FATHER AND CHILD.
All next morning Holdsworth kept watch for Dolly and his child, but did
not see them. But Mr. Conway had passed when Mrs. Parrot happened to
be in the room laying the cloth for dinner, and the woman had directed
Holdsworth’s attention to him. The glimpse he obtained, however, was
very brief. All that he saw was a sandy-whiskered gentleman, with
a tilted hat, aim with rather uncertain legs for the gate with the
brass plate upon it, and vanish with an alacrity that was painfully
suggestive of a disordered vision.
“There he goes! Drunk as usual!” exclaimed Mrs. Parrot, disgustfully,
giving the table-cloth an angry twitch.
“How does he live? I have seen nobody call at his house yet!”
“No, sir; and I don’t think you’re likely to. Persons as can’t get
served at the other tooth-drawers are too sensible to walk all this way
to get their jaws broke.”
“Are they _very_ poor, do you think?”
“Why, sir, I suppose he must pay his rent somehow, but I don’t know as
he does anything more. I’m told that they owe money all over the town,
but the tradespeople make no fuss, because, as Mr. Jairing the butcher
says to me, ‘It’s all very fine, Mrs. Parrot,’ he says, ‘talkin’ of
hexecutions, but what’s the use o’ going to the expense of a distress
when there’s nothing to seize?’ There’s a deal in that, sir.”
“God help them!” muttered Holdsworth to himself. Then looking up he
said, “Do you think Mrs. Conway would let her little girl come and have
tea with me this afternoon?”
“I should think she would, sir, and feel honoured by the askin’.”
“I have not seen the child to-day.”
“No, sir! Mrs. Conway don’t often come out. She kapes a bit of a wench
as does her arrands, and I’ve told the slut times out o’ mind to put
her bonnet on, an’ not go flyin’ down the road as though a orficer was
arter her, disgracin’ of our neighbourhood, and frightening away any
respectable person as might be comin’ wi’ a bad tooth. I don’t think of
_him_, sir. If I could put a sixpence in his way I would, for the sake
of his wife an’ the little one.”
“How shall I invite little Nelly if I do not see her?”
“I’ll run across, if you like, when I’ve got your dinner ready, and ask
Mrs. Conway if she’ll let the child come. Perhaps you’ll just watch,
sir, and tell me when the husband leaves the house. I don’t want to
meet him if I can help it.”
An hour elapsed before Holdsworth saw Mr. Conway pass on his way to the
High Street, on which he rang the bell and informed Mrs. Parrot that
she might now call on Mrs. Conway in safety.
His anxiety to have the child impressed his landlady as a very odd
thing. She could understand his admiration of Nelly; she could also
understand his calling her in and giving her a kiss and a present. No
man’s heart, she considered, could fail to be warmed by the sight of so
pretty a little girl. But she could not understand him posting himself
at the window, and looking troubled because he did not see the child,
and showing himself as anxious to have her to tea as if she was a grown
woman, and he was courting her.
She sailed across the road (watched by Holdsworth), her cap-strings
streaming over her shoulders, and walked up to the door of the Conways’
house, and gave a single knock. She was kept waiting so long, that when
the door was at last opened by the “bit of a slut,” who, to judge by
her complexion, appeared to have been devoting the last hour or two to
black-leading her face, Mrs. Parrot, instead of asking for Mrs. Conway,
began storming at her for “kaping respectable folks on the doorsteps
while she sat readin’ ha’porths o’ bad fiction by the kitchen fire.”
“I wasn’t readin’. I didn’t hear yer. Who do you want--missus?” said
the girl sulkily.
“Why, Mrs. Conway, of course. Show me in, and go an’ tell her at once
that I’m here,” replied Mrs. Parrot, not waiting to be shown in, but
pushing into the middle of the passage.
The girl shambled off, and presently Mrs. Conway came up the kitchen
stairs. The skirt of her dress was pinned up at the waist, and her
arm-sleeves were above her elbows, displaying the whiteness and
fineness of the skin, though the arms were very thin.
“How do you do, Mrs. Parrot? You will excuse my wretched untidy
appearance. I am doing a little washing downstairs, and would not keep
you waiting whilst I made myself presentable.”
