron and a white hat.
“Who lives in that house?” returned Holdsworth, pointing down the road.
“That one yonder, with the chimbley looking this way? Why, I don’t
think anybody’s living in it just now, although I did hear that it was
taken by a party from Ashford.--Emily!” he called.
A stout, well-looking woman elbowed her way out of the tavern, and
stood on the lower step.
“The gentleman wants to know who lives in that house at the bottom.”
“It’s to let. Mr. Markham has the letting of it,” answered the woman.
“His is the shop yonder,” said the man. “You’ll see ‘Undertaker and
Joiner’ wrote over the door.”
“I’ll send a boy to fetch him, if you like,” said the woman.
“I’ll goa, missus,” remarked an old man in a long blouse, turning about
on his stick in his eagerness to earn a glass of yale.
“No, I don’t want him,” said Holdsworth.
“Won’t you step in and rest yourself, sir?” exclaimed the woman,
exerting the seductive smile with which she was wont to greet every
passenger who stopped at her door.
Holdsworth hesitated a moment, as though there were a magic in the
little distant house that constrained him to keep his eyes upon it, and
then entered the tavern, heralded by the landlady, and followed by the
landlord.
The parlour into which he was conducted was as quiet and private as he
could wish, screened by a red curtain across the glass of the door from
the bar, with a window opening on to a square of ground well stocked
with shrubs and vegetables. The sunshine streamed into the room, and
lighted up the queer ornaments on the mantelpiece, the fine old china
hanging upon rows of hooks in a mahogany cabinet, the well-worn
carpet, the velvet sofa, the black bottles and glittering tankards on
the shelves of the sideboard.
The landlord went behind the bar to look after some besmocked gentry
who were drinking in front of it, leaving his wife to attend to
Holdsworth.
“What might you like to order, sir?” she inquired, presenting herself
at a side door.
He asked her to bring him some wine and biscuits, saying that he had
no appetite now, but would dine or sup later on. He looked at her very
attentively as he spoke, with an idea in his mind that he had seen her
before.
She went away, and he left his seat and paced the room with a wild look
of distress on his face, and bitter anxiety and fear in his heart.
Once he snatched up his hat and advanced to the door, but hesitated
and resumed his agitated walk. His feelings were those of a man just
awakened to consciousness from the effects of a blow that had stunned
him. His body trembled, his lips worked, and he held his hands squeezed
tightly together. His sufferings were indeed terrible. He looked back
upon the blank of five years and recoiled before the conjectures his
heart prompted as to the things which had happened in that time.
Sometimes his impulse was to rush forth and cry aloud for Dolly, and
then a deadly chill came over him, and he shut his eyes and beat aside
his thoughts, as though they were something tangible and apart from
him, with his hand.
When the door opened, he bit his lip to control himself, and kept his
back turned upon the woman in feigned inspection of a print upon the
wall. As she was about to withdraw, he looked at her and said:
“Have you lived long in Southbourne?”
“Yes, sir, many years.”
He seated himself and drank a glass of wine.
“How many years?”
“Oh, twelve, thirteen. Ah, more like fifteen years, sir!”
“So long! Then you know all the people here?”
“Yes, sir, I daresay I do,” answered the woman, putting her hands under
her apron, and examining Holdsworth’s face and clothes with great
curiosity.
“Who last lived in that house at the bottom of the street?”
“You mean the one you was askin’ my husband about?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Fairchild, the butcher, after he sold his business about two years
ago.”
“Who before Mr. Fairchild?”
“It stood empty awhile after Mrs. Holdsworth left it.”
“Where is she now?”
“Livin’ at Hanwitch, along with her husband, Mr. Conway, the dentist.”
The woman’s eyes, when she made this answer, were on the garden; when
she looked again at Holdsworth, his face was turned from her.
“Did you know any of the parties, sir, as you’re asking about?” she
inquired.
