RECONCILED.
It was the height of the season at Hastings; the yearly heaven of
lodging-house keepers had arrived; they could be firm about rent, linen,
the use of plate, boot-cleaning, and kitchen fires; the millennium of
temporal prosperity had, after months of weary waiting, come at last,
and the reign of the saints by the sea-side had begun. As for the
sinners, they had a terrible time of it. At what hour they should eat;
the Spartan nature of the cookery they might expect; the rooms
wherewithal they must needs content themselves; these things were
announced to them by the powers in the ascendant with a severe
composure.
Any man who had all his life entertained an idea that he was entitled
for his money to money’s worth, needed but to set foot in Hastings to be
undeceived.
It was the harvest time; and all the native population of Hastings—under
the Castle of Hastings, on a level with the Castle, of St.
Leonards-on-Sea, and the various regions lying back from the shore, but
still studded with villas and terraces—put in the sickle.
The Egyptians had come down to the sea-side, and the householders
forthwith set about considering how they should best spoil them. Rents
were doubled—extras were put on—items were run up—bells were not
answered—servants were harassed to death—every dwelling was crammed,
from basement to garret—cooks were arrogant—housemaids breathless—and
still the cry went on, “They come!”—and still the place got fuller and
fuller; and it was, as I have said, the height of the season in Hastings
the romantic.
Was there ever a prettier bathing-place?—was there ever a more charming
dwelling for a short time? Was there ever a town round and about which
there were to be found lovelier walks and drives—sweeter bits of rural
scenery—more enchanting views over the great sea?
Most people seemed to have thought Hastings perfection that year, for
they came flocking to it as cattle go down into a pond to drink.
They came—the autocrats of the fashionable and the would-be fashionable
world—to St. Leonards, to the great houses fronting the sea, to Warrior
Square, to the little houses up back streets, and to the terraces, hung
up so high that ordinary limbs ached before the temporary home was
reached.
Then there were old-fashioned folks who affected Hastings—who thought
the old town seemed more home-like and pleasant than the new—who brought
their money to spend within easy walk of the East Cliff—who loved the
roads leading away to Fairlight—and the old churches in the High
Street—and who declared the bathing was better at Hastings than at St.
Leonards.
Anyhow, Hastings and St. Leonards were full—too full for comfort; but
not too full for amusement to anyone who knew London and its people
well.
To the country squire, to the grand folks who, by reason of their great
wealth and greater gentility, are far removed from all the pleasures of
watching their commoner fellows and trying to understand their ways,
these sea-side places must seem, as a rule, stale, flat, and
unprofitable. It is the naturalist who loves to note the habits and
instincts and modes of existence of the commonest animal; the bees going
and coming—the ants busy at work—the mole heaps in the garden: the
eccentricities of toad life have no charm to anyone who does not
understand something of the nature of bee, or ant, or mole, or toad: and
in like manner, the person who does not comprehend the modes of life and
habits of thought of the men and the women he sees around him, cannot
reasonably be expected to take much interest in observing their
peculiarities.
There are those, however, who ask no better enjoyment than watching
Jones, Brown, and Robinson out for a holiday; who delight in tracing
Jones to his clique, and Brown to his, and Robinson to his; who
luxuriate among snobs; who, watching them staring out of the windows at
St. Leonards, or airing themselves in the balconies at Robertson
Terrace, or lounging up and down the Parade, or adventuring their necks
on the backs of much-enduring horses, can classify the swell, the
millionaire, the fortune-hunter, the pretender, the distant relation of
some great house, the newly rich, the poor man of family, to a nicety.
And behold! there are all the men, women, and children he has become so
familiar with in the course of his walks and residences round London.
There is Paterfamilias, drearily promenading with Materfamilias, and
making believe to enjoy a holiday, which is a continual anxiety, and, as
the poor man feels, an unwarrantable expense.
In the whole of his married life he has never before seen so much of his
children, and he never—heaven forgive him!—wants to see so much of them
again. He is tired of the objectless days passed in the unexciting
society of the wife of his bosom and of his numerous progeny. On the
whole, he wishes the holiday were over, and he back at business once
again; while Materfamilias wages war with the landlady, and is pathetic
concerning the price of meat.