“Niver mention it, ma’am,” answered Mrs. Parrot, looking with pleasure,
mingled with pain, at the sweet face, in which, now that there was no
hat to shadow it the sorrow and care were clearly seen. Her prettiness
was but enhanced by the looped-up skirt, showing the little feet and
small firm ankles. Her bright hair was in disorder, and there was the
little flush of recent exertion on her cheeks.
“I’ve called wi’ a message from my gentleman lodger. He wants Miss
Nelly to drink tea with him, and sent me across to ask you to let her
come.”
“The same gentleman who gave Nelly a shilling yesterday?” asked Dolly,
looking half surprised and half pleased.
“Yes, ma’am. He’s a very nice person, and seems uncommon partial to
children. He’s been all the morning on the look-out for your little
gal, and I hope you’ll let her come, ma’am, and bring her doll wi’ her,
for I think he’ll take it to heart if you refuse.”
“Oh, I will certainly send her. Will half-past three do? I shall have
to dress her. Pray give my compliments to the gentleman, and thank him
for his kindness. You have not told me his name.”
“Hampden, ma’am; Mr. Hampden.”
“I have not yet seen him. Is he an old man? Few young men care for
children.”
“To tell you the truth, ma’am, I’ve got no more idea of his age, than
I have of the age of my house. He’s got a deal o’ gray hair on his
head, and yet he isn’t an old man either, although to see him walk,
leanin’ on his stick, you’d take him to be sixty. I think he means to
make friends wi’ your little gal, if you’ll let him, just for want o’
company. He don’t seem to know anybody in Hanwitch, nor to follow any
callin’ like. I doubt he’s a bit rich; but you see, ma’am, he only took
my lodgin’s the day before yesterday, and I’ve not had time to make him
quite out yit.”
Saying this, Mrs. Parrot dropped a courtesy, and turned to depart,
taking a quick comprehensive glance at the dingy little parlour as she
passed, and mentally comparing it with her own rooms.
Holdsworth was at the window when she returned, and she could hardly
forbear laughing, so tickled was she by his expectant face.
“Mrs. Conway’s compliments, sir, and she says that her little gal will
be with you at half-past three, thankin’ you for your kindness,” said
she, her eyes twinkling with her suppressed but perfectly good-natured
mirth.
“Thank you, Mrs. Parrot, for taking so much trouble,” exclaimed
Holdsworth gleefully. “What time is it now? A quarter to three. I shall
just have time to walk into the High Street and buy a cake. She will
like a cake--a plum-cake I think; and shall I get some marmalade? Yes,
she will enjoy marmalade--and what else? Tell me, Mrs. Parrot; what do
little children like?”
“Why, mostly sweet things, sir. I guess the marmalade’ll take Miss
Nelly’s fancy. But don’t you trouble, sir; I can run out and buy you
what you want.”
“No--I am obliged to you. There are other things she might like which I
shouldn’t be able to remember without seeing them. We will have tea at
four, Mrs. Parrot. I shall be back in twenty minutes.”
Mrs. Parrot watched him leave the house and walk down the road as
swiftly as he could, leaning on his stick. “Well, if iver I saw the
like of this!” she exclaimed aloud. “I’ll not tell mother; it might
scare her. There’s something downright sing’ler in the notion of a
stranger takin’ all this trouble, and goin’ almost wild-like all along
of a little gal he never saw before yisterday. Some folks ’ud call it
alarmin’.”
_Her_ nerves, however, were equal to the occasion; for whilst
Holdsworth was away, she journeyed upstairs and unlocked a little
glass-fronted cupboard, screwed into a corner of her bedroom, from
which she took a teapot, a cream-jug, and two cups and saucers of
brilliantly-coloured china; likewise from an open box under her bed a
tray magnificently decorated with mother-of-pearl birds of paradise
seated on pink trees, and surrounded by a prospect not to be paralleled
on this side the moon.
She returned to the kitchen with these things, and then entered the
garden and picked a bouquet of sweet-scented flowers, with which she
furnished the tray. Then she set to work upon a loaf of bread, and
produced in no time a number of thin and appetising slices; which done,
and the tray being arranged, she fell back a step to admire the effect.