He did not answer her, and she, thinking that he had not heard her,
continued:
“I was servant along with poor Mr. Newcome before the old gentleman
died, and saw a good deal of Mrs. Holdsworth, as I always call her;
for, somehow, I can never bear to think of her as Mrs. Conway, for
her heart never went with her hand when she married that gentleman, as
I can bear witness to, for I was at the wedding, and never saw a poor
body cry as she did. She and her grandmother, old Mrs. Flemming, was
often at the rectory ... but I beg pardon, sir; you was speaking of the
house. I can’t remember who had it before Mrs. Holdsworth. It’s a long
time ago.”
Holdsworth raised his head.
Up to the moment of her speaking of Dolly he had not known his own
name; all other memories had returned to him, save that. His face was
very white, but there was a strong expression in it. If the woman were
to talk for another twelve hours, she could add nothing more to what
she had already said. Dolly’s death he had expected as he had expected
a hundred other nameless possibilities, when memory swooped upon him
and set him peering over the edge of the chasm that separated the
Then from the Now; but not her marriage. Not that. In all the hours
he had passed in the open boat at sea, beholding death striking down
his companions about him, suffering the exquisite torture of thirst,
the yet more exquisite pang of hopelessness, there was no moment of
agony in all that time comparable to the agony that now wrenched him.
It might be one of those terrible experiences which break the heart or
transform the nature, but it gave to or found in Holdsworth a quality
of endurance that enabled him to front the extremity with a face of
marble.
When next he spoke his voice was low, but without a tremor in it.
“I am interested in Mrs. Conway and her old grandmother. Tell me what
you know about them.”
“Surely, sir, you don’t bring news of Mr. Holdsworth--of the fine young
man that went to sea and was shipwrecked?” inquired the woman with a
face of excitement, and staring hard, as if she were about to receive
some astounding news.
“No, no!” he answered, almost under his breath; and then he added,
“Tell me what you know of the widow.”
“I remember Mr. Holdsworth well,” said the woman, her speech answering
to her mood. “A handsomer young fellow I never saw. He used often to be
at the rectory with his wife, and the love between them was something
beautiful. How she ever had the heart to let him leave her I never
could guess. But he went and was drowned, and left the young thing
without a friend or a shilling in the wide world, God help her; and
though I said it was almost stupid her marrying Mr. Conway, remembering
what love there was between her and Mr. Holdsworth, yet I have always
believed it was for her child’s sake that she married the dentist, for
they were in desperate want when he courted her, and must have starved
for want of help.”
“You are speaking of Holdsworth’s child?”
“Yes, sir. A bright little thing, and fair as a lily. I saw her the
other day when I was over at Hanwitch. She was with her mamma, and I
never see such a likeness as there is between her and her poor drowned
papa. But you’re askin’ about old Mrs. Flemming. Why, she died four
years ago. She was very old, and went off quite peaceful, they said.
What with Mrs. Flemming’s death, and her never getting any news of her
husband, and having a tiny little baby to find food for, I do think
the poor young lady’s heart nearly broke. I never heard exactly how
the money matter was with her, but I believe that when Mrs. Flemming
died she would have nothing to live on but her husband’s pay, which was
stopped when he was given up for lost. Mr. Newcome was very kind, and
paid her rent, and helped her along while he lived; and then Mr. Conway
saw her; but it was a long time before she would marry him, long after
the poor old rector was dead and gone, and she found that taking in
needlework was worse than going on the parish. I often think of her--I
do, indeed, sir--waiting day after day for her husband, who was never
to come home. I’d rather, myself, have married anybody than a sailor.
There’s no telling, when once they go, whether they’ll ever come back
again. They’re worse nor soldiers for that.”
Here the woman, suddenly conceiving that she had talked quite enough,
and perhaps a little too much, dropped a courtesy and left the room;
but came back again to ask two questions--At what hour would the
gentleman please to dine? and would he like to have a bed-room in her
house? She could recommend her bed-rooms. Her linen was clean as snow.
“I will tell you presently,” answered Holdsworth. “I have not yet
decided upon my movements.”
