DOLLY’S THOUGHTS.
Three days passed before Holdsworth saw Nelly again. He then, from his
window, beheld her playing on the pavement opposite with the horse and
cart he had given her.
He called, and she came running over to him gleefully at once.
Mrs. Parrot was despatched to request Mrs. Conway’s leave that Nelly
might stop to tea with Mr. Hampden, and returned to say that “the
little gal might, with the greatest of pleasure.”
Again and again Nelly was summoned out of the road by Holdsworth,
sometimes of a morning, sometimes of an afternoon, when he could
see her. The little creature soon learnt to resist all her mother’s
suggestions that she should play in the back garden; she liked the
pavement in the road, especially the pavement opposite Holdsworth’s
lodgings, and with an air of inscrutable mystery would keep a sharp
look-out for Holdsworth, while she feigned to be absorbed in her toy.
Ah, the artfulness of some little girls! But then there were always
gingerbread and cakes for her in the miraculous cupboard in the corner
of Holdsworth’s room; and the temptation to obtain these luxuries,
and to evade the slice of bread and cup of thin milk and water which
formed her evening meal at home, was sometimes powerful enough to send
her toddling out of the back garden, where her mother placed her, into
the road, actually unobserved by mamma, who, imagining that she still
played in the garden, would be astonished by Mrs. Parrot coming across
and saying that Miss Nelly was with Mr. Hampden, and please might she
stop to tea.
Often, if Holdsworth had the good fortune to see his little girl in
the morning, or early in the afternoon, he would put on his hat, and
leaving word with Mrs. Parrot to tell Mrs. Conway, should she ask, that
he had taken Nelly for a walk, clasp the child’s hand and stroll with
her into the town.
Nelly enjoyed these rambles hugely. Their two figures contrasted
strangely, and many a woman’s eyes would follow them, because the
measured step, the thoughtful brow, the sunken face of the man, and the
golden-haired child at his side, with her bright young face and big
eyes drinking in the sights and processions of the streets, and little
twinkling feet, tripping so fleetly and dancingly along, that one would
say she held his hand to prevent herself flying away, formed a picture
which a woman’s heart would love to contemplate for its prettiness.
They would sometimes turn out of the hot streets, when Nelly’s listless
glance would show her weary at last of the splendours of the toy-shops
(before which they regularly stopped) and wander to the river’s side;
and there, in the shadow of trees, Holdsworth would rest himself, while
Nelly cleared the space around her of all the daisies and buttercups
she could find.
These were hours of deep and calm enjoyment to Holdsworth, who, until
the chimes of the town clocks warned him to rise, would lie, with his
head supported on his elbow, that his face might be close to Nelly’s
that he might catch every fluctuating expression that made her eyes
an endless series of sweet signs, that he might hear every faltering
syllable that fell from her lips.
Soft and cool were the sounds the river made, as its gentle tide
gurgled a secret music among the high rushes, or rippled round stumps
of trees or projections of stone lodged in the bank. Winged insects
flashed many-coloured lights upon the eye as they swept from shadow to
shadow, parted by a rivulet of sunshine falling through the openings
in the trees. Now and again a trout leaped with a pleasant and lazy
splash. From the shores opposite, behind the trees, came the smell of
the warm red clover, mingled with the multitudinous hum of bees. Afar,
at a bend of the stream, an angler might stand watching his quill,
with his head and shoulders mirrored in the clear water--so exquisite
the counterfeit that one might easily make a parable out of it, and
sermonise slumberously, as befitted the drowsy influence of the hot
day, on those illusions of life which mock the heart they mislead in
its search after truth.
Once, when Holdsworth was taking Nelly home, after a long rest on the
river’s edge, he met Mr. Conway, who stared very hard, but passed on
without addressing the child. Nelly drew close to Holdsworth when she
saw the man.