At a quarter-past three Holdsworth returned, followed by a boy with
his arms full of bags. He called to Mrs. Parrot, who came out and took
the bags from the boy, and placed them upon the dining-room table.
More things than edibles had been purchased; though of these there
was enough to give an evening party upon--fruit, cakes, pots of jam,
gingerbread-nuts, sweetmeats, tarts; there was a doll; there was also
a horse and cart; and there was an immense box of bricks.
Mrs. Parrot turned pale, and was much too astonished to speak, as
Holdsworth thrust the bags and pots, the buns and the tarts, into
her arms, and requested her to take them at once into the kitchen,
and display them on plates to the very best advantage, ready for the
little one when the bell should ring for tea. He then hid the toys in
a closet, and stationed himself at the window to watch for Nelly.
Punctual to the moment, she came out of the house, led by the hand by
the servant, who looked horribly grimy. Holdsworth ran to the door and
opened it, and when the child came timidly up to him, snatched her up
in his arms, and hastened with her into the sitting-room, kissing her
all the way.
“There’s a good little pet,” he said sitting down and keeping her on
his knee. “Let me take off your hat. Nelly mustn’t be afraid of me.”
“My own! my own!” he murmured, as his lingering fingers caressed her
soft hair, and he gazed with passionate love at her big eyes, roving
with a half-scared expression from his face around the room.
“Me dot dolly,” she said, producing the old toy from under her cloak.
“Ay, that’s right; and dolly shall have a slice of cake all to herself.
Here she is!” he exclaimed, seeing Mrs. Parrot peeping in at the door.
“Will you take her hat and this little cape?”
“How do you do, dear?” said Mrs. Parrot, giving the child a kiss.
“Look at my frock!” exclaimed Nelly, holding up her dress, which had a
little embroidery work upon it, and which bore marks of much patient
mending and darning.
“Beautiful! beautiful!” cried Mrs. Parrot. “I’ve set the kettle on to
bile, sir, and tea’ll be ready whiniver you’re pleased to want it.”
So saying, she dropped a courtesy, being greatly impressed by Mr.
Hampden’s undoubted wealth, illustrated by his prodigal purchases, and
withdrew.
Father and child! A lonely man, gentle, honourable, faithful, as any
whom God in His wisdom has chosen to afflict, opening his heart to
receive and fold up the sweetness and innocence of his own little baby!
Ah! I think even Mrs. Parrot might have guessed the strange mystery
of this man’s desire for the child, had she but watched him from some
secret hiding-place when the door had closed upon her.
He surrendered himself to his emotion when he felt himself alone with
the little girl, and for many moments could not speak to her, could do
no more than look at her, searching her fairy lineaments with something
almost of a woman’s ecstasy, reading his brief history of hopeful,
beautiful love in her fresh deep eyes, and drinking in greedily the
memories of the days that were no more, which thronged from the face
that mirrored his as it was when Dolly knew him, as the dew-drop
mirrors the sun.
But he was recalled to himself by the gathering expression of fear
in Nelly. Indeed, there was something alarming enough to her in the
concentrated passion, all soft and holy as it was, that shone in his
fixed regard.
Such abandonment to feeling would not do, if the part he was to play
was to be complete.
He placed her gently on the floor, and, going to the cupboard, brought
out the doll.
“See, Nelly! here is a little lady I invited expressly to drink tea
with you. She told me that she had often seen you pass her shop in the
High Street, and that she wanted to live with you. You must take her
home when you leave me, will you?”
Nelly stood for a moment transfixed by the spectacle of this
gorgeously-dressed creature, resplendent in blue gauze, bronzed
boots, gilt sash, and flowing red feather. Then--so permanent is
human affection--she threw down her old doll and ran forward, with
outstretched arms, to welcome and hug the stranger.
But the sum of her amazement was not yet made out. Once more Holdsworth
dived into the mysterious cupboard and produced the horse and cart,
which, he told Nelly, was the chariot that had brought the young lady
to his house, and without which she never condescended to take the
air, being much too fine a lady to walk. The box of bricks followed;
and presently Nelly was on the floor, taking up the three toys one
after the other in quick succession, her avariciousness of enjoyment
perplexed by the number of the objects that ministered to it.
Holdsworth knelt by her side and watched her face.