There are the young ladies from No. 7, who will go out in the yacht
twice a day, together with a friend, who has invariably to be relanded,
if the sea proves rough, amidst the pity of the passengers and the
secret maledictions of the crew. There is young Tomkins, the
corn-factor, taking great airs upon himself, walking in sandboots along
the Parade, and staring in the face of every woman he meets; there is
his future father-in-law, driving out his better-half in one of those
pony-carriages that are a cross between a clothes and a plate basket,
and charioteering the safest and most docile of ponies, who could not
run away if he would—as Alexander might have been supposed to manage
Bucephalus, had that animal ever been harnessed to a modern dog-cart. In
all Hastings there is nothing more amusing than to watch these amateur
whips, who hold the reins wide apart, and with great skill manage to
keep a firm grasp on the whip at the same time.
No young blood tooling his four-in-hand along the high road ever felt
grander than a regular cockney at Hastings seated behind a
slowly-trotting pony _en route_ to Crowhurst.
I have often wondered what the ponies say to each other about their
hirers when they get back to their chaff and their oats at night. Do
they take any part of the hauling and mauling out in sneers and
sarcasms?—do they curse the day when basket-carriages were invented?—do
they make lamentation over their weary legs and roughly-handled
mouths?—do they tell about how they are cantered up hill and rattled
down?—do they scoff at the hundred weights of flesh they have had to
pull about?—do they recount their experiences, and do they, as a rule,
consider mankind a mistake?
And as for the riding-horses—for the galled backs, for the broken
winds—for the way they are mauled about, and pulled from side to side
and harassed with curbs—and men who do not know what to do with either
bridle or whip—and women who will hang on their crutches—and equestrians
generally, who seem to think horses machines, incapable of weariness or
aching bones—what shall we say of all this?—what of the great people who
drive about in their own carriages, languidly surveying the commonalty
through eye-glasses?—what of the little people who walk up and down for
hours and go to the beach to pick up shells, and sit on the benches and
listen to the music?—what of the lonely men and the solitary women?—what
of the excursionists who come down from London to stay for one day, and
are taken back at a single fare, and who eat more apples, pears, and
plums, and drink more beer in that time than an inexperienced person
might deem possible?—what of the nobs who come down here, for any
purpose, as it would seem, judging from their faces, save pleasure?—what
of the snobs, who ape the airs of the nobs, and enjoy themselves little
accordingly?—what of the lawyer you have known so well in London, who
mounts to the very top of the East Cliff, and lies down on the grass
there, far away from men and the noise thereof—lies down, not to think,
or to look, or to dream, but to rest!—what of the invalid, who gazes out
from shaded window at the changing groups upon the shore?—what of the
children and the nursemaids, of the lovers and the newly married, of the
childless and the widowed? What? Dear reader, go to Hastings, and look
upon them all for yourself; go, as Mrs. Stondon did, and yourself a
dispassionate observer, look over the throng.
It was in the height of the season that Phemie found herself in Hastings
once again, and the waves broke against the Parade, and the sea kept up
its perpetual murmur, and the wind went sobbing away out upon the waters
just as she could remember it doing in the days that were gone.
She did not come to Hastings as a visitor. She took no furnished
apartments. She had to listen to no dissertations on the subject of
plate, linen, and boot-cleaning. She was in Hastings for a purpose, not
for any pleasure. She had come quickly, and she meant to return without
delay; for which reasons she and Mr. Aggland took up their quarters at
the hotel which stands at the east end of Robertson Terrace.
Seated by the window, straining her eyes out over the sea, Phemie went
back over the years that had elapsed since she first beheld the Castle,
the Parade, the East and West Cliffs.
She had come to Hastings to see an old friend who was mixed up with
every sad memory of her life. Of all places Hastings was, perhaps, the
one she would most have shrunk from revisiting; but necessity is a hard
taskmaster, and necessity had brought Mrs. Stondon back to the sea, to
the visitors, to the music, to the moonlight once again.
She wanted to see Miss Derno. On her arrival at Roundwood, immediately
after her hurried departure from Marshlands, her first act was to
inquire at what time the post went out; her next to write a letter.
Writing letters being an employment to which, at this present age of the
world, men and women are much addicted, the fact of Phemie inditing an
epistle before she rested or refreshed herself would scarcely be worth
mentioning, had it not chanced that the missive in question was one over
which she wept many tears and breathed many sighs.
It was a confession that she had been wrong, that she had been guilty of
grievous injustice; it contained expressions of deep regret; it
concluded with an earnest prayer for forgiveness.
In the main Phemie was of a just and a generous nature. She never spared
herself, and she could not let the sun set, after her discovery of
Basil’s marriage, till she acknowledged that Miss Derno’s suspicions of
Georgina had been correct, that her own suspicions of Miss Derno had
been wrong.