Holdsworth knew Conway perfectly well by sight now. The dentist had
repeatedly passed the window at which Holdsworth stationed himself
on the look-out for Nelly; and of late, it might have been noticed,
he would glance with no unfriendly expression towards Mrs. Parrot’s
old-fashioned house.
His walk, when he did not actually reel, as he very often did, might
have been studied with some disgust as an illustration of character.
It was a species of gliding movement, such as a man might be supposed
to adopt, whose self-abasement he himself holds irrevocable, and who
has made up his mind no longer to walk, but to sneak through life.
The influence of importunate creditors might be marked in the quick,
furtive glancing of the eye, that wandered from side to side and
challenged every individual it rested upon. One half-dulled perception
of his social obligations might yet linger; or perhaps it was an innate
love of dress which, from being a vice in prosperity, would degenerate
into a kind of sickly virtue in poverty, that gave him an indescribable
air of seedy jauntiness, tilting his soiled hat, swathing his neck
in a bright kerchief, and furnishing his body with a small-waisted
frock-coat.
It was very natural that Mrs. Parrot’s lodger should be somewhat of
a mystery to him. Having no liking for children himself, but, on the
contrary, a rather decided aversion to them, he could not understand
what this Mr. Hampden saw in Nelly to make him so prodigal in his
gifts, so eager for her society.
Who _was_ he? As Mrs. Parrot made a point of avoiding him, he could not
very well question her about her lodger; but since she was the only
person in Hanwitch who was likely to know anything about him, he got
one of her tradesmen to cross-examine her. But this _ruse_ resulted in
little. All that Mrs. Parrot could tell was, that her lodger’s name was
Hampden, that he was a gentleman with rather queer habits, and that he
seemed to have lots of money.
It was something to find out that he had lots of money.
On the strength of this Mr. Conway suddenly discovered Nelly to be a
very interesting child, and never seemed more pleased than when she was
over the way at Mrs. Parrot’s.
The fact was, the dentist had an idea. It was a small, contemptible,
tricky idea, such as poverty and drink would beget between them. He
kept it to himself and waited.
Dolly, of course, was deeply gratified by Mr. Hampden’s affection for
her child. At first her curiosity had been morbidly excited by this
stranger. Something there had been in his voice which stirred memory to
its centre: and the strange, baffling, elusive thoughts it had induced
kept her spiritless and nervous for some days after the interview
between them. Twice she dreamed of the husband she believed dead. The
dream, in both instances, was perplexed, and left no determinable
impression; but its iteration increased her melancholy, and made memory
painful and importunate.
She accounted for her feelings by referring them to the recollections
which had been abruptly renewed--dragged, so to say, from the grave in
which they lay hidden; and this clue being put into her hand, left her
easy as to the _raison d’être_ of her depression.
Indeed, no suspicion of this stranger’s identity with Holdsworth could
have entered her mind without being instantly followed by conviction.
The thought never occurred to her: how _could_ it? She believed him
dead, and the permanent habit of this belief took the quality of
established proof of his death.
But even if she had doubted his death; if ever she had cherished the
hope that he would one day return to her--a hope that she had held to
passionately for awhile, but which had dropped dead out of her heart
when she gave her hand to Mr. Conway--no memory that she had of him
would admit the possibility of the change that had been wrought in him.
There was a sign to be made--a look, a smile, a whisper--which would
flash perception into her, knit into compact form the thoughts
which his voice had troubled, and confess him her HUSBAND, though
hollow-faced and wan; though stricken as with age; though presenting
the ineffaceable memorials of grievous torture.
But, until this sign should be made, he must be a stranger to her; a
puzzle, perhaps; a man of eccentric habits, and of an odd and striking
aspect--but not her husband.
Nor, strange as his suddenly-acquired affection for Nelly might seem to
others, could it come to her as a surprise. The mother’s vanity would
easily account for the pleasure her little daughter gave to the lonely
man.
