"The days have vanished, tone and tint,
And yet perhaps the hoarding sense
Gives out at times (he knows not whence)
A little flash, a mystic hint."
_In Memoriam_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
When September came, things had changed but little since the summer,
except that talk had drifted into other channels, and there was less
curiosity in noticing Anthony Miles's behaviour. He still kept aloof
from his friends, and looked worn and haggard, while the charm which
used to take the people by storm was rarely visible. The men, who had
never liked him so well as the women, grumbled at his manners, and the
women confessed that he had lost his pleasantness. Winifred, who now
scarcely saw him, used to wonder how true it was, and what she would
have found out if the old intercourse had not ceased. One day, when she
and Bessie were in the High Street of Aunecester, they met the Bennetts,
and Anthony with them; and as they were coming out of a shop it was
impossible to avoid walking with them, though he was so cold and
constrained that Winifred longed to escape. It was a keen autumnal day,
the old town had put on its gayest, in honour of a visit from some
learned Association or other; there were bright flags hung across the
narrow street, setting off the picturesque gables and archways, and here
and there decking some building black with age.
"Are you going to the concert?" asked Mrs Bennett. "Ada would be sadly
disappointed if I did not take her; but, really, I have been sitting in
the hall and listening to all those lecturers until I have a headache.
I think it would be much nicer if they stopped now and then, and let one
think about it, for I became quite confused once or twice when the heat
made me doze a little, and I heard their voices going on and on about
sandstones, and slate, and things that never seemed to come to an end."
"I was so glad to get out," Ada said. "I believe Anthony wanted to
stay, but I really could not, it was much too learned for me. I suppose
you liked it, Miss Chester?"
It seemed as if she could not resist a little impertinent ring in her
voice when she spoke to Winifred, and Bessie was going to rush in with a
headlong attack, when Mrs Bennett made one of her useful unconscious
diversions.
"There are the Needhams," she said.
"They are going to the concert, I dare say," said Ada. "Anthony, I hope
you took good seats for us?"
"I took what I was given," he said, a little shortly, and at that moment
Ada spied Mr Warren, and invited him graciously to accompany them. It
turned out that he had no ticket, and Anthony immediately offered his
own.
"Then I shall go back to the hall," he said, "for Pelham is going to
speak, and one does not often get such an opportunity."
"That will be a capital plan," said Ada. Winifred could not tell
whether she were vexed or not. To her own relief they had reached the
end of the street, and there was a little separation; the concert people
went one way, the Chesters another, Anthony went back to his lecturing.
Just as they parted Winifred asked for Marion.
"She is better, thank you," he said gravely. "She has been very ill,
but we hope it will all go well now."
"I did not know she had been ill," said Winifred. She could not avoid a
reproachful jar in her voice, and the feeling that her lot was harder
than Anthony's, since she met distrust from him, and he only from an
indifferent world. "Does he think we are made of stone?" she said,
walking away with a sad heart. Perhaps she was not far wrong. For
Anthony's was a nature which such a blow as he had received, anything
indeed which shook his faith in himself or in others, would have a
disposition to harden, and all that was about him would certainly take
its colouring from himself. He was letting his sympathies dry up,
almost forcing them back out of their channels, and was ceasing to
believe in any broader or more genial flow in others. People are not so
much to us what they are as what we see them, so that there are some for
whom the world must be full of terrible companions.
And with poor Anthony the colouring he laid on at this time was cold and
grey enough. Every gleam of brightness lay behind him in the old days
which had suddenly grown a lifetime apart,--school, college, home, where
on all sides he was the most popular, the most brilliant, the most full
of life. And now--old friends had failed him, old hopes had been
killed, old aims seemed unreal, old dreams foolishness. The saddest
part of it all was that he was making even his dreariest fancies truth.