A man need not be a father to find something elevating and purifying
in the contemplation of a child’s countenance, varied by tiny innocent
emotions, reflecting the little play of her small passions, as her eyes
reflect the objects that surround her. But that subtle and sacred bond,
which unites a child’s life to a parent’s heart, creates an impulse to
such contemplation which makes the pleasure sweeter than any other kind
of pleasure, by the infusion of an exquisite pathos, mingled with the
only kind of pride to which vanity seems to contribute nothing.
The natural bitterness which Holdsworth felt in thinking that his
little girl did not know him, that misfortune had thrust his love
out of the sphere of her own and his wife’s life, was converted into
tender melancholy by the emotions Nelly’s presence excited, and left
his pleasure unalloyed by pain. Here was a little being who was his
at least; his by a right no sin, no folly, no error could challenge;
indisputably his, to survive, if God permitted, into his future, when
the time should come for him to call himself aloud by the name of
Father, and ask her love as some recompense for that present sacrifice
of his which was enforced by grand obedience to the high laws of
morality.
How hard it was to be thus true to himself, thus true to his wife,
thus true to the little one who must needs share some portion of that
obligation of shame which would befall them all, were he to confess
himself--Judge! for you see him kneeling by his child’s side; you may
behold his love in his eyes; you may know that no upturned luminous
glance of hers but thrills along the chords of his passion, and makes
his heart gush forth its overfull tenderness, even until his sight
grows humid, and he turns his thoughts in a piteous aside to God for
courage and will, so to sustain this strange, pathetic happiness, that
no sorrow shall follow it.
* * * * *
“Nelly, we will have tea now,” he says; and he rings the bell, and
then comes up to the child again, and, turns her face up, kisses her
suddenly, and seats himself at a distance with his chin upon his hand.
Then Mrs. Parrot came in, armed with the tray, which she placed upon
the table, while she challenged her lodger’s admiration by lightly
lifting her gray eyes and smirking.
Yes, it was very beautiful. The bouquet made the room odoriferous at
once; the birds of paradise looked splendid; the cups were elegant
enough to induce one to go on drinking tea with stubborn disregard
of the nervous system, for hours and hours together, if only for an
excuse to handle them and have them under the eye. In order to bring
little Nelly’s head a little above the level of the table, Holdsworth
piled three or four of the folios on a chair, on which he seated her;
and that the two dolls might be seen to advantage, he very ingeniously
tied them together, and set them on a chair, leaning against the table,
with a plate and a slice of bread-and-butter before them; whereat Nelly
laughed rapturously, clapping her hands and filling the room with sweet
sounds.
It was all Fairyland, these cups and toys and cakes and what not, to
the little girl, whose tea at home was often no more than a slice of
dry bread, when her step-father had drunk away the money he should
have given to his wife, and left her without the means to purchase an
ounce of butter. The sun was at the back of the house, and its rules
of yellow light flooded the floor at the extremity of the apartment,
and flung a golden haze over that portion of the room where the table
stood. There was something so charming in the scene thus delicately
lighted, that Mrs. Parrot, who had been struggling with her modesty for
some minutes, while she fidgeted over the plates and dishes, suddenly
exclaimed:
“I humbly beg parding for the liberty, sir, but would you mind mother
just takin’ one peep? She came into the kitchen while I was dressin’
the tray, an’ I told her what was goin’ forward, an’ I think it ’ud do
her heart good to see this beautiful show.”
“Let her come by all means,” replied Holdsworth, touched and diverted
by the perfect simplicity of these people.
Presently fell a respectful knock, and Mrs. Parrot re-entered, followed
by a Roman nose that came and vanished like an optical delusion near
the handle of the door.
“Come in, mother; the gentleman’s kind enough to say you may,” said
Mrs. Parrot; and in faltered the old woman, dropping an aged courtesy,
and making her spectacles chatter in their wooden case as she strove to
withdraw them.
“Ain’t this a picter, mother?”
“Niver see anything to aquil it,” replied the old lady, putting on her
spectacles and gazing around her with many a convulsive motion of the
head. “Why, Sairey, them’s our best cups!”
“Yes, I told you I was usin’ them. Don’t you see the little gal,
mother?”
