It is always rather melancholy arriving at home alone, and I miss
Palestrina very much at these times, and I feel ill-disposed towards
Thomas. Down-Jock pretended not to know me, and barked furiously when
I drove up to the door, and then ran away on three legs, making
believe, as he sometimes does when he wants to appeal to one's pity,
that he is old and lame.
It was still early in the afternoon, and the sunshine was blazing over
everything when I hobbled down the hill to inquire for Miss Lydia. The
houses in Stowel are all roofed with red tiles, and each garden has
flowering shrubs in it or beds full of bright-coloured flowers, so that
the little place has a very warm and happy look on a sunny summer day.
A great heavy horse-chestnut tree hung over the walls of the doctor's
house, and scattered fragments of pink blossom when the soft air
stirred gently. The wistaria on the post-office was in full bloom.
And the place was so full of pleasant sounds this afternoon--of singing
birds, and heavy-rolling wagons moving up the broad street, and the
laughter of children, and the soft rush of the summer wind through the
trees--that one felt that a day like this gave one a very strong
leaning in favour of the happy view that life is, after all, a good
thing.
One had, of course, to stop and speak to several old friends, who said
they were thankful to see me back, as though a visit to London was an
expedition fraught with many dangers.
When I reached the little cottage with the green gate, and the maid
opened the door to me, she told me that Lydia Blind had died an hour
ago.
The staircase of the little house is directly opposite the front door.
I could not but believe that if I waited a little while Miss Lydia
would descend the stairs, as she always did, with a smile which never
failed to welcome every one. Or, if she were not within doors, that I
would only have to pass out into the little garden at the back of the
house to find her. I thought suddenly of the words of a boy I used to
know at school, who, when a young playfellow died, said between his
sobs, "It was so hard upon him dying before he had had a good time."
Certainly ever since we knew her Lydia's life had been one long
sacrifice to a witless invalid, and I couldn't help feeling that
perhaps no one would ever know the extent of her patient service.
Probably there never lived a more unselfish woman, and I cannot think
why she never married.
She was a person who lacked worldly wisdom, and in worldly matters she
was not prosperous--she never sowed that sort of grain. It was very
touching to find that she had not even a few trinkets to leave behind,
but that one by one each had been sold to pay for something for the
invalid--a doctor's fee, or a chemist's heavy bill. She left the world
as unobtrusively as she lived in it. Her last illness was very sudden
and brief, and probably she would have been thankful that the little
household was spared any extra expense.
The news of Lydia's death was unexpected by every one. When I turned
and left the house and was walking home again, I met Mrs. Taylor going
to inquire about her neighbour's health, with an offering of fruit in a
little basket. She begged me, in the Stowel fashion, to turn and walk
back with her, declaring that she felt so seriously upset by the news
that if I would only see her as far as her gate I should be doing her a
kindness. In the garden the General, who had run down to Stowel for a
couple of days, was reclining in a deck-chair, Indian fashion. He was
reading some cookery recipes in a number of _Truth_, and he turned to
his niece as she crossed the lawn and said, "Do you think your cook
could manage this, Mary? Select a fine pineapple----"
"Oh, uncle," said Mrs. Taylor with a good deal of feeling, "we have had
such bad news! Our dear old friend in the village, Miss Lydia Blind,
is dead."
"What Lydia Blind?" said the General; and Mrs. Taylor replied,--
"You never knew her, dear. She wasn't able to come to the party;
indeed, I think she has been ailing ever since about that time, but we
had no idea that the end was so near."
"It can't be the Lydia Blind I used to know?" said the General.
"Oh no, you couldn't have known her," said Mrs. Taylor with a sob; "she
was just a dear old maiden lady living in the village on very small
means."
"She hadn't a sister called Belinda, had she?" said the General.
Mrs. Taylor said she had, and I remembered suddenly how I had seen
Lydia Blind standing one morning in front of the General's picture in
the photographer's shop, and had heard her say, "I used to know him."
Mrs. Taylor went indoors, and I said good-bye, but the General said to
me abruptly, "I should like to see her; will you take me there?" And
he did not speak again until we found ourselves in the little porch of
the cottage. He looked very tall standing by the low door of the
house, and an odd idea came to me that Miss Lydia would have been proud
of her afternoon caller.
"Let me go alone," he said gruffly, when he had asked permission to go
to her room; and I waited in Lydia's morning-room, with its twine cases
and unframed sketches, and the photographs of babies.