“There’s a nice plump fowl----”
“Yes, cook me that by seven o’clock,” said Holdsworth, who was
feverishly impatient to be left alone.
She closed the door, and Holdsworth leaned his temples on his hands
and fixed his heavy eyes on the bare table, taking the attitude of a
student striving to master some difficult problem.
For many minutes he held this posture, presently lifted his head, and
looked about him; then took his hat and went out.
The landlord behind the bar made him a low bow, and offered his
services to show him over the village. Holdsworth declined his offer
with a “Thank you,” and walked into the road. He glanced over his
shoulder suspiciously as he advanced, disliking the inquisitive stare
with which he had been followed through the bar of the inn by the
people drinking there, but no one watched him. He held a stick, on
which he leaned as he moved, like an infirm man; and often he paused
and gazed around him. The people in the roadway, or in the houses,
eyed him as he passed with the curiosity a stranger seldom fails to
excite in small unfrequented places; but he took no notice of them; his
mind was intent on vivifying the impressions it was receiving with old
memories, and adjusting the ideas which had been restored to him out of
the dark and secret hiding-places of the past.
Few changes had been made in the aspect of the little village to
embarrass the picture which his recovered memory had submitted to him.
Some alterations in the external form of one or two shops, and two
freshly-built houses on the left-hand side facing the blacksmith’s
shed, were the only new features in the familiar scene of this quaint
broad thoroughfare.
His steps grew more reluctant, his face took a sharper expression of
pain, though never losing its characteristic of hardness and severity,
as he drew near to his old home. He forced himself forwards, and, when
abreast, halted and looked at it.
The windows were blindless, the garden showed signs of long neglect,
and a board nailed to a post leaned towards the road, bearing the
announcement, in painted letters, that the house was to let. A row
of cobwebs garnished the woodwork of the gate, and glistened in the
sunshine; the bare rooms, visible through the windows, looked cheerless
and inhospitable; the window-glass was dirty, and some of the panes
in the kitchen window were broken. The grass about the house was tall
and vividly green. That window, looking towards the trees between the
lanes, belonged to Dolly’s room. There were white soft curtains to it
in those days, and the glass was pure and transparent as spring-water.
That room on the left was the sitting-room. There they had taken their
meals; there they had played forfeits, had hunted the slipper, had
made the walls ring with innocent laughter. He remembered the old
grandmother’s placid smile, the rector’s kindly jokes, his Dolly’s
sweet face, throwing a light of purity and beauty about her. And under
the sill were the dead branches of the clematis, still held to the wall
by the pieces of black leather Dolly’s own hand had nailed. Such humble
signs make grief sharper than large memorials.
He stood leaning upon his stick, losing all sense of the present in
this vision of the past. His thoughts, taking their departure from the
time when he first fitted out that house as a home for Dolly, flowed
regularly downwards. He was a bridegroom again, and his wife was at his
side, and her eyes upon his, and their hands clasped. Now the shadow of
separation that was to darken them presently was felt; and then came
the eve of his departure, thronged with the memory of kisses sweet and
bitter, of tears and broken prayers, and brave hopes battling with
sullen misgivings. He was now on board the “Meteor,” and now in the
open boat, surrounded by the dying, and himself suffering tortures it
broke him down to recall; and now he was in Australia, striving with
memory, which would yield no answer to his passionate prayers. But the
finger of God pointed the way to his old home; and now he was returning
to England, with his past still hidden in gloom, but with his heart not
unhopeful of the morning that was to break after the long darkness of
the night. And finally, with the old village of Southbourne before him,
came the rush of memory--the brief exultation--the spasm of fear--the
terror that held him mute--the disclosure that showed him his wife less
his than had he traversed all the desolate miles of water only to kneel
by her grave....
Tears would have relieved him, but he could not weep. He turned and
moved slowly away, stopping again and again to look back at the
little empty house, while sobs convulsed him, and a sense of supreme
desolation and friendlessness weighed him down.