She had let Basil Stondon come between her and everything she most
esteemed and valued; between herself and her husband; between herself
and her family and her friends; between herself and purity; between
herself and God.
And fully aware of all this, in her deep self-abasement, in the first
agony of her mortified pride and vanity, with the first smart of the
dreadful wound spurring her on, with the past spread open before her
like a book, Phemie wrote such a letter to her old friend as caused Miss
Derno, when at length it reached her, to mourn with an exceeding sorrow
for the misery of the woman whom she had first met so young, so
guileless, so shy and unsophisticated.
She had always loved Phemie; loved her spite of her faults, her whims,
her injustice, her variableness; and she tried, when she answered the
letter, to convey some assurance of this love to Mrs. Stondon.
The letter had been forwarded to her by Mrs. Hurlford. She said—“I would
have answered it in person, but I am ill, dear, and I cannot go to you.
I hear your health is far from good, or I would pray you to come and see
me. If you are strong enough to travel here, I should like to see you,
as it is scarcely probable I shall ever be able to leave Hastings
again.”
That was the errand which brought Mrs. Stondon to Hastings, to see her
old friend, to look in her face, and touch her hand once more. That!
Phemie sat and thought about it, till at length, turning to her uncle,
she said—
“I think she must be back by this time. Shall we go and see?”
He took his hat in silence, and they passed out of the hotel side by
side. The radiant beauty of old was gone, and yet many a man turned to
look after the fair widow as she swept along the Parade, turning her
eyes neither to right nor to left, but looking straight forward, like
one who sees something away in the indefinite distance.
They had inquired at the house in Robertson Terrace where Miss Derno
lived, if she were come in, but the servant said she had not yet
returned.
“Very likely, ma’am, she is on the Parade. She generally goes out about
this time in a Bath-chair, to listen to the music and to watch the tide
coming in.”
Along the Parade, therefore, Phemie walked, as I have said, with her
black dress trailing behind her, with her eyes fixed on every advancing
group, on every approaching figure.
There had been a time when on that same Parade she felt dreamily,
dangerously happy; and as she walked along, the past was very present
with her, and the woman’s heart bled, remembering the sweetness of the
hours gone by, and contrasting that sweetness with the bitterness of the
hours which were then passing.
Lonely and widowed, childless and deserted, with the man who had loved
her so truly dead, with the man whom she had loved so passionately
married to another woman, whose son would hereafter be master of
Marshlands—no wonder that the people who looked admiringly at Phemie’s
stately walk, and turned back for another glance at her queenly figure,
felt instinctively that the widow’s dress, that the sweeping garments,
covered a sorrowful story; that the new comer had wept bitter tears,
kept weary vigils, passed through much sorrow, and seen bitter
suffering.
She was an old actor now on the stage which she had once regarded from
afar off as a mere spectator; she had gone through the tragedy, she had
played out the most important scenes in her own life, and she listened
to the moaning and murmuring of the sea with a comprehension clear and
distinct of its meaning.
She felt that although she might still have to appear on the boards of
existence, and act in other men’s pieces, appear in the comedies and
tragedies of other people’s lives, still that her own was over.
At thirty her spring-time and her summer were gone. They had not been
sunshiny or genial seasons to her; and the early blossoms which might
have brought forth fruit in the autumn had died away and withered and
rotted, and the rain had beaten down her roses, and withered the buds of
promise, and cankered the root of every pleasant flower.
Her wounds were fresh, and Phemie felt them opening again with every
step she took. There was not a foot of all that place but she knew and
loved. There was not a spot of ground round which there did not hover
some memory of the olden time. She could remember the airs and the
waltzes they had listened to in the days before Basil went over the sea.
She could recollect where they sat watching the waves come rushing up on
the shore; the sight of the East Cliff standing out against the sky
affected her like a sudden pain.
She had rejoiced here and she had lamented—she had been happy while he
walked by her side—she had hearkened to the moaning of the sea—to the
voices of the night when they came evening after evening and spoke to
her—through the whole of the winter she passed at Hastings with her
husband—about the depths wherein she then thought Basil was lying.
Was his death one half so bitter as his resurrection? Was it not easier
for her to mourn him dead than behold him lost to her? Yet—no—no—the
woman’s love was stronger than the woman’s pride. Life for him—life at
any price—at any suffering to herself. He would be happy and she could
bear; and she looked out seaward as she thought this, and the waves came
murmuring gently up on the shore—gently and peacefully.
“Phemie, I think this is Miss Derno.”
