THE FULFILLING OF THE DREAM.
In the opinion of certain members of the Chancery bar the conclusion
of the Harborough case was disappointing, for from a legal point of
view, there was no conclusion. In spite of all that had been said on
both sides, all the facts and traditions and curious crooks that had
come to light, the case was in the end as far from a legal decision as
ever; it was merely withdrawn. This was the best thing possible for the
litigants and certainly the wisest; still, it was to be deplored, for
a decision would have been interesting. Apart from the legal aspect
the conclusion could not be regretted; the buying of the claimant
was undeniably wise, and at the same time almost romantic, for there
was something of mystery about it. Nobody, not even the Harboroughs,
knew who paid for it. Someone, whose name was not mentioned and who
apparently had no personal interest in the case, found the money, which
Gilchrist accepted in lieu of his chance of the Gurnett estates, and
for the consideration of which he duly undertook that neither he nor
his should ever raise the claim again.
Thus it happened, when the case was well on in its second year, that
all ended and came to nothing, and Kit Harborough found himself very
much where he used to expect he would be; but with an addition he did
not expect in those days,--a certain price to pay for having defended
his right to be there. Gilchrist had something to pay too, but it
did not so much matter to him, for he had thought of the costs when
he bargained for the price of his withdrawal. On the whole he was
satisfied with the terms; they were not so high as he had tried to get,
but they were all his chance was worth to him, and all, apparently,
that the benevolent person unknown was willing to pay.
There was one man, in no way connected with the case, who took a keen
interest in that benevolent person unknown; not so much at the time,
but a little later. In the light of subsequent events Mr. Stevens chose
to find that individual most interesting. “Unless I am much mistaken,”
he once said, though wisely in no one’s hearing but his own, “there
is stuff for a good Chancery suit in that buying off of Gilchrist
Harborough. Certain persons have been juggling with the law, or I’m a
Dutchman; persons, too, who should have been above suspicion. Mistress
Wilhelmina has a deal to answer for, bless her wicked little heart!
I wonder how it was done? I’d give something to know.” But he never
did know; only, in later years, he used sometimes to doubt if there
had been much juggling with the law after all; if rather a certain
childless old man, who was so much richer than most people knew, had
not chosen secretly to serve a girl in his life instead of benefiting
her after his death. But of this fancy Mr. Stevens never spoke, for he
knew, if it were true, that it was a secret hidden even from the girl
herself, and he, though only a country lawyer, was a man possessed of
that best wisdom, the knowledge when to keep silent.
But all this was long after; at the time when the Harboroughs’ suit
was concluded no one even suspected who their benefactor might be. The
Harboroughs themselves puzzled over it for some time and then, as is
the nature of man, turned to the consideration of their own affairs.
Those affairs were identical for both of them in one particular
at least,--the question of Gilchrist’s return to Australia. It was
generally understood among those whom it concerned that Gilchrist was
going back to Australia; he had said he should go so soon as the case
was settled, but now when it came to the point he did not seem so sure
about it. Kit took a most surprising interest in his rival’s departure,
and he noticed his hesitation directly the subject was introduced.
There was only one occasion when the two Harboroughs spoke of the
matter, the only occasion on which they met on purely social terms,
the day they lunched together at Wood Hall. Kit had invited Gilchrist
there as it were to shake hands after the fight, possibly feeling
it his duty to do so. Gilchrist accepted the invitation, partly for
similar reasons, and partly because he had never been inside Wood Hall
and thought he would rather like to see the old house for which he had
been fighting; coming with this motive, there is no doubt he also came
prepared to observe critically and to put a market-value on all he saw.
“I think I have the best of the bargain,” he told Theresa afterwards;
“the place is in bad repair and at the best of times would take a lot
of keeping up. Still, I admit it has a charm of its own, a charm
which cannot be bought or exchanged, and would not, I believe, stand a
change of ownership. If the house were mine, I should do it up, and, I
suppose, change its nature; since it is his, he will let things remain
as they are; he can’t afford to do anything else, poor beggar! But he
will keep the charm and a few absurd, inimitable, medieval prejudices
which even an enlightened education cannot make us altogether despise.”
It is to be feared that Gilchrist was not far from the truth in his
estimate of the poverty likely to reign at Wood Hall. The estate,
crippled before, could ill afford the money spent in defence of its
owner’s claim to it. Kit knew this, and knew that the Australian was
quick to mark signs of prosperity or decay.
The two Harboroughs did not lunch in the big dining-room where Kit
had sat with Bill on the day that old Mr. Harborough died, but in
a smaller, more modern room where neither length of possession nor
shortness of means stood out so plainly. There was little here to
suggest that evil days had fallen upon the old place, excepting only
the view from the windows. Gilchrist glanced out once; the pale
February sunlight was wan on the crack in the stone-work of the
terrace, on the unswept leaves of the autumn and the untouched borders
by the wall. Unconsciously he looked towards his host and observed
him curiously--the well-bred, stoical face, the grave eyes, the
well-finished hands--the whole man which told so little.