There are few friendships that will stand the test of one dropping away
from the bond: as to hopes and dreams and aims, they too become what a
man makes them,--no less and no more. He was beginning to feel with
impatient weariness that his engagement was not fulfilling even the
moderate amount of contentment which he had expected. He had never
professed to himself any overwhelming passion of love for Ada, but he
had turned to her when he was sore and wroth with all the world, and it
had seemed to him as if here were a little haven of moderate calm. If
he had loved her better he would have felt as if she had a right to
demand more, but I doubt whether this ever troubled him. With an older
man also the experiment might have succeeded better, but his life was
too young, and as yet too full of mute yearnings, for a reaction not to
follow. It was not that clear-sightedness was awakened in him: the
girl's character was just one which the dullest woman would have
fathomed, and scarcely a man have read rightly,--it was rather a cloudy
dissatisfaction, a weariness, a consciousness that neither touched the
other nor ever would, a sense of failure. No thought of escape was
haunting him, he had a vague impression that his destiny might for a
time be delayed, but meanwhile his destiny stood before him, and he knew
that he was moving towards it, whether with willing or reluctant steps.
Of Winifred he thought very little. He did not choose to think of her.
If ever there had been a day when it had seemed as if she might have
become a part of his life, that day was gone like many another day. She
and the world were against him, and if his own heart had been on that
side, poor Anthony in his desperation would have fought against them,--
heart and all. It would all come to an end some time, and meanwhile--
Well, meanwhile he could go on towards the end.
As he walked down the old street under the flags, a sudden brightening
of sunshine lit up the gay fluttering colours, a fresh breeze was
blowing, the houses had irregular lines, rich bits of carving, black
woodwork,--an odd sort of mediaeval life quietly kept, as it were, above
the buying and selling and coming and going: now and then a narrow
opening would disclose some little crooked passage, narrow, and
ill-paved with stones which many a generation had worn down; while
between the gables you might catch a glimpse of the soft darkness of the
old Cathedral rising out of the green turf, trees from which a yellow
leaf or two was sweeping softly down, a misty, tender autumnal sky,
figures passing with a kind of grave busy idleness. There was a band
marching up the street, and at the corner Anthony met Mr Wood, of the
Grange, and at the same moment Mr Robert Mannering.
"Glad to see you," said the latter, ignoring the younger man's evident
desire to hurry on. "You're the very couple I should have chosen to run
my head against, for Charles never rested until he had made Pelham and
Smith, and half a dozen of their like, engage to dine with us to-morrow,
and they'll certainly not be content with me for a listener, so take
pity, both of you, will you? Half past seven, unless they give us a
terribly long-winded afternoon, and then Mrs Jones will be in a rage,
and woe betide us!"
"No, no," said Mr Wood, shaking his head, and going on. "Don't expect
me. I've just had a dose of Smith, and his long words frighten me.
They don't seem quite tame."
"I'm sorry that I can't join you," said Anthony, putting on his
impracticable look.
"Come, come. You've treated us very scurvily of late. Miss Lovell must
spare you for once, Anthony."
"Thank you. It is not possible."
He said it so curtly, that Mr Robert's face grew a shade redder; but as
he watched the young man walking away down the street with short, quick
steps, the anger changed in a moment into a sort of kind trouble.
"He'll have none of it, and if it's shame I don't know but what I like
him the better, poor boy! I know I'd give pretty nearly anything to be
able to put out my hand and tell him I believe that confounded story to
be a lie. But I can't, and he knows it. The mischief I've seen in my
day that had money at the bottom of it! Well, I hope that pretty little
girl will make him a good wife, and I shall make it up to Margaret's
child by and by. There goes Sir Peter, on his way to patronise the
Association, I'll be bound. He'll walk up to the front and believe they
know all about him, how many pheasants he has in his covers, and what a
big man he is in his own little particular valley. Why shouldn't he?--
we're all alike. I caught myself thinking that Parker would be
astonished if he could only see my Farleyense; and there's Charles as
proud as a peacock over his Homer that he's going to display, and Mrs
Jones thinking all the world will be struck with the frilling in which
she'll dress up her ham, and so we go on,--one fool very much like
another fool. And as the least we can do is to humour one another, and
as, to judge from the shops, the Association has in it a largely
devouring element, I'll go and look after Mrs Jones's lobster."
He turned down a narrow street. The Cathedral chimes were ringing,
dropping down one after the other with a slow stately gravity. People
were making their way across the Close to the different doors. The
streets had their gay flags, and carriages, and groups in the shops, and
mothers bringing little convoys from the dancing academy, and stopping
to look at materials for winter frocks,--but hardly a touch of these
excitements had reached the Close. It seemed as if nothing could ruffle
its quiet air; as if, under the shadow of the old Cathedral, life and
death itself would make no stir. The chimes ceased, the figures had
gone softly in; presently there floated out dim harmonies from the
organ. As Mr Mannering passed along under one of the old houses he met
the Squire.
"Winifred and Bess are there," he said, nodding towards the Cathedral.
"The children like to go in for the service. They're good children--
mine--God bless them!" he went on, with a sudden abruptness which made
Mr Robert glance in his face.
"Good? They're as good as gold."
"So I think, so I think. Bess, now. She's a spirit of her own, up in a
moment, like a horse that has got a mouth worth humouring, but all over
with the flash, and not a bit of sulkiness to turn sour afterwards. And
Winifred, she's been a mother to her sister. She has, hasn't she,
Mannering?"
"Don't harrow a poor old bachelor's feelings. You know I have lost my
heart to Miss Winifred ever since she was ten years old, and she refused
to marry me, even then,--point-blank."
But the Squire did not seem to be listening to his answer, or if he
heard it, it blended itself with other thoughts. He said with something
that seemed like a painful effort, "Pitt had a notion that Anthony Miles
liked Winifred. There never was anything of the kind, but he took it
into his head. I'm glad with all my heart that Pitt was mistaken, for I
would not have one of my girls suffer in that way for a thousand pounds.
But I've been thinking to-day,--I don't know what sets all these things
running in my head, unless it is that it is my wedding-day.--My
wedding-day, seven-and-twenty years ago, and little Harry was born the
year after. I wasn't as good a husband as I should have been, I know,
Mannering, but I used to think, if little Harry had lived--"
He stopped. He had been speaking throughout in a slow disjointed way,
so unlike himself that Mr Robert felt uncomfortable while hardly
knowing why.
"Come," he said cheerily. "Look at your two girls, and remember what
you have just been saying about them."
The Squire shook his head.
"They're well enough," he said, "but they're not Harry. Who was I
talking of--Anthony Miles, wasn't it? I've been thinking that perhaps
I've been too hard on the boy. It would have broken his father's heart
if he had known it, for there wasn't a more honourable man breathing;
but if my Harry had grown up, though he never could have done such a
thing as that, he might have got into scrapes, and then if I had been
dead and gone it would have been hard for never a one to stick by the
lad. I don't know how it is. I believe I've such a hasty tongue I
never could keep back what comes uppermost. Many a box in the ear my
poor mother has given me for it, though she always said all the same,
`Have it out, and have done with it, Frank.' It was a low thing for him
to do, sir," went on the Squire, firing up, and striking the ground with
his stick by way of emphasis, "but--I don't know--I should be glad to
shake hands with him again. Somehow I feel as if it couldn't be right
as it is, with his father gone, and my little lad who might have grown
up."
And so, across long years there came the clasp of baby fingers, and the
echo of a message which was given to us for a Child's sake,--peace and
good-will.
"I wish you would," Mr Mannering said heartily. "He is somewhere about
in the town at this very minute; perhaps you'll meet him. Only you
mustn't mind--"
He hesitated, for he did not feel sure of Anthony's manner of accepting
a reconciliation, or whether, indeed, he would accept it at all, and yet
he did not like to throw difficulties in the way. But the Squire
understood him with unusual quickness.
"You mean the lad's a bit cranky," he said, "but that's to be expected.
Perhaps he and I may fire up a little, for, as I said, I'm never sure of
myself, but there's his father between us, and--well, I think we shall
shake hands this time."
Not as he thought; but was it the less truly so far as he was concerned?
For a minute or two Mr Robert stood and looked after him as he went
along the Close, a thick, sturdy figure, with country-cut clothes, and
the unmistakable air of a gentleman. The Cathedral towers rose up on
one side in soft noble lines against the quiet sky, leaves fluttered
gently down, a little child ran across the stones in pursuit of a puppy,
and fell almost at the Squire's feet. Mr Robert saw him pick it up,
brush its frock like a woman, and stop its cries with something out of
his pocket. The child toddled back triumphant, the Squire walked on
towards the High Street, and Mr Robert turned in the other direction.
