FLIGHT.
When William left Charles in his room at Ravenshoe, the latter sat down
in his chair and began thinking.
The smart of the blow, which had fallen so heavily at first, had become
less painful. He knew by intuition that it would be worse on the morrow,
and on many morrows; but at present it was alleviated. He began to dread
sleeping, for fear of the waking.
He dreaded the night and dreams; and, more than all, the morrow and the
departure. He felt that he ought to see Cuthbert again, and he dreaded
that. He dreaded the servants seeing him go. He had a horror of parting
from all he had known so long, formally. It was natural. It would be so
much pain to all concerned; were it not better avoided? He thought of
all these things, and tried to persuade himself that these were the
reasons which made him do what he had as good as determined to do an
hour or two before, what he had in his mind when he called William back
in the corridor--to go away alone, and hide and mope like a wounded stag
for a little time.
It was his instinct to do so. Perhaps it would have been the best thing
for him. At all events, he determined on it, and packed up a portmanteau
and carpet-bag, and then sat down again, waiting.
"Yes," he said to himself, "it will be better to do this. I must get
away from William, poor lad. He must not follow my fortunes, for many
reasons."
His dog had been watching him, looking, with his bright loving eyes,
first at him and then at his baggage, wondering what journey they were
going on now. When Charles had done packing, and had sat down again in
his chair, before the fire, the dog leapt up in his lap unbidden, and
laid his head upon his breast.
"Grip, Grip!" said Charles, "I am going away to leave you for ever,
Grip. Dogs don't live so long as men, my boy; you will be quietly under
the turf and at rest, when I shall have forty long years more to go
through with."
The dog wagged his tail, and pawed his waistcoat. He wanted some
biscuit. Charles got him some, and then went on talking.
"I am going to London, old dog. I am going to see what the world is
like. I sha'n't come back before you are dead, Grip, I expect. I have
got to win money and a name for the sake of one who is worth winning it
for. Very likely I shall go abroad, to the land where the stuff comes
from they make sovereigns of, and try my luck at getting some of the
yellow rubbish. And she will wait in the old house at Ranford."
He paused here. The thought came upon him, "Would it not be more
honourable to absolve Adelaide from her engagement? Was he acting
generously in demanding of her to waste the best part of her life in
waiting till a ruined man had won fortune and means?"
The answer came. "She loves me. If I can wait, why not she?"
"I have wronged her by such a thought, Grip. Haven't I, my boy?"--and
so on. I needn't continue telling you the nonsense Charles talked to his
dog. Men will talk nonsense to their dogs and friends when they are in
love; and such nonsense is but poor reading at any time. To us who know
what had happened, and how worthless and false Adelaide was, it would be
merely painful and humiliating to hear any more of it. I only gave you
so much to show you how completely Charles was in the dark, poor fool,
with regard to Adelaide's character, and to render less surprising the
folly of his behaviour after he heard the news at Ranford.
Charles judged every one by his own standard. She had told him that she
loved him; and perhaps she did, for a time. He believed her. As for
vanity, selfishness, fickleness, calculation, coming in and conquering
love, he knew it was impossible in his own case, and so he conceived it
impossible in hers. I think I have been very careful to impress on you
that Charles was not wise. At all events, if I have softened matters so
far hitherto as to leave you in doubt, his actions, which we shall have
to chronicle immediately, will leave not the slightest doubt of it. I
love the man. I love his very faults in a way. He is a reality to me,
though I may not have the art to make him so to you. His mad, impulsive
way of forming a resolution, and his honourable obstinacy in sticking to
that resolution afterwards, even to the death, are very great faults;
but they are, more or less, the faults of men who have made a very great
figure in the world, or I have read history wrong. Men with Charles
Ravenshoe's character, and power of patience and application superadded,
turn out very brilliant characters for the most part. Charles had not
been drilled into habits of application early enough. Densil's
unthinking indulgence had done him much harm, and he was just the sort
of boy to be spoilt at school--a favourite among the masters and the
boys; always just up to his work and no more. It is possible that Eton
in one way, or Rugby in another, might have done for him what Shrewsbury
certainly did not. At Eton, thrown at once into a great, free republic,
he might have been forced to fight his way up to his proper place,
which, I believe, would not have been a low one. At Rugby he would have
had his place to win all the same; but to help him he would have had all
the traditionary school policy which a great man has left behind him as
an immortal legacy. It was not to be. He was sent to a good and manly
school enough, but one where there was for him too little of
competition. Shrewsbury is, in most respects, the third of the _old_
schools in England; but it was, unluckily, not the school for him. He
was too great a man there.