Once, when Mrs. Parrot, meeting her in the road, said that “It did seem
strange that a man an’ a child, as had niver set eyes on each other
before, should love each other in the way Mr. Hampden and Miss Nelly
did:” Dolly answered, “Yes; but though I am her mother, yet I must say
that Nelly is a pretty and very winning child, and there is nothing
uncommon in strangers taking a fancy to children.”
No; that was quite true, Mrs. Parrot answered; and told a story of a
rich lady admiring a little beggar girl in the street; and how the rich
lady took the wench into her carrich, and got the parients’ leaf to
adopt her; and how the beggar girl came into the rich lady’s fortin,
and grew up into a stately an’ ’aughty woman, an’ married a lord, she
did, as was beknown to many.
“It ’ud be a comfortin’ thing to you, ma’am, don’t you think, if Mr.
Hampden was to adopt your little gal. It ’ud be a relief to your
feelings, wouldn’t it?” Mrs. Parrot said.
If some half-formed thought, bearing a resemblance to Mrs. Parrot’s
view, had flitted across Dolly’s mind, let us not marvel. Never was her
mood sadder, never was her secret grief sharper, than when her child’s
future formed the subject of her thoughts. Who would give Nelly a home
if she died? Who would love the little thing; rear her in the knowledge
of God, of her broken-hearted mother, of her poor drowned father?
“I could not part with her, Mrs. Parrot; she is the only link that
binds me to bygone happy days. I could not spare her. My life would be
_too_ lonely for me to support it. But I often pray to God that she
may find a friend--such a friend as I am sure Mr. Hampden would make
her--when I am dead.”
This hope--that Mr. Hampden _would_ prove that friend--was the real
source of the comfort that filled her heart each time she saw her
little girl trip across to Mrs. Parrot’s house.
She seldom saw Holdsworth. Sometimes she thought he avoided her. Twice,
when she was leaving or returning to her house, she saw him in the
porch, and each time he hastily withdrew, when she would have crossed
over to speak to him. On rare occasions she met him coming from the
town. Once he raised his hat and passed on: once she went up to him
to thank him for his kindness to Nelly. He answered her hurriedly,
speaking with an effort, and terminated the interview almost abruptly
by bowing and leaving her. Then, again, his voice affected her
powerfully. She stopped and looked after him; and went on her way,
brooding, with a little frown of anxious, painful thought.
On his part, the weight of his secret, when they thus met, face
to face, was insupportable. The wild rush of impulse combated by
inflexible resolution, created a conflict in his breast beyond his
capacity of endurance. He could not have prolonged a conversation with
her. It was shocking to feel himself unknown; it was shocking to feel
that he might betray himself. But he could watch her from his window.
He knew now her hours of going and coming, and would station himself
behind the curtain, and follow her with exquisite tenderness in his
eyes, and sadness, crueller than words can tell, in his heart.
How was this all to end?
Here was the thought that now tormented him. Six weeks had passed since
he came to Hanwitch. He was living frugally, indeed; and of the money
he had brought with him from Australia a large portion still remained.
But his few hundred pounds made a very slender capital; and when they
were spent what then?
He knew very well that he could return to Sydney, that Mr. Sherman
would welcome him back, and reinstate him in his old post. But the
mere thought of leaving England was misery to him. Suppose, under any
plea, he obtained Dolly’s leave to take Nelly with him, could he part
from Dolly? He might never see her again. Then let him think of her
companion; of the sordid, hungry life he _knew_ she was leading--knew,
though he could devise no expedient for relieving her, that might not
be resented as an affront and lose him Nelly’s companionship.
He would rather have her in her grave than leave her as she was.
If urgent distress should ever come upon her, he would be at hand to
succour and support her. And that such urgent distress _must_ come
sooner or later--that the day sooner or later _must_ arrive when
she and her child would be without a home, he had but to watch the
maundering man who passed his windows backwards and forwards day after
day, aimless, sodden, and growing shabbier and shabbier every week in
his appearance, to know.