"I cannot see the sister," said the General irritably, when he had
rejoined me in the darkened room. "Is she still dumb, poor thing? If
ever there was a case," he went on, "of one life--and, to my mind, the
sweeter and the better life--being sacrificed to another, it is in the
case of Lydia Blind." He sat down on the little green sofa, and looked
about him with eyes that seemed to see nothing. "I never expected such
a thing," he said; "I couldn't have expected a thing like this ... I
didn't even know she lived here.... Do you remember her," he said,
"when she was very pretty? No, no, of course you wouldn't.... It
doesn't hurt you to walk a little, does it? I have lived nearly all my
life out of doors, and when anything upsets me I cannot stand being
within four walls...."
We went out and crossed the field-path into the woods beyond. The
paths of the wood are narrow and uneven, and at first we walked in
single file, until we came to the broader road beyond the stream, and
then we walked on side by side, the General suiting his pace to my
slow, awkward gait.
"... Did you ever know the Bazeleys at all? No, you wouldn't, of
course: that would be before your time. They had a very pretty place
in Lincolnshire--a charming place--with a veranda round the house, and
wicker-chairs with coloured cushions on them--more like an Indian house
than an English one.... Harold Bazeley was in love with Lydia too."
(I believe the General was talking more to himself than to me.) "It
was one night sitting in the veranda that I heard him begin to make
love to her for all he was worth, and I had to cut it.... Poor chap!
he came into the smoking-room that night, where I was sitting alone,
and he sat down by the table and put his head in his hands. He may
have been saying his prayers (for he was always a religious man ... he
did a lot of good for the men under him in India), and I sat with him
till it was time to go to bed. I don't know if it was any comfort to
him, but I knew from his face that Lydia must have said no, and I
thought perhaps he wouldn't like being alone.... Well, then of course
one didn't like to rush in and ask one's best friend's girl to marry
one so soon after his disappointment. One had very strict ideas about
honour in those days; I hope one has not lost them.... It is very odd
that I was never here before, until last spring. Nearly all my service
has been abroad, and I generally used to spend my leave hunting or in
London, and my niece used to come up and stay with me there.... I
didn't care much for Taylor in those days, but he really isn't a bad
sort of fellow."
The sun began to sink behind the trees, and the General seemed to wake
from the reverie in which he had been talking to me, and said: "You
oughtn't to be out after sunset, if you have still got malaria about
you," and we began to walk slowly homewards.
"It was just such an evening as this," he said, "when I bade her
good-bye, meaning to come back in a little while and ask her to marry
me. She was standing by the gate--fine old gates with stone pillars to
them, and the sun shone full in her eyes.... I suppose that gentle,
sweet look never left them, did it? They were closed, of course, when
I saw them just now.... She was wearing a white dress that evening, I
remember--a sort of muslin dress which I suppose would not be
fashionable now, but which looked very pretty then. It had a lot of
pink ribbons about it, and there was a great bunch of pink moss-roses
in the ribbon of her belt.... Do you know I never picture her except
as the girl who stood by the gate with the sun behind her, and the
roses in her belt. I think I lost my head a little when it came to
saying good-bye, and I began to say things which I had not meant to
say--she looked so pretty with the red sunlight upon her, and her white
muslin dress almost turned to pink in the glare.... I don't think she
was surprised, only sweeter and gentler than before, and a curious,
happy look was in her eyes. But I stopped in time, and stammered like
a fool, thinking of poor Harold Bazeley, and then I said good-bye
rather hurriedly. But I came back again to the gate where she was
still standing, and asked if I might have one of the roses in her belt.
And she gave me the whole bunch.
"... It must have been after this that the father died and left them
very poor, and then the sister (this one, Belinda) had a stroke of
paralysis, and there was no one to look after her but Lydia.... I
wrote and proposed to her before I went to India--asked her to come
with me as my wife. But she said she could not marry while her sister
lived. It isn't as though we could have remained in England, and she
could have lived with us; but of course India would have been an
impossibility for the poor thing. We never thought in those days that
poor Belinda would live long. And then she made a sort of recovery,
but was still quite helpless, and Lydia wrote and asked me to wait for
her no longer.... I never heard that she had come to live at Stowel."
The broad, wide village road was dim with twilight when we walked
homewards along it--The Uncle and I. The children had all gone
indoors, and the flowers in the little garden had lost their colour in
the dim light.
As we passed by the cottage the General halted on the quiet, deserted
road and took off his hat, then he leaned over the little green paling
and drew towards him a branch of a moss-rose tree that Miss Lydia had
planted there. He plucked a bud from it and held it to his face. Then
he said gently, "They are the same sort, but they do not smell so
sweet."