“Are you going to live here?” he asked suddenly.
“Probably not.”
There was a moment’s silence. Kit was evidently not communicative on
that subject, and Gilchrist looked out of the window again before
giving expression to the thoughts in his mind. “Pity the old place
should go to pieces!” he said at last. “I could have saved it--spoiled
it, perhaps you would have said--still, saved its life after a fashion,
but you--”
“I shall probably go abroad for the next twenty years; after which, if
I am not an inveterate wanderer by that time, I shall come home and
think about getting some bricks and mortar to mend the hole in the
terrace which we can see so well from here.”
Gilchrist laughed, although he was a little annoyed; he had felt
vaguely sorry for Kit and the decline of the house of Harborough. But
Kit kept him well at arm’s length, and the house of Harborough was
plainly not his concern, so he withdrew his sympathy from the end he
had himself hastened, and the subject was pursued no further.
It was then that Kit enquired concerning the return to Australia, and
learned that there was a good deal of uncertainty connected with the
date of Gilchrist’s departure; indeed, it seemed almost possible that
he would not leave England at all that year. Kit did not ask why;
he knew that it was a woman’s will and a woman’s preparations that
ruled the time of the Australian’s going. Herein he was quite right,
though he was not right in thinking that woman Bill Alardy. Bill’s
preparations, like her will, were never long in making; but the woman
for whom Gilchrist waited was different; who is to hurry a nine months’
widow, and who make love to the wife of a man whose grave has not long
been green?
But of this difficulty Kit knew nothing, and since he was very well
aware that Bill’s betrothal was of a private nature, he could not make
any remark upon it even had he wished. So he was still unenlightened as
to the name of the woman whose pleasure Gilchrist waited when a little
later the Australian took his leave.
Kit went to the door with him, stood on the step looking after him even
when he was out of sight, stood there until the sound of his horse’s
feet had died away in the distance. The sun was gone now; ashy clouds
had crept over the sky, and all the world was still and grey with the
soft, tired look of endless afternoon. Kit went down the steps and
walked slowly past the west front of the house; once he glanced up at
the crooked windows and the sloping, many-peaked roof, but he looked
away again quickly as if the sight hurt him. He reached the end of the
terrace but he did not go back; instead he wandered aimlessly across
the lawn, down the rose-walk, past the box-edged beds and the yew
trees once trimly clipped into quaint devices. The devices were lost
now, the clipping had not been done for many years. Bill had once said
that, were the trees hers, she would learn to clip them herself rather
than that they should be left. So she would, too; she would clip the
trees and weed the paths and save the house from its approaching decay!
Gilchrist had said that day he would have saved it; how could he fail
to save it with her for wife? Old Harborough himself had testified that
she, and such as she, penniless though they might be, alone could save
an exhausted family, a proud, poor, played-out race.
Kit had come to the outskirts of the wood now; he stopped for a moment,
not from indecision as to which path to follow, but because he wished
to call a halt in his mind and force himself to face the truth. Why
should he pretend to look upon Bill as the saviour of his family, the
prop of his house? It is true she could have been all that, but it was
also true that she was something else to him; not prop nor saviour, but
the only woman the world held. He had been but a boy eighteen months
ago when he first looked into her eyes; he had grown to manhood in
those eighteen months, but it did not matter, the look thrilled him
still. He had not seen her since that October day when they pledged
each other to duty, but he had not forgotten; he would never forget;
there are some it is not easy to forget.
He had been following the footpath that led from the gardens to the
little church, but he turned away before he reached the low boundary
wall and wandered on through the waste of dead bracken till he struck
the public footpath which gave upon the lane by a swing-gate. There
was someone standing by the gate, someone with arms resting upon the
topmost bar, and eyes fixed, not upon the path with its approaching
figure, but upon the leafless tree-tops of the wood.
For half a second Kit paused, a sensation almost of fear at his
heart--how could she be here in the flesh? Then, at a bound he had
reached the gate; flesh or phantom, he must see her, must touch her
hand once again.
“Bill!”
He had put his hand on the hands on the gate. They were warm, living
hands; he held them fast and there was no effort made to draw them
away. She did not start nor cry out; she did not move at all; she only
looked up at him, silent yet with throbbing breast. So they stood, the
gate between them, for the space of a full minute, and the world seemed
to hold but them alone.
From the main road there came the sound of horse’s feet, steady,
slow-going, some farm-horse on its way to the blacksmith’s in the
village. The sound of hoofs recalled to Kit the last time he had heard
it and recalled also the thought of the man who rode away from his
house not an hour ago. He dropped the hands he held almost as if they
burnt him.
“He cannot--shall not have you!” The words were hardly spoken; they
seemed wrung from him against his will.
The discarded hands pulled a splinter off the gate. “He,--he doesn’t
want me”--their owner seemed much interested in the splinter.
“Not want you? You--”
The gate was between them no longer.