Some indefinite sense of uneasiness had touched him, though, after all,
there was no form to give it. If Mr Chester's manner had been at first
slightly unusual, he explained it himself by saying that he had been
stirred by old recollections, and the vagueness his friend had noticed
quite died away by the end of their conversation. He was walking
slowly, but with no perceptible faltering.
"And a man's wedding-day must be enough to set things going in his
head," Mr Robert reflected. "If matters had fallen out differently now
with Margaret Hare--Well, well, so I am going to make an old fool of
myself, too. I'd better get on to the carrier, and set Mrs Jones's
mind easy about her lobster."
Distances are not very great in Aunecester, and it did not take long for
Mr Mannering to reach the White Horse, transact his business, and go
back to the principal street to wait for his brother. There was one
particular bookseller's shop, to which people had parcels sent, and
where they lounged away what time they had in hand, and just before he
reached it Mr Mannering noticed an unusual stir and thickening of the
passers-by. He concluded that the band might be playing again, or that
some little event connected with the Association had attracted a crowd.
It was not until he was close to one of the groups that the scattered
words they let fall attracted his attention.
"An accident, did you say?" he said, stopping before a man whose face
was red and heated.
"Yes, sir. A gentleman knocked down. That's the boy, and a chase I've
had to catch him."
Mr Mannering began to see a horse, a policeman, and a
frightened-looking lad in the midst of the crowd.
"Nothing very serious, I hope?"
"It looked serious, sir, when we picked him up. He is took into the
shop, and they've sent for the doctor. Boys don't care what they ride
over."
"I fancy something was wrong before the horse touched him, though," said
another man, with a child in his arms. "There was time enough else for
him to have got out of the way."
"Who is it?" asked Mr Mannering, with a sudden wakening of anxiety. At
that moment Anthony Miles came quickly out of the shop, almost running
against him in his hurry.
"Have you seen them?" he said hastily, when he saw who it was. His face
was drawn and pallid, like that of a man who has received a great shock.
"Who, who?" said Mr Robert, gripping his arm. "It isn't the Squire
that's hurt?"
"Yes," said Anthony impatiently. "He's in there. Somebody must find
Winifred, or she'll be in the thick of it in a minute."
"She is at the Cathedral, she and Bessie," said Mr Mannering, asking no
more questions, but feeling his heart sink. "They must be coming out
about this time. God help them, poor children!"
Anthony was off before the words were out of his mouth. Mr Robert, his
kind ugly face a shade paler than usual, turned into the shop, which was
full of curious customers, and made his way to a back room to which they
motioned him gravely.
It was a little dark room, lit only by a skylight, on which the blacks
had rested many a day, and hung all round with heavy draperies of cloaks
and other garments, which at this moment had something weird in their
familiar aspect. The Squire had been laid upon chairs, hastily placed
together to form a couch; the doctor and one or two of the shop-people
were talking together in a low voice as Mr Robert came in, and a
frightened girl, holding a bottle in her hand, stood a little behind the
group.
By their faces he knew at once that there was no hope. Perhaps for the
moment what came most sharply home to him was the incongruity of the
Squire's fresh open-air daily life, and this strange death-room of his.
He said eagerly to the doctor,--
"Can't we get him out of this?"
"Not to Thorpe," Dr Fletcher said gravely. "But we can move him to my
house. I have sent for a carriage."
"Is he quite unconscious?"
"Quite. There will be no suffering."
There was no need to ask more. Death itself seems as helplessly matter
of fact as the life before it. Mr Robert stood and looked down with
moist eyes at the honest face that had been so full of vigour but the
day before, when the Squire went through his day's shooting like a man
of half his years; and then thought of him as he had seen him that very
hour, on his way to make peace, comforting a little child. Those had
been his last words, the kind, good heart showing itself behind its
little roughnesses, and softened as it may have been--who knows?--by a
dim foreshadowing.