“See her? Yes,--of course I do. But she don’t want an old ’ooman like
me to kiss her, eh, my pretty? I’m very much obleeged, sir,” dropping
a creaking courtesy, “for the sight o’ this table.”
“Would your mother like one of these cakes for her tea?” said
Holdsworth.
“Oh, sir, you’re very good.--Mother, the gentleman wants to know if
you’ll accept of one of these cakes for your tea?”
“Thank ye, sir. I relish a bit o’ somethin’ sweet now and agin,”
replied the old lady, dropping another courtesy as she received the
cake. “I was cook to Squire Harrowden, lar’ bless yer! I dessay it were
years afore you was born, and they did say as there niver was my aquil
i’ the makin’ o’ pie-crust. I’ve cooked for as many as a hundred and
tin persons, ay, that I have,” with intense earnestness, “as Sairey’ll
bear me witness, for she’s heerd the story from her own father, as was
gamekeeper to the Squire, an’ a more likely man you niver see, sir. His
name was Cramp, which he was a Croydon man, as you may happen to know
the name if you was iver in them parts.”
“Come, mother, we have stopped long enough,” exclaimed Mrs. Parrot,
putting her hand upon the old lady’s arm.
They both courtesied; and then the old woman let fall the cake, which
rolled under the table. Holdsworth recovered it for her, which act of
condescension was so overwhelming that she let the cake fall again; on
which Mrs. Parrot lost her temper, and hurried the old dame through the
door at a velocity to which her legs were quite unused, and possibly
quite unequal. She might be heard feebly remonstrating in a voice
similar to the sound a key makes when turned in a rusty lock; and then
the door was closed, and Holdsworth and Nelly were left alone.
* * * * *
If Mrs. Parrot had dared, she would have been glad to advise Holdsworth
“not to let the little gal eat too much, there bein’ nothing worse nor
sweetstuff for young stomachs, which finds milk-and-water sometimes
too much for ’em.” But, happily, Nelly was not a glutton; besides, the
majority of human beings at her age eat only as much as they want, and
no more; we wait until our judgment is matured, until life is precious,
until we have experienced most of the distempers which arise from
an overloaded stomach, before making ourselves thoroughly ill with
over-feeding!
By this time the child was perfectly at home with Holdsworth, and
enjoying herself immensely, varying a bite at a slice of cake with a
bite at some bread covered with jam, sipping the good milk Holdsworth
had obtained for her with great gravity, and staring at the dolls, and
then bending to make sure that her bricks had not taken to their heels
while she was looking at the horse and cart, and that the horse had not
bolted with the cart while she was looking at her bricks.
Holdsworth scarcely removed his eyes from her face. When he spoke to
her there was a softness in his voice that melted like music on the ear.
At last she pushed her plate away, and Holdsworth rang the bell, and
giving Mrs. Parrot private instructions to make up a parcel of the
remainder of the cakes, etc., ready for Nelly to take home with her, he
clasped the child’s hand and went with her into the garden, she holding
the new doll, he dragging the horse and cart after him.
There was a square of grass in this garden, and a bench on it; and here
Holdsworth sat, while Nelly played with her toys.
It was a roomy, old-fashioned garden, with aged walls, full of rusty
nails and rotten ligatures, and a few tall pear-trees sheltering a
small circumference of ground at their feet; and many fruit-trees
sprawling wildly against the walls. The moss was like a carpet on the
flint walk, and the box at the side of the bed was high and thick;
and at the top of the garden was an old hencoop, hedged about with
wirework, behind which some dozen hens scratched the soil for worms,
and made the air drowsy with their odd, half-suppressed mutterings.
Moods possess us, sometimes, which such a scene as this will affect
more pleasurably than a garden bursting with exotics, and tended with
the highest artistic judgment. There is something very calming in
homely shrubs, and old fruit-trees with their roots hidden by the long,
vivid grass, and uncouth weeds thrusting their rude shapes among violet
beds; and the solemn chatter of barn-door hens sunning themselves in
hot spaces, or lying like dead things with a wing half-buried in sand
and dirt, will sometimes impart a more agreeable tranquillity to the
mind than the choicest songs of nightingales warbled in groves under a
full moon.
Holdsworth suffered the child to have her full sportive will for some
time, and then, thinking her tired, called her to him.