It was Mr. Aggland who spoke, pointing to a lady seated in an
invalid-chair, which was turned so as to catch the rays of the setting
sun, that were streaming over town and castle, over cliff and sea.
“Miss Derno—surely not!” exclaimed Phemie, “That skeleton Miss Derno!”
And she went forward doubtingly, and looked in the sick woman’s face.
“Mrs. Stondon!”—“Miss Derno!”—they exclaimed at the same moment, and the
two had met once more.
That was no place for loving greeting, for tender inquiry, for
affectionate discourse; and it was not till Miss Derno had been wheeled
back to her lodgings, and, assisted by a gentleman who was introduced to
Mrs. Stondon as Major Morrice, had walked into the house, that the
friends could speak to one another—heart to heart, and soul to soul.
“Forgive me, dear!”—that was the burden of Phemie’s entreaty.
“I have nothing to forgive,” was the reply; “and I am so glad—so glad to
see you again—to have you near me before I go.”
“You are not dangerously ill though, darling, are you?”
“Mrs. Stondon”—Miss Derno raised the head which was resting in her lap,
and bade Phemie look in her face—“do you think I am much like a woman
who has long to live?” she asked, earnestly. “And I have so wished to
live—so wished it, God forgive me.”
Then in the quiet twilight, while the sound of voices floated to them
from the Parade—while the music rose and fell—while the visitors walked
up and down—while the feet of many people hurried by—while the moon rose
over the East Cliff—while the waves came washing up on the shore, and
the sound of the waters fell on the ear like a subdued accompaniment to
the noisy melody of human fears and hopes which was still being sung on
the strand, just the same as formerly, Miss Derno told the story of her
life to Phemie.
It was the old story of a mutual love which yet could not end in
marriage—of a rich father desirous that his only son should marry well,
and unwilling for him to choose beauty and goodness and youth when money
formed no part of the lady’s dower.
It was the old story of the girl who would not endanger her lover’s
worldly prosperity—who would not let him be pauperised for her sake.
It was the old story of rings exchanged, of vows breathed, of an
engagement entered into, of eternal constancy promised—then they parted.
He went to India, she remained with her aunt.
After that there was foul play; she was represented to her lover as
faithless, as married, as happy.
“My letters never reached him, his letters never reached me,” she
proceeded; “and though I knew, though I was confident there had been
treachery somewhere, still I could not go on writing when I got no
reply. A woman cannot force herself on a man,” said Miss Derno, with a
slight return of the light, easy manner which Phemie had so much admired
in former days. “Even if she believes he wants her, it is a difficult
matter for her to press so valuable a possession on his acceptance—I
could not, at all events. How was I to know the falsehoods he was told
concerning me, and unknowing, I argued, ‘If he wants me he will come
back for me; he will come back some day.’ And he has come back,” she
finished, “to find me the wreck you see.”
“Was Major Morrice then——?” began Phemie.
“He was my first love and my last,” said the dying woman, and the tears
came into her eyes and rolled down her cheeks as she spoke. “I could
have married often,” she went on. “I say it in no spirit of idle vanity,
but merely to show that I did not remain faithful, as many a woman does,
simply because she has had no chance of being otherwise than faithful—I
could have married often, I could have married well, as the world talks
about such things, but the love of my youth was the love of my life, and
I could take no second love into my heart for ever. He has never been in
England since we were parted till now. He would not have come back yet,
only that his father is dead, and there were many things requiring his
presence. He returned at the same time as Basil Stondon; they were
fellow-passengers in the steamer, and they landed together at
Southampton. From Basil he heard I was not married, that I had always
remained true, and he came to me here—came to pray me at last to be his
wife. Think of it—think after the years of waiting, and to have to die
and leave him.”
She covered her face with her hands, and sobbed aloud, while Phemie
said, gently—
“And can nothing——”
“Nothing can save me,” added Miss Derno, completing her friend’s
sentence, “and I am not going to fight against the unconquerable—I am
not going to try to avert the inevitable. Nothing worse can come to me
than the look I saw on Gordon Morrice’s face when we first met. My fate
was reflected there as in a glass. He has learned to disguise his
thoughts since that—to speak hopefully of the future, but I know—I
know——”
And she turned her head towards the window, and looked out at the groups
standing on the Parade, at the young girls walking up and down, squired
by attentive cavaliers. Her life had been full like theirs once—full of
bliss and joy and happiness—full as the tide at its highest; but now the
waves were ebbing, ebbing, leaving the sands of time, receding from the
green shores of earth, rolling back—slowly, surely—into the depths of
the mysterious sea.