A while later the farm-horse, having been to the blacksmith’s, was
led home by way of the lane; the man who led him saw no one about the
lonely spot; there was no one by the swing-gate or on the footpath
going to the church, no one visible at all. In the shelter of the
leafless wood, however, there were two who explained many things. There
were many things which needed explanation they found,--the mystery of
Bill’s freedom, for one, and Kit’s ignorance of it, for another. The
first was easy to recount; the second Bill found harder to explain.
“I could not tell you,” she said at last; “of course I could not tell
you. Do you know the feeling, the consciousness almost, that you can
have and get whatever you make up your mind to have? That has been my
feeling so long; but I was afraid to seek for this; I wanted it to be
the free gift of God to me; I wanted it an unsought gift, or not at
all. Do you understand what I mean?” And in case he did not, she went
on to give another reason. “I have been getting so much lately,” she
said, flashing a shy smile at him, “getting and willing and taking that
I think I wanted someone to take me.”
And it is to be presumed that Kit understood the art of taking her,
for the next explanation did not follow immediately. When it did come
it had reference to Bill’s unexpected appearance at the gate that
afternoon.
“There is no mystery about that,” Bill said. “I came to look at a
house at Sales Green. We are thinking of moving in the spring or
early summer, and we are looking out for a house with a large garden
somewhere in this part--the garden is for me, the house for Polly, the
part for Theresa who wants to be near Bella. However, the Sales Green
house is no good at all; we shall have to look out for another.”
“Did you come from town to-day?”
“Yes; Bella met me at Wrugglesby and drove me to look at the house
and then home with her to lunch. Afterwards I started to walk to the
rectory, having promised to go to tea with Mr. Dane; he is going to
drive me to the station this evening.”
“You do not seem to have chosen a very direct route to the rectory.”
“No,” Bill was obliged to admit; “but I thought I would like to go down
the lane once more and,--and I did not know you were at home.”
Kit showed the utmost satisfaction in having been at home on this
occasion, and they passed on to the next explanation which was of a
different nature and was given by Kit. It had to do with his prospects
and the narrow means he had to offer; the thought of them made him
remember now it was too late that he had but small right to ask her to
share his lot.
“Don’t you know?” Bill exclaimed eagerly almost before she had heard
him out. “Haven’t you heard? I have got money now,--oh, I am so glad!
I thought perhaps Mr. Briant would have told you, but I suppose he
thought you had worries enough of your own.”
Perhaps this was the case; at all events, as Mr. Briant had not told
the tale in full, Bill told it now, and with it the name of the unknown
benefactor who had put an end to the Harborough suit. Possibly she
did not tell it well, certainly Kit was astonished almost beyond
comprehension.
“You?” he said and he stood to look at her. “You did it?”
“Yes,” and she stood still too, twisting a dry twig she held. She
snapped the brown thing nervously. “I’m sorry, Kit,” she said humbly.
She knew that it is not always easy to receive a favour. “I’m sorry,
but there did not seem anyone else to settle it, and it had to be done.
I know it is hard to take things from a woman but,--do you mind so very
much from me?”
Kit’s throat swelled painfully. After all, he was very much a boy
still; but he took the favour and the giver of the favour all in one.
Later, as they went up the forest path together, he asked her what
she would have done had he not met her at the gate that day. “It is
all very well,” he said, “to say that you have saved Wood Hall for
yourself as well as for me, but supposing I had not met you to-day,
supposing I had never learned you were free?”
“Then I should have gone to live in a house with a big garden and grown
tons of cabbages.”
Kit laughed. “But tell me,” he persisted, “would you have never let me
know?”
She shook her head. “I made up my mind to tell no one,” she said,
“only Polly assured me that if ever I married I would have to tell
my husband; for one reason because he might find out if I did not,
for another because it would be wrong to hide things from him. For
the first reason I do not care, I would have risked that; but for the
second it is different. I am not afraid that you will misunderstand and
it seems a pity to begin with secrets.”
“Yes;”--Kit had possessed himself of the small strong hand,--“a great
pity since we are to have all things in common.”
And so they passed through the silent wood where the shadows lay,
brown and purple and deepest blue; they followed the wet path still
studded with the autumn’s funguses, crossed the deep hollows where last
year’s leaves glowed in the even light, under the old trees, twisted
pollards and stately beeches, and so on, up the hill. Once a startled
jay flashed from the covert of a thorn-bush low down across their path;
once a rabbit looked out from among the beech-roots; nothing else
moved, and in the stillness of a holy world they came to the gardens
and to the house.
Together they went by the western front to the great door still open as
Kit had left it; together they entered the wide, dim hall. Kit turned
as he stood on the threshold and looked up at the old house. “Not
yours nor mine,” he said, “but ours, sweetheart.”
* * * * *
But the diamond buckles came to Kit Harborough’s wife after all, for
they were given to her on her wedding-day by one who still called her
“Princess Puck, child of the Lord’s consolation.”
THE END.
GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.