She ran to him at once, and he perched her on his knee.
“Is Nelly afraid of me now?”
“No. Nelly dot afraid. Nelly loves ’oo.”
In proof whereof she put her mouth up for a kiss.
“Will Nelly come to see me every day?”
“Det.”
“Does Nelly’s papa love her?”
He believed that she had been taught to regard Mr. Conway as her papa.
It was a sore tax upon the gentle mood then on him to put the question
in that form, but he wished to learn if his child were well treated by
her step-father.
The question puzzled her. Indeed, she was a very little thing, and
backward in her speech. It was delicious to see her knit her tiny
brows, and gaze with her full, deep, earnest eyes on Holdsworth, with
a half-intelligence in her face, and all the rest child-sweetness.
Like all children, who cannot answer a question, she remained silent;
a hint parents would sometimes do well to take.
“Does Nelly get plenty to eat?”
“Det.”
This was not quite true; but then Holdsworth, who knew nothing of
children, was ignorant that little infants will borrow their answers
from your voice or face, so that to get an affirmative from them you
have only to speak or look affirmatively.
“Does mamma teach Nelly to pray?”
“Det. Nelly pray.”
And, to prove how well she could pray, she put her two hands together,
hung down her head, and whispered:
“Dod bless dear mamma and Nelly. Dod bless little Nelly’s dear papa.”
She looked up coyly, as though ashamed.
Dear reader, smile not at these simple words, nor think them puerile.
When we behold a little child praying, we know how the angels worship
God.
A sob broke from Holdsworth as she ceased. Who was little Nelly’s dear
papa but he? His wife’s love had dictated that prayer, and it was
their child who told him of her love. Ah! God had deigned to hear that
prayer, whispered by a wife’s heart through the lips of her infant, and
had blessed him with this knowledge of her devotion, and had brought
him from afar to know it.
No; not want of love had made her faithless to his memory. Faithless
she was not--she could not be if her heart nightly spoke to God of him
through her child.
Let him look at the little girl now; let him feel the fulness of
the love she inspired in him; let him imagine that he was desolate
and friendless, and in want, and that this frail flower, this tender
little lamb, pined and grew wan and ragged for food and raiment; let
him mingle with his own emotion the pain and torment which a mother’s
heart would feel in the presence of this baby’s sufferings; and then
let him condemn his wife, if he could, for sacrificing her memories and
accepting food and shelter from any hand that offered them under any
honourable conditions.
He could not speak again for some time; and Nelly, growing tired of
sitting, slipped from his knee, and betook herself to her toys.
Then his eyes kindled anew, and he watched her eagerly. He longed to
ask her questions--to hear her lisp him sweet assurances of his Dolly’s
love--to learn from her little lips that her mother was his, had
been, would always be his, though separated from him by a barrier as
formidable as death. But there was no question he could put which the
child might not repeat again; for, backward as she was in speech, her
small imperfect language would be intelligible enough to the mother.
His curiosity would be too unnatural in a stranger not to excite
Dolly’s suspicions; and if they should not even lead to the discovery
of his secret, they might be the means of breaking off all intercourse
between him and his child.
And so he remained silent; and presently, as he sat watching the
little creature pushing her doll to and fro in the cart and talking
to herself, a calm came upon his heart--a sense of exquisite repose
and security. You would have said, to look upon him and remark the
placid sweetness that reigned in his face, that the child’s prayer had
veritably done its office--that God had blessed him indeed.
A long hour passed. The garden was fresh and cool; the declining sun
mellowed the gray walls and kindled many little suns in the vine-draped
windows; the sparrows flitted quickly with short chirrups from tree to
tree; and the crooning of the hens added completeness to the peace and
tenderness that breathed in the air.
Once again Nelly was on Holdsworth’s knee, fetching vague replies from
her struggling perceptions for his questions, when Mrs. Parrot came out
of the house and said that Mrs. Conway was in the sitting-room, waiting
to take her little girl home.
Holdsworth glanced quickly at the window of the room, but did not see
her. He put the child down hurriedly, and said:
“There, my little pet, run along with Mrs. Parrot.”
“Won’t you come and speak to Mrs. Conway, sir?” asked Mrs. Parrot. “She
wants to thank you for your kindness.”