At Oxford, too, he hardly had a fair chance. Lord Welter was there
before him, and had got just such a set about him as one would expect
from that young gentleman's character and bringing up. These men were
Charles's first and only acquaintances at the University. What chance
was there among them for correcting and disciplining himself? None. The
wonder was, that he came out from among them without being greatly
deteriorated. The only friend Charles ever had who could guide him on
the way to being a man was John Marston. But John Marston, to say the
truth, was sometimes too hard and didactic, and very often roused
Charles's obstinacy through want of tact. Marston loved Charles, and
thought him better than the ninety and nine who need no repentance; but
it did not fall to Marston's lot to make a man of Charles. Some one took
that in hand who never fails.
This is the place for my poor apology for Charles's folly. If I had
inserted it before, you would not have attended to it, or would have
forgotten it. If I have done my work right, it is merely a statement of
the very conclusion you must have come to. In the humiliating scenes
which are to follow, I only beg you to remember that Charles Horton was
Charles Ravenshoe once; and that, while he was a gentleman, the people
loved him well.
Once, about twelve o'clock, he left his room, and passed through the
house to see if all was quiet. He heard the grooms and footmen talking
in the servants' hall. He stole back again to his room, and sat before
the fire.
In half an hour he rose again, and put his portmanteau and carpet-bag
outside his room door. Then he took his hat, and rose to go.
One more look round the old room! The last for ever! The present
overmastered the past, and he looked round almost without recognition. I
doubt whether at great crises men have much time for recollecting old
associations. I looked once into a room, which had been my home, ever
since I was six years old, for five-and-twenty years, knowing I should
never see it again. But it was to see that I had left nothing behind me.
The coach was at the door, and they were calling for me. Now I could
draw you a correct map of all the blotches and cracks in the ceiling, as
I used to see them when I lay in bed of a morning. But then, I only shut
the door and ran down the passage, without even saying "good-bye, old
bedroom." Charles Ravenshoe looked round the room thoughtlessly, and
then blew out the candle, went out, and shut the door.
The dog whined and scratched to come after him; so he went back again.
The old room bathed in a flood of moonlight, and, seen through the open
window, the busy chafing sea, calling to him to hasten.
He took a glove from the table, and, laying it on the hearthrug, told
the dog to mind it. The dog looked wistfully at him, and lay down. The
next moment he was outside the door again.
Through long moonlit corridors, down the moonlit hall, through dark
passages, which led among the sleeping household, to the door in the
priest's tower. The household slept, old men and young men, maids and
matrons, quietly, and dreamt of this and of that. And he, who was
yesterday nigh master of all, passed out from among them, and stood
alone in the world, outside the dark old house, which he had called his
home.
Then he felt the deed was done. Was it only the night-wind from the
north that laid such a chill hand on his heart? Busy waves upon the
shore talking eternally--"We have come in from the Atlantic, bearing
messages; we have come over foundered ships and the bones of drowned
sailors, and we tell our messages and die upon the shore."
Shadows that came sweeping from the sea, over lawn and flower-bed, and
wrapped the old mansion like a pall for one moment, and then left it
shining again in the moonlight, clear, pitiless. Within, warm rooms,
warm beds, and the bated breath of sleepers, lying secure in the lap of
wealth and order. Without, hard, cold stone. The great world around
awaiting to devour one more atom. The bright unsympathising stars, and
the sea, babbling of the men it had rolled over, whose names should
never be known.
Now the park, with herds of ghostly startled deer, and the sweet scent
of growing fern; then the rush of the brook, the bridge, and the vista
of woodland above; and then the sleeping village.