A DAY ON THE DOWNS
"_A son to clasp my finger tight._"--NORMAN GALE.
When we had been in Spain for nearly a year, there was some dispute
about the business arrangements of Willie's partnership in his
uncle's bank, and Willie withdrew altogether from the affair. We
then decided to return to England. Though glad to go home, I parted
from my Spanish relations with regret, and have always since my visit
to them thought that the admixture of Irish and Spanish blood is most
charming in its result.
On our return to England we lived in Clarges Street, London, for some
time, while Willie was looking for a place in the country where he
could start a stud farm. Willie was very fond of horses, and
understood them well, and I was delighted at the idea of his getting
some really good brood mares and breeding race-horses. We knew, of
course, nothing of the enormous expense and many losses such an
undertaking was certain to entail.
At last we decided to take Bennington Park, Hertfordshire, and on
going there Willie bought some good blood stock, among the pick of
which were Alice Maud, Scent, and Apricot. Soon we had all the boxes
tenanted, and I spent many happy hours petting the lovely
thoroughbred mares with their small velvety noses and intelligent
eyes.
The chief form of social intercourse in the county was the giving of
long, heavy, and most boring dinners. People thought nothing of
driving eight or even ten miles {25} (and there were no motor-cars
then) to eat their dinner in each other's houses, and this form of
entertainment used to produce such an absolutely painful boredom in
me that I frequently hid the invitations from Willie, who wished to
"keep up with the county."
Willie and I were a good-looking young couple, and people liked to
have us about. Willie, too, was a good conversationalist, and had a
ready wit that made him welcome, since an Irishman and wit are
synonymous to the conventional mind. That his witticisms pertained
rather to the France of his education than the Ireland of his birth
was unrecognized because unexpected.
I was--rather, I fear, to Willie's annoyance--labelled "delightfully
unusual" soon after our going to Bennington, the cause being that I
received my guests one evening with my then abundant hair hanging
loosely to below my waist, twisted through with a wide blue ribbon.
To Willie's scandalized glance I replied with a hasty whisper, "The
very latest from Paris," and was rewarded with the mollified though
puzzled expression very properly awarded by all men to the "latest
fashion" of their womenkind.
I put off the queries of the ladies after dinner in the same way, and
was rewarded by them by the general admission that it was a fashion
for the few--who had the hair. Never did I admit that I had been out
with the horses so late that I had had just time for Caroline to
hurry me into a gown and shake down my hair as my first guest
arrived. So little do we deserve the fame forced upon us.
Willie was never good at dunning friends for money owed, and as we
had many brood mares, not our own, left with us for months at a time,
the stable expenses, both for forage and wages, became appallingly
large. It was always difficult to get the accounts in, and while
Willie {26} did not like to worry the owners even for the amount for
the bare keep of the animals, he was himself perpetually worried by
forage contractors, the shoeing smith, and the weekly wage bill,
besides the innumerable extra expenses pertaining to a large stable.
As I urged against the sale of the mares, which he so often
threatened, their happy, peaceful maternity, in the long lush grass
and shade of trees by day, their comfortable boxes at night, and
their fondness of me, he used to stare gloomily at me and swear
gently as he wished there were more profit than peace in their
maternity and my sentimentality. But he could forget his worries in
the pleasure of schooling the yearlings, and we agreed always to hold
on as long as possible to a life we both found so interesting, and
with the facile hope of youth we thought to get the better of our
expenses in time.
In this year (1869) my eldest (surviving) brother, Frank, became very
ill, and Willie and I went to Rivenhall to see him. He wanted me to
nurse him, so I stayed on in my old home while Willie returned to
Bennington.
Frank had consumption, and very badly; he suffered intensely, and I
think I have never longed for the presence of a doctor with more
anxiety than I did for Dr. Gimson's at that time. My perpetual fear
was that the effect of the opiate he gave to deaden poor Frank's pain
would wear off before he came again. When it grew dusk Frank desired
me to put candles in every window, that he might not see the
shadows--the terrifying shadows which delirium and continual doses of
morphia never fail to produce.
Frank's very dear friend, Captain Hawley Smart, the novelist, came to
Rivenhall in the hope that he could cheer poor Frank's last hours;
but he was too ill to know or care, {27} and Hawley Smart could, like
the rest of us, only await the pitying release of death.