“No--no--pray don’t let her call it kindness,” stammered Holdsworth,
who was very pale.
“I’m sure she’ll take it unkind if you won’t let her thank you, sir,”
said Mrs. Parrot earnestly. “She’s been watching you both through the
window for the last five minutes, an’ I couldn’t help tellin’ her what
a fine treat you have given Miss Nelly. Besides, she’s seen them toys,”
she added, looking at Nelly’s presents.
A whole lifetime of nervous pain was in that moment’s pause. Could he
meet her, speak to her, and remain unknown? His desire was to hide.
It seemed inconceivable that in five years such a change should be
wrought in him as to render him unrecognisable by his wife.
But the pressing necessity of immediate action was too sudden to give
his imagination time to alarm his judgment. He must dare the encounter,
since it was not to be obviated by any means which might not prove more
productive of suspicion than bold confrontment.
He laid the utmost tyranny of his will upon his feelings, and saying:
“Perhaps you are right, Mrs. Parrot. Mrs. Conway will think me rude if
I do not see her,” took Nelly’s hand and walked with her to the house.
Dolly was seated in an arm-chair near the fireplace, leaning her cheek
on her hand. Her attitude showed that she had been watching the group
in the garden.
She stood up when Holdsworth entered and bowed to him.
Nelly ran to her, holding up her doll.
“Look, mamma!”
The action was timely; it enabled Holdsworth to walk to the side of the
window, where the shadow lay darkest, and there he stood.
This he had sense enough to do; but for a moment or two the room swam
round him, and he grasped the back of a chair.
_Would she know him?_
That thought swept like a galvanic shock through him, and made his
blood tingle.
It brought hope with it and fear; a wild paradoxical emotion of
yearning love and the blighting sense of the sorrow and dishonour
recognition would involve.
“I have to thank you very much, Mr. Hampden, for your attention to my
little girl,” she said in a low sweet voice--how remembered!
“Her society gives me great happiness,” he replied, with the faintest
tremor in his tone.
It might have been that sign of agitation which made her look at him
suddenly.
His gaze sank. But he felt her eyes upon his face, and the eager,
restless scrutiny that filled them.
But if ever a memory of something infinitely beloved to her had been
renewed by his reply, it melted upon her conviction of the death of him
whom Holdsworth’s voice had recalled to her, as snow upon water.
Could it have been otherwise?
Not five years--not twenty years--not a lifetime, maybe, of ordinary
sufferings could have so transformed his face but that her love could
have pierced the mask.
But the unnatural misery of those ten days in the open boat--the hunger
that had wasted, the agonising thirst that had twisted his face out of
all likeness to what it had been, the growth of beard and moustache
that hid the lower part of the countenance, the gray hair, the bare
forehead, the deformed eyebrows, the rugged indent between the brows,
the stooped form!--
Here was a transformation that would have defied a mother’s
instincts--that would have offered an impenetrable front to perception
barbed into keenness by the profoundest love that ever warmed the heart.
And yet, looking at this woman attentively--looking at her gazing at
yonder man, cowering, it might almost seem, in the friendly shadow
of the wall--there was something in her eyes, something in her face,
something in her whole manner, that would have quickened your pulse
with a moment of breathless suspense.
In such matters, as in the loss of memory, we must recognise the
existence of a deep spiritual insight having no reference to the
revelations of the mind. There are convictions which do not satisfy,
though cemented by logic and acted on by their possessor with sincere
conscience. Against such convictions instincts will surge as waves
break upon a shore. Echoes are awakened, but are thought purposeless.
And the conviction is still maintained, while the secret truth rolls at
its base.
The voice of Holdsworth, but not his face, had set Dolly’s instincts in
motion.
But then her conviction that Holdsworth was dead was a permanent one;
and under it her instincts subsided into uneasy sleep, though there was
a shadow of melancholy on her face when she removed her eyes, which had
not been there before Holdsworth spoke.
“I hope Nelly has been good, Mr. Hampden.”
“Very good, indeed.”
He seemed to know that the crisis was passed, for he breathed more
freely, looked at her, and removed his hand from the chair.
“These toys are very beautiful. I really feel unable to express my
gratitude to you.”
