Mr. Campbell was not to be moved. He was very anxious, angry, and ill at
ease; but whether it was that he would not betray to me that the
message, which he viewed as an anonymous statement, could cause him any
uneasiness, or whether it was perplexity and confusion of mind, or if he
really felt a confidence which neither his son nor daughter shared, I
cannot tell. But he refused to be influenced in any way by this strange
communication. It would be some intrusive woman, he said; some
busybody--there were many about--who, thinking she could escape being
found out in that way, had thought it a grand opportunity of making
mischief. He made me a great many apologies for his first hasty words.
It was very ill-bred, he said; he was ashamed to think that he had let
himself be so carried away; but he would hear nothing of the message
itself. It appeared that Miss Campbell had both written and telegraphed
to her brother. To the letter there was as yet no reply; but Colin had
answered the telegram by a somewhat angry one, declaring that he was all
right. “What more would you have him to do?” Mr. Campbell said, with a
sort of restrained fury. Charlotte said nothing more in my presence, but
I divined that she was anxiously endeavouring to induce him, if not to
go himself, yet to permit her to go to her brother. The position was a
very embarrassing one, especially when all the brothers left for their
business, which they did by the morning boat. It seemed out of all
character that a stranger should remain in the circumstances; so I
contrived to have a letter by the midday post summoning me back to
town. They were, of course, quite well aware that letters do not come
from London on a Monday; but Charlotte at least made no remark. Her
father looked at me rather fiercely, being irritated and susceptible,
and disposed to take offence at anything that seemed to attach
importance to this curious episode; and the children made a great outcry
and lamentation; but they did not make any serious attempt to change my
resolution. It was even agreeable to Miss Campbell I saw, and this gave
me a pang, anxious as I was to be agreeable to her in every way. The
last boat would get me to the nearest station in time for the night
train, or it was suggested that I might be driven there, which would
give me still more time. I had made all my arrangements, and had come
downstairs again, somewhat forlorn, to have my last talk with the woman
whose sweet company during these two or three weeks past had been more
to me than I could say. I found her with her hat on, waiting for me in
the hall. “I thought you would like to take one turn more,” she said,
with a smile, in which (I hoped) there was some sadness. There was
certainly excitement in her eyes, in her movements a sort of eagerness
and almost impatience. We went out and walked across the lawn to the
side of the loch. The sun was beginning to sink; the sky was all aglow,
putting on by degrees the gorgeous hues of a northern sunset. She said
nothing till we were clear of all possibility of listeners--too far off
for the children to rush out upon us, as they so often did. Then she
paused suddenly, and looked up into my face. “Mr. Temple,” she said,
“you will think me heartless, letting you go without a word, though well
I know the reason why. You think you are a trouble to us at such a time.
Oh no, you are no trouble. But I am selfish; I don’t wish to detain
you--I want you to do something for me.”
“Anything,” I cried, “anything--whatever man can.”
“I knew you would say so; that is why I have scarcely said I am sorry. I
have not tried to stop you. Mr. Temple, I am not shutting my eyes to it
like my father. I am sure that, whoever it was that spoke to you, the
warning was true. I want you to go to Colin,” she said abruptly, after a
momentary pause, “and let me know the truth.”
“To Colin?” I cried. “But you know how little acquainted we are. It was
not he who wrote to me, but Charley”--
“And I. You don’t leave me out, I hope,” she said, with a faint smile.
“But what could make a better excuse than that you have been here? Mr.
Temple, you will go when I ask you? Oh, I do more--I entreat you! Go,
and let me know the truth.”
“Of course I shall go--from the moment you ask me, Miss Campbell; but
what if I offend, and make him angry? He may think me a spy upon him. He
may think”--
“Oh, Mr. Temple, never mind. You have been so friendly to us. Think what
a comfort it will be to me. You have been mixed up in it all. You are
not like a stranger; and yet if you knew the comfort, the satisfaction
it is that you _are_ a stranger! Do you know what I mean? I can speak to
you. It is not like exposing my poor Colin to somebody who has known him
all his life, and who will say, ‘I knew this was what would happen.’ Do
you know what I mean?” she asked, with the tears in her eyes.
And I hope I was man enough to understand without either offence or
thinking too much of the confidence thus given to me. I perceived that I
was a sort of forlorn hope; that I was like a rope thrown out to a
drowning man; all the more prized because I was not of them--perhaps
because I would disappear--my use being served--and be seen no more. But
this was not--oh, surely not--what she meant! She was not a woman to
throw anyone over who had served her. We walked up and down the side of
the water, which every moment grew more and more into a blazing mirror,
a burnished shield decked with every imaