Marion; smiling lips gave her joy of his return; sage mothers fanned
themselves, and hoped she mightn’t be too youthful and inconstant for the
quiet round of home; impetuous fathers fell into disgrace for too much
exaltation of her beauty; daughters envied her; sons envied him;
innumerable pairs of lovers profited by the occasion; all were
interested, animated, and expectant.
Mr. and Mrs. Craggs came arm in arm, but Mrs. Snitchey came alone. ‘Why,
what’s become of _him_?’ inquired the Doctor.
The feather of a Bird of Paradise in Mrs. Snitchey’s turban, trembled as
if the Bird of Paradise were alive again, when she said that doubtless
Mr. Craggs knew. _She_ was never told.
‘That nasty office,’ said Mrs. Craggs.
‘I wish it was burnt down,’ said Mrs. Snitchey.
‘He’s—he’s—there’s a little matter of business that keeps my partner
rather late,’ said Mr. Craggs, looking uneasily about him.
‘Oh-h! Business. Don’t tell me!’ said Mrs. Snitchey.
‘_We_ know what business means,’ said Mrs. Craggs.
But their not knowing what it meant, was perhaps the reason why Mrs.
Snitchey’s Bird of Paradise feather quivered so portentously, and why all
the pendant bits on Mrs. Craggs’s ear-rings shook like little bells.
‘I wonder _you_ could come away, Mr. Craggs,’ said his wife.
‘Mr. Craggs is fortunate, I’m sure!’ said Mrs. Snitchey.
‘That office so engrosses ’em,’ said Mrs. Craggs.
‘A person with an office has no business to be married at all,’ said Mrs.
Snitchey.
Then, Mrs. Snitchey said, within herself, that that look of hers had
pierced to Craggs’s soul, and he knew it; and Mrs. Craggs observed to
Craggs, that ‘his Snitcheys’ were deceiving him behind his back, and he
would find it out when it was too late.
Still, Mr. Craggs, without much heeding these remarks, looked uneasily
about until his eye rested on Grace, to whom he immediately presented
himself.
‘Good evening, ma’am,’ said Craggs. ‘You look charmingly.
Your—Miss—your sister, Miss Marion, is she—’
‘Oh, she’s quite well, Mr. Craggs.’
‘Yes—I—is she here?’ asked Craggs.
‘Here! Don’t you see her yonder? Going to dance?’ said Grace.
Mr. Craggs put on his spectacles to see the better; looked at her through
them, for some time; coughed; and put them, with an air of satisfaction,
in their sheath again, and in his pocket.
Now the music struck up, and the dance commenced. The bright fire
crackled and sparkled, rose and fell, as though it joined the dance
itself, in right good fellowship. Sometimes, it roared as if it would
make music too. Sometimes, it flashed and beamed as if it were the eye
of the old room: it winked too, sometimes, like a knowing patriarch, upon
the youthful whisperers in corners. Sometimes, it sported with the
holly-boughs; and, shining on the leaves by fits and starts, made them
look as if they were in the cold winter night again, and fluttering in
the wind. Sometimes its genial humour grew obstreperous, and passed all
bounds; and then it cast into the room, among the twinkling feet, with a
loud burst, a shower of harmless little sparks, and in its exultation
leaped and bounded, like a mad thing, up the broad old chimney.
Another dance was near its close, when Mr. Snitchey touched his partner,
who was looking on, upon the arm.
Mr. Craggs started, as if his familiar had been a spectre.
‘Is he gone?’ he asked.
‘Hush! He has been with me,’ said Snitchey, ‘for three hours and more.
He went over everything. He looked into all our arrangements for him,
and was very particular indeed. He—Humph!’
The dance was finished. Marion passed close before him, as he spoke.
She did not observe him, or his partner; but, looked over her shoulder
towards her sister in the distance, as she slowly made her way into the
crowd, and passed out of their view.
‘You see! All safe and well,’ said Mr. Craggs. ‘He didn’t recur to that
subject, I suppose?’
‘Not a word.’
‘And is he really gone? Is he safe away?’
‘He keeps to his word. He drops down the river with the tide in that
shell of a boat of his, and so goes out to sea on this dark night!—a
dare-devil he is—before the wind. There’s no such lonely road anywhere
else. That’s one thing. The tide flows, he says, an hour before
midnight—about this time. I’m glad it’s over.’ Mr. Snitchey wiped his
forehead, which looked hot and anxious.
‘What do you think,’ said Mr. Craggs, ‘about—’
‘Hush!’ replied his cautious partner, looking straight before him. ‘I
understand you. Don’t mention names, and don’t let us, seem to be
talking secrets. I don’t know what to think; and to tell you the truth,
I don’t care now. It’s a great relief. His self-love deceived him, I
suppose. Perhaps the young lady coquetted a little. The evidence would
seem to point that way. Alfred not arrived?’
‘Not yet,’ said Mr. Craggs. ‘Expected every minute.’
‘Good.’ Mr. Snitchey wiped his forehead again. ‘It’s a great relief. I
haven’t been so nervous since we’ve been in partnership. I intend to
spend the evening now, Mr. Craggs.’
Mrs. Craggs and Mrs. Snitchey joined them as he announced this intention.
The Bird of Paradise was in a state of extreme vibration, and the little
bells were ringing quite audibly.
‘It has been the theme of general comment, Mr. Snitchey,’ said Mrs.
Snitchey. ‘I hope the office is satisfied.’
‘Satisfied with what, my dear?’ asked Mr. Snitchey.
‘With the exposure of a defenceless woman to ridicule and remark,’
returned his wife. ‘That is quite in the way of the office, _that_ is.’
‘I really, myself,’ said Mrs. Craggs, ‘have been so long accustomed to
connect the office with everything opposed to domesticity, that I am glad
to know it as the avowed enemy of my peace. There is something honest in
that, at all events.’
‘My dear,’ urged Mr. Craggs, ‘your good opinion is invaluable, but _I_
never avowed that the office was the enemy of your peace.’
‘No,’ said Mrs. Craggs, ringing a perfect peal upon the little bells.
‘Not you, indeed. You wouldn’t be worthy of the office, if you had the
candour to.’
‘As to my having been away to-night, my dear,’ said Mr. Snitchey, giving
her his arm, ‘the deprivation has been mine, I’m sure; but, as Mr. Craggs
knows—’
Mrs. Snitchey cut this reference very short by hitching her husband to a
distance, and asking him to look at that man. To do her the favour to
look at him!
‘At which man, my dear?’ said Mr. Snitchey.
‘Your chosen companion; _I_’m no companion to you, Mr. Snitchey.’
‘Yes, yes, you are, my dear,’ he interposed.
‘No, no, I’m not,’ said Mrs. Snitchey with a majestic smile. ‘I know my
station. Will you look at your chosen companion, Mr. Snitchey; at your
referee, at the keeper of your secrets, at the man you trust; at your
other self, in short?’
The habitual association of Self with Craggs, occasioned Mr. Snitchey to
look in that direction.
‘If you can look that man in the eye this night,’ said Mrs. Snitchey,
‘and not know that you are deluded, practised upon, made the victim of
his arts, and bent down prostrate to his will by some unaccountable
fascination which it is impossible to explain and against which no
warning of mine is of the least avail, all I can say is—I pity you!’
At the very same moment Mrs. Craggs was oracular on the cross subject.
Was it possible, she said, that Craggs could so blind himself to his
Snitcheys, as not to feel his true position? Did he mean to say that he
had seen his Snitcheys come into that room, and didn’t plainly see that
there was reservation, cunning, treachery, in the man? Would he tell her
that his very action, when he wiped his forehead and looked so stealthily
about him, didn’t show that there was something weighing on the
conscience of his precious Snitcheys (if he had a conscience), that
wouldn’t bear the light? Did anybody but his Snitcheys come to festive
entertainments like a burglar?—which, by the way, was hardly a clear
illustration of the case, as he had walked in very mildly at the door.
And would he still assert to her at noon-day (it being nearly midnight),
that his Snitcheys were to be justified through thick and thin, against
all facts, and reason, and experience?
Neither Snitchey nor Craggs openly attempted to stem the current which
had thus set in, but, both were content to be carried gently along it,
until its force abated. This happened at about the same time as a
general movement for a country dance; when Mr. Snitchey proposed himself
as a partner to Mrs. Craggs, and Mr. Craggs gallantly offered himself to
Mrs. Snitchey; and after some such slight evasions as ‘why don’t you ask
somebody else?’ and ‘you’ll be glad, I know, if I decline,’ and ‘I wonder
you can dance out of the office’ (but this jocosely now), each lady
graciously accepted, and took her place.
It was an old custom among them, indeed, to do so, and to pair off, in
like manner, at dinners and suppers; for they were excellent friends, and
on a footing of easy familiarity. Perhaps the false Craggs and the
wicked Snitchey were a recognised fiction with the two wives, as Doe and
Roe, incessantly running up and down bailiwicks, were with the two
husbands: or, perhaps the ladies had instituted, and taken upon
themselves, these two shares in the business, rather than be left out of
it altogether. But, certain it is, that each wife went as gravely and
steadily to work in her vocation as her husband did in his, and would
have considered it almost impossible for the Firm to maintain a
successful and respectable existence, without her laudable exertions.
But, now, the Bird of Paradise was seen to flutter down the middle; and
the little bells began to bounce and jingle in poussette; and the
Doctor’s rosy face spun round and round, like an expressive pegtop highly
varnished; and breathless Mr. Craggs began to doubt already, whether
country dancing had been made ‘too easy,’ like the rest of life; and Mr.
Snitchey, with his nimble cuts and capers, footed it for Self and Craggs,
and half-a-dozen more.
Now, too, the fire took fresh courage, favoured by the lively wind the
dance awakened, and burnt clear and high. It was the Genius of the room,
and present everywhere. It shone in people’s eyes, it sparkled in the
jewels on the snowy necks of girls, it twinkled at their ears as if it
whispered to them slyly, it flashed about their waists, it flickered on
the ground and made it rosy for their feet, it bloomed upon the ceiling
that its glow might set off their bright faces, and it kindled up a
general illumination in Mrs. Craggs’s little belfry.
Now, too, the lively air that fanned it, grew less gentle as the music
quickened and the dance proceeded with new spirit; and a breeze arose
that made the leaves and berries dance upon the wall, as they had often
done upon the trees; and the breeze rustled in the room as if an
invisible company of fairies, treading in the foot-steps of the good
substantial revellers, were whirling after them. Now, too, no feature of
the Doctor’s face could be distinguished as he spun and spun; and now
there seemed a dozen Birds of Paradise in fitful flight; and now there
were a thousand little bells at work; and now a fleet of flying skirts
was ruffled by a little tempest, when the music gave in, and the dance
was over.
Hot and breathless as the Doctor was, it only made him the more impatient
for Alfred’s coming.
‘Anything been seen, Britain? Anything been heard?’
‘Too dark to see far, sir. Too much noise inside the house to hear.’
‘That’s right! The gayer welcome for him. How goes the time?’
‘Just twelve, sir. He can’t be long, sir.’
‘Stir up the fire, and throw another log upon it,’ said the Doctor. ‘Let
him see his welcome blazing out upon the night—good boy!—as he comes
along!’
He saw it—Yes! From the chaise he caught the light, as he turned the
corner by the old church. He knew the room from which it shone. He saw
the wintry branches of the old trees between the light and him. He knew
that one of those trees rustled musically in the summer time at the
window of Marion’s chamber.
The tears were in his eyes. His heart throbbed so violently that he
could hardly bear his happiness. How often he had thought of this
time—pictured it under all circumstances—feared that it might never
come—yearned, and wearied for it—far away!
Again the light! Distinct and ruddy; kindled, he knew, to give him
welcome, and to speed him home. He beckoned with his hand, and waved his
hat, and cheered out, loud, as if the light were they, and they could see
and hear him, as he dashed towards them through the mud and mire,
triumphantly.
Stop! He knew the Doctor, and understood what he had done. He would not
let it be a surprise to them. But he could make it one, yet, by going
forward on foot. If the orchard-gate were open, he could enter there; if
not, the wall was easily climbed, as he knew of old; and he would be
among them in an instant.
He dismounted from the chaise, and telling the driver—even that was not
easy in his agitation—to remain behind for a few minutes, and then to
follow slowly, ran on with exceeding swiftness, tried the gate, scaled
the wall, jumped down on the other side, and stood panting in the old
orchard.
There was a frosty rime upon the trees, which, in the faint light of the
clouded moon, hung upon the smaller branches like dead garlands.
Withered leaves crackled and snapped beneath his feet, as he crept softly
on towards the house. The desolation of a winter night sat brooding on
the earth, and in the sky. But, the red light came cheerily towards him
from the windows; figures passed and repassed there; and the hum and
murmur of voices greeted his ear sweetly.
Listening for hers: attempting, as he crept on, to detach it from the
rest, and half believing that he heard it: he had nearly reached the
door, when it was abruptly opened, and a figure coming out encountered
his. It instantly recoiled with a half-suppressed cry.
‘Clemency,’ he said, ‘don’t you know me?’
‘Don’t come in!’ she answered, pushing him back. ‘Go away. Don’t ask me
why. Don’t come in.’
‘What is the matter?’ he exclaimed.
‘I don’t know. I—I am afraid to think. Go back. Hark!’
There was a sudden tumult in the house. She put her hands upon her ears.
A wild scream, such as no hands could shut out, was heard; and
Grace—distraction in her looks and manner—rushed out at the door.
‘Grace!’ He caught her in his arms. ‘What is it! Is she dead!’
She disengaged herself, as if to recognise his face, and fell down at his
feet.
A crowd of figures came about them from the house. Among them was her
father, with a paper in his hand.
‘What is it!’ cried Alfred, grasping his hair with his hands, and looking
in an agony from face to face, as he bent upon his knee beside the
insensible girl. ‘Will no one look at me? Will no one speak to me?
Does no one know me? Is there no voice among you all, to tell me what it
is!’
There was a murmur among them. ‘She is gone.’
‘Gone!’ he echoed.
‘Fled, my dear Alfred!’ said the Doctor, in a broken voice, and with his
hands before his face. ‘Gone from her home and us. To-night! She
writes that she has made her innocent and blameless choice—entreats that
we will forgive her—prays that we will not forget her—and is gone.’
‘With whom? Where?’
He started up, as if to follow in pursuit; but, when they gave way to let
him pass, looked wildly round upon them, staggered back, and sunk down in
his former attitude, clasping one of Grace’s cold hands in his own.
There was a hurried running to and fro, confusion, noise, disorder, and
no purpose. Some proceeded to disperse themselves about the roads, and
some took horse, and some got lights, and some conversed together, urging
that there was no trace or track to follow. Some approached him kindly,
with the view of offering consolation; some admonished him that Grace
must be removed into the house, and that he prevented it. He never heard
them, and he never moved.
The snow fell fast and thick. He looked up for a moment in the air, and
thought that those white ashes strewn upon his hopes and misery, were
suited to them well. He looked round on the whitening ground, and
thought how Marion’s foot-prints would be hushed and covered up, as soon
as made, and even that remembrance of her blotted out. But he never felt
the weather and he never stirred.
Part the Third
THE world had grown six years older since that night of the return. It
was a warm autumn afternoon, and there had been heavy rain. The sun
burst suddenly from among the clouds; and the old battle-ground,
sparkling brilliantly and cheerfully at sight of it in one green place,
flashed a responsive welcome there, which spread along the country side
as if a joyful beacon had been lighted up, and answered from a thousand
stations.
How beautiful the landscape kindling in the light, and that luxuriant
influence passing on like a celestial presence, brightening everything!
The wood, a sombre mass before, revealed its varied tints of yellow,
green, brown, red: its different forms of trees, with raindrops
glittering on their leaves and twinkling as they fell. The verdant
meadow-land, bright and glowing, seemed as if it had been blind, a minute
since, and now had found a sense of sight wherewith to look up at the
shining sky. Corn-fields, hedge-rows, fences, homesteads, and clustered
roofs, the steeple of the church, the stream, the water-mill, all sprang
out of the gloomy darkness smiling. Birds sang sweetly, flowers raised
their drooping heads, fresh scents arose from the invigorated ground; the
blue expanse above extended and diffused itself; already the sun’s
slanting rays pierced mortally the sullen bank of cloud that lingered in
its flight; and a rainbow, spirit of all the colours that adorned the
earth and sky, spanned the whole arch with its triumphant glory.
At such a time, one little roadside Inn, snugly sheltered behind a great
elm-tree with a rare seat for idlers encircling its capacious bole,
addressed a cheerful front towards the traveller, as a house of
entertainment ought, and tempted him with many mute but significant
assurances of a comfortable welcome. The ruddy sign-board perched up in
the tree, with its golden letters winking in the sun, ogled the
passer-by, from among the green leaves, like a jolly face, and promised
good cheer. The horse-trough, full of clear fresh water, and the ground
below it sprinkled with droppings of fragrant hay, made every horse that
passed, prick up his ears. The crimson curtains in the lower rooms, and
the pure white hangings in the little bed-chambers above, beckoned, Come
in! with every breath of air. Upon the bright green shutters, there were
golden legends about beer and ale, and neat wines, and good beds; and an
affecting picture of a brown jug frothing over at the top. Upon the
window-sills were flowering plants in bright red pots, which made a
lively show against the white front of the house; and in the darkness of
the doorway there were streaks of light, which glanced off from the
surfaces of bottles and tankards.
On the door-step, appeared a proper figure of a landlord, too; for,
though he was a short man, he was round and broad, and stood with his
hands in his pockets, and his legs just wide enough apart to express a
mind at rest upon the subject of the cellar, and an easy confidence—too
calm and virtuous to become a swagger—in the general resources of the
Inn. The superabundant moisture, trickling from everything after the
late rain, set him off well. Nothing near him was thirsty. Certain
top-heavy dahlias, looking over the palings of his neat well-ordered
garden, had swilled as much as they could carry—perhaps a trifle more—and
may have been the worse for liquor; but the sweet-briar, roses,
wall-flowers, the plants at the windows, and the leaves on the old tree,
were in the beaming state of moderate company that had taken no more than
was wholesome for them, and had served to develop their best qualities.
Sprinkling dewy drops about them on the ground, they seemed profuse of
innocent and sparkling mirth, that did good where it lighted, softening
neglected corners which the steady rain could seldom reach, and hurting
nothing.
This village Inn had assumed, on being established, an uncommon sign. It
was called The Nutmeg-Grater. And underneath that household word, was
inscribed, up in the tree, on the same flaming board, and in the like
golden characters, By Benjamin Britain.
At a second glance, and on a more minute examination of his face, you
might have known that it was no other than Benjamin Britain himself who
stood in the doorway—reasonably changed by time, but for the better; a
very comfortable host indeed.
‘Mrs. B.,’ said Mr. Britain, looking down the road, ‘is rather late.
It’s tea-time.’
As there was no Mrs. Britain coming, he strolled leisurely out into the
road and looked up at the house, very much to his satisfaction. ‘It’s
just the sort of house,’ said Benjamin, ‘I should wish to stop at, if I
didn’t keep it.’
Then, he strolled towards the garden-paling, and took a look at the
dahlias. They looked over at him, with a helpless drowsy hanging of
their heads: which bobbed again, as the heavy drops of wet dripped off
them.
‘You must be looked after,’ said Benjamin. ‘Memorandum, not to forget to
tell her so. She’s a long time coming!’
Mr. Britain’s better half seemed to be by so very much his better half,
that his own moiety of himself was utterly cast away and helpless without
her.
‘She hadn’t much to do, I think,’ said Ben. ‘There were a few little
matters of business after market, but not many. Oh! here we are at
last!’
A chaise-cart, driven by a boy, came clattering along the road: and
seated in it, in a chair, with a large well-saturated umbrella spread out
to dry behind her, was the plump figure of a matronly woman, with her
bare arms folded across a basket which she carried on her knee, several
other baskets and parcels lying crowded around her, and a certain bright
good nature in her face and contented awkwardness in her manner, as she
jogged to and fro with the motion of her carriage, which smacked of old
times, even in the distance. Upon her nearer approach, this relish of
by-gone days was not diminished; and when the cart stopped at the
Nutmeg-Grater door, a pair of shoes, alighting from it, slipped nimbly
through Mr. Britain’s open arms, and came down with a substantial weight
upon the pathway, which shoes could hardly have belonged to any one but
Clemency Newcome.
In fact they did belong to her, and she stood in them, and a rosy
comfortable-looking soul she was: with as much soap on her glossy face as
in times of yore, but with whole elbows now, that had grown quite dimpled
in her improved condition.
‘You’re late, Clemmy!’ said Mr. Britain.
‘Why, you see, Ben, I’ve had a deal to do!’ she replied, looking busily
after the safe removal into the house of all the packages and baskets:
‘eight, nine, ten—where’s eleven? Oh! my basket’s eleven! It’s all
right. Put the horse up, Harry, and if he coughs again give him a warm
mash to-night. Eight, nine, ten. Why, where’s eleven? Oh I forgot,
it’s all right. How’s the children, Ben?’
‘Hearty, Clemmy, hearty.’
‘Bless their precious faces!’ said Mrs. Britain, unbonneting her own
round countenance (for she and her husband were by this time in the bar),
and smoothing her hair with her open hands. ‘Give us a kiss, old man!’
Mr. Britain promptly complied.
‘I think,’ said Mrs. Britain, applying herself to her pockets and drawing
forth an immense bulk of thin books and crumpled papers: a very kennel of
dogs’-ears: ‘I’ve done everything. Bills all settled—turnips
sold—brewer’s account looked into and paid—’bacco pipes ordered—seventeen
pound four, paid into the Bank—Doctor Heathfield’s charge for little
Clem—you’ll guess what that is—Doctor Heathfield won’t take nothing
again, Ben.’
‘I thought he wouldn’t,’ returned Ben.
‘No. He says whatever family you was to have, Ben, he’d never put you to
the cost of a halfpenny. Not if you was to have twenty.’
Mr. Britain’s face assumed a serious expression, and he looked hard at
the wall.
‘An’t it kind of him?’ said Clemency.
‘Very,’ returned Mr. Britain. ‘It’s the sort of kindness that I wouldn’t
presume upon, on any account.’
‘No,’ retorted Clemency. ‘Of course not. Then there’s the pony—he
fetched eight pound two; and that an’t bad, is it?’
‘It’s very good,’ said Ben.