“You owe me no thanks. My gratitude is due to you for allowing your
sweet little girl to come and see me.”
“Mrs. Parrot tells me you are very fond of children?”
“Very. I hope little Nelly will often be here. I am quite alone, and
she cheers me with her pretty prattle.”
She glanced at him quickly and sympathetically, as he said he was
alone, and sighed.
Holdsworth noticed that her dress was very shabby; but her beauty lost
nothing by her apparel. He thought her looking sweeter than when he had
left her five years before. Her riper charms were made touching by an
under colouring of sadness, and there was languor in her movements and
speech--sign of heart-weariness.
“It is time for us to get home, Nelly,” she said, looking uneasily
towards the window. “Go and give Mr. Hampden a kiss, and thank him
prettily for his beautiful presents.”
The child approached Holdsworth, who kissed her gently, repressing the
passionate emotion that, had he been alone, would have prompted him to
raise her in his arms and press her to his breast.
“Here are some little cakes,” he said, taking the parcel Mrs. Parrot
had prepared, and giving them to the child, but addressing Dolly,
“which will amuse her to play with. When may she come again, Mrs.
Conway?”
“Oh, she must not intrude ...”
“No, no! she cannot come too often. Pray let me make a companion
of her. She has completely won my heart. May she not walk with me
sometimes? I promise to take as much care of her as if she were my own
child.”
He had advanced a step and spoke eagerly, bending forward; but meeting
her full eyes fixed on him with a little frown of mingled fear and
amazement, he turned pale, fell back a step, and forcing a smile, said
hurriedly:
“I am sometimes--sometimes laughed at for--for my love of children.”
She did not answer him for some moments, but stood watching him with a
startled expression, suggesting both fascination and terror. Then she
averted her eyes slowly, the colour went out of her cheeks, and she
murmured something under her breath.
“You remind me of one who was very dear to me ... I beg your pardon ...
there is often a strange resemblance in the tones of voices.”
She took the child’s hand, and was mechanically walking to the door.
“Me want dolly and horse,” said Nelly, holding back.
Holdsworth picked up the toys, and went into the passage to open
the door. They bowed to each other, and Holdsworth returned to the
sitting-room.
* * * * *
The moment he had dreaded had come and was gone. He had met his wife,
spoken with her, and she did not know him.
He had noticed the sudden surprise and fear that had come into her
face; he had noticed the deeply thoughtful mood in which she had
quitted the house. But these things proved no more than this: that a
note, familiar to her ear, still lived in the tones of his voice, and
had aroused for awhile the memory which rarely disturbed her now, save
in dreams at night.
Well! what he wished had happened. Suffering had deformed him, time had
changed him, to some purpose. He could play the game of life anew, as
one freshly come upon the stage. His paradise was closed to him, but he
could stand at the gate and be a looker-on at the sphere in which his
most sacred interests played their parts; he could respect and uphold,
by his withdrawal and secrecy, her, whose vows to him his imagined
death had cancelled; he could have his child for a playmate, and sow in
her heart those seeds of love, which, if God should ever suffer her
to know her father, would, in the fulness of time, bless him with an
abundant harvest of happiness.
But, though he would not, for the worth of his life, have had things
otherwise than they were, yet, as he stood in the room from which the
light had departed with his child’s sweet face, the tears rose to his
eyes and sobs convulsed him.
Oh, it was hard to look back upon his sufferings, and feel that nothing
but suffering yet remained; hard and bitter to behold those whom he
loved, those whose love would spring to meet him were he to make but
one little sign, and to know that he was as dead to them as if the
great desolate sea rolled over his body.
But here was a noble self-sacrificing heart that could not long mourn
its own afflictions. High virtues are always pregnant with high
consolations, and a good man’s grief for himself is short because he
carries many tender ministers to it in his bosom. There was no triumph
now to complete, for his conquest over impulse had been achieved at
Southbourne. He drew to the open window at the back, where the air was
fragrant with the smell of hay from the meadows beyond, and the cool
evening perfumes of flowers hidden amid the shrubbery in the garden,
and watched the sun sinking, whilst his thoughts followed it to the
distant deep, whose breast it overhung, and on whose lonely surface he
had watched it rising and setting with a despair the memory of which
filled him with thoughts too deep for tears.