We went on at Bennington in very much the same way until the end of
that year. Willie had been betting very heavily in the hope of
relieving the ever-increasing difficulty of meeting our heavy
expenses, and now, in view of his losses in racing added to the cost
attendant on keeping up such a large stud, the kind-hearted bank
manager insisted that the large overdraft on his bank must be
cleared. Hitherto, whenever he had become very pressing, Willie had
sent him "something on account," and we had given a breakfast for his
hunt, as Willie said such a good fellow "could not eat and ask at the
same time." Now, however, Mr. Cheshire sorrowfully declined to eat,
and maintained that his duty to his firm necessitated his insisting
upon the clearing of the overdraft.
When Willie was made bankrupt, Mr. Hobson--a gentleman living near us
with his very charming wife, who afterwards became Mrs. A.
Yates--very kindly took my little old pony across the fields at night
to his own place and kept him there so that he should not go into the
sale of our goods. This defrauded no one, as the pony (my own) was
beyond work, being my childhood's pet.
I was now nearing my first confinement, and my aunt, Mrs. Benjamin
Wood, took a house for me at Brighton close to my sister's, Lady
Barrett-Lennard. There my son Gerard was born.
I was very ill for some time after this, and my mother, Lady Wood,
stayed with me, employing her time in making a lovely water-colour
sketch for me.
Willie's affairs were now settled, and I had to give up all hope of
returning to my dearly loved country home and all my pets; but I had
the consolation of my beautiful babe, {28} and I forgot my sorrow in
my greater possession. He was very healthy, so I had no trouble on
that score.
A young solicitor who took Willie's affairs in hand, Mr. Charles Lane
(of Lane and Monroe), very kindly took upon himself to call on my
Uncle William, who was then Lord Chancellor of England, and ask him
to assist us in our financial difficulties. Uncle William was much
astonished at the application of this obviously nervous young
solicitor, who with the courage born of despair went on to suggest
that Lord Hatherley might give Willie a lucrative appointment.
Strangely enough it had never occurred to me to apply to Uncle
William for anything, and when Mr. Lane called on us and solemnly
presented me with a substantial cheque and a kind message from my
uncle, Willie and I were as surprised as we were pleased, even though
Mr. Lane explained that "the Lord Chancellor had no post suitable"
for Willie's energies.
We then moved into a house on the Marine Parade, as the one we were
in was very expensive, and though I was glad to be next door to my
sister, I felt it was not fair to my aunt, Mrs. Wood, who was paying
the rent for us.
My faithful French maid Caroline stuck to us all through our fallen
fortunes, as also did our stud-groom, Selby, and though we could no
longer pay them the high wages they had always had, they refused to
leave us.
My aunt now took a cottage for me at Patcham, just put of Brighton,
and I was able to have my pony there. The house at Patcham was a
dear, little, old-fashioned place right against the Downs, and there
I used to walk for miles in the early morning, the springy turf
almost forcing one foot after the other, while the song of the {29}
larks and scent of the close-growing, many-tinted herbage in the
clear bright air filled me with joyous exhilaration.
Willie went to town, and often was away for days, on various
businesses, and I was very lonely at home--even though I daily drove
the old pony into Brighton that I might see my sister.
I had a cousin of Willie's, Mrs. Vaughan, to stay with me for some
time, but she was perpetually wondering what Willie was doing that
kept him so much away, and this added irritation to loneliness. I
had had such a busy life at Bennington that I suffered much from the
want of companionship and the loss of the many interests of my life
there. I felt that I must make some friends here, and, attracted by
a dark, handsome woman whom I used to meet riding when I walked on to
the Downs, I made her acquaintance, and found in her a very congenial
companion. Quiet and rather tragic in expression, she thawed to me,
and we were becoming warmly attached to one another when Willie, in
one of his now flying visits, heard me speak of my new friend. On
hearing her name--it was one that a few years before had brought
shame and sudden death into one of the oldest of the "great" families
of England--he professed to be absolutely scandalized, and, with an
assumption of authority that at once angered me, forbade me to have
any more to do with her. He met my protests with a maddening
superiority, and would not tell me why she was "beyond the pale." I
explained to him my own opinion of many of the women he liked me to
know and almost all the men, for I had not then learnt the hard
lesson of social life, and that the one commandment still rigorously
observed by social hypocrisy was, "Thou shalt not be found out."
{30}
When I met Mrs. ---- again she soothed my indignation on her behalf,
and as we sat there, high on a spur of a hill, watching the distant
sea, she smiled a little sadly as she said to me: "Little fool, I
have gambled in love and have won, and those who win must pay as well
as those who lose. Never gamble, you very young thing, if you can
help it; but if you do be sure that the stake is the only thing in
the world to you, for only that will make it worth the winning and
the paying."
It was nearly ten years afterwards that I, feeling restless and
unhappy, had such a sudden longing for the sea, that one morning I
left my home (at Eltham) very early and went down to Brighton for the
day. I was alone, and wished to be alone; so I got out of the train
at Preston, for fear I should meet any of my relations at Brighton
station. A fancy then seized me to drive out to Patcham, about a
mile farther on, to see if my former little house was occupied.
Having decided that it was I dismissed my fly and walked up the
bridle path beyond the house out on to the Downs, where, turning
south, towards the sea, I walked steadily over the scented turf,
forcing out of my heart all but the joy of movement in the sea wind,
with the song of the skylarks in my ears.
I sang as I walked, looking towards the golden light and sullen blue
of the sea, where a storm was beating up with the west wind.
Presently I realized that I was very tired, and I sat down to rest
upon a little hilltop where I could see over the whole of Brighton.
The wind brought up the rain, and I rose and began to descend the
hill towards Brighton. I wondered apathetically if my sister was in
Brighton or if they were all at Belhus still. Anyhow, I knew there
would be someone at her house who {31} would give me something to
eat. Then I turned round, and began deliberately to climb up the
hill on to the Downs again. After all, I thought, I had come here to
be alone, and did not want to see my sister particularly. The family
might all be there, and anyhow I did not want to see anybody who
loved me and could bias my mind. I had come down to get away from
Willie for a little while--or rather from the thought of him, for it
was rarely enough I saw him. If I went down to see Emma and Tom they
would ask how Willie was, and really I did not know, and then how
were the children. Well, I could thankfully answer that the children
were always well. Why should I be supposed to have no other
interests than Willie and my children? Willie was not, as a matter
of fact, at all interesting to me. As to my children, I loved them
very dearly, but they were not old enough, or young enough, to
engross my whole mind. Then there was dear old Aunt Ben, who was so
old that she would not tolerate any topic of conversation of more
recent date than the marriage of Queen Victoria. What a curiously
narrow life mine was, I thought, narrow, narrow, narrow, and so
deadly dull. It was better even to be up there on the Downs in the
drifting rain--though I was soaked to the skin and so desperately
tired and hungry. I paused for shelter behind a shepherd's hut as I
saw the lithe spare form of my brother-in-law, Sir Thomas, dash past,
head down and eyes half closed against the rain. He did not see me,
and I watched him running like a boy through the driving mist till he
disappeared. He had come over from Lewes, I supposed. He was a
J.P., and had perhaps been over to the court; he never rode where he
could walk--or rather run.
I waited, sheltering now from the rain, and through the {32} mist
there presently came a girl riding. On seeing me she pulled up to
ask the quickest way to Brighton, as the mist had confused her. As I
answered her I was struck by a certain resemblance, in the dark eyes
and proud tilt of the chin, to my friend of many years ago, whose
battles I had fought with Willie, and who had told me something of
her life while we sat very near this place. The girl now before me
was young, and life had not yet written any bitterness upon her face;
but as she thanked me, and, riding away, laughingly urged me to give
up the attempt to "keep dry," and to fly home before I dissolved
altogether, I had the voice of my old-time friend in my ears, and I
answered aloud, "I am afraid; I tell you, I am afraid." But she was
dead, I knew, and could not answer me, and I smiled angrily at my
folly as I turned down the track to Preston, while I thought more
quietly how the daughter whose loss had caused such bitter pain to my
dear friend, when she had left all for love, had grown to happy
womanhood in spite of all.
I was now feeling very faint from my long day of hard exercise
without food, but there was a train about to start for London, and I
would not miss it.
On the platform for Eltham, at Charing Cross, stood Mr. Parnell,
waiting, watching the people as they passed the barriers. As our
eyes met he turned and walked by my side. He did not speak, and I
was too tired to do so, or to wonder at his being there. He helped
me into the train and sat down opposite me, and I was too exhausted
to care that he saw me wet and dishevelled. There were others in the
carriage. I leant back and closed my eyes, and could have slept but
that the little flames deep down in Parnell's eyes kept flickering
before mine, though they were closed. I was very cold; and I felt
that he took off {33} his coat and tucked it round me, but I would
not open my eyes to look at him. He crossed over to the seat next to
mine, and, leaning over me to fold the coat more closely round my
knees, he whispered, "I love you, I love you. Oh, my dear, how I
love you." And I slipped my hand into his, and knew I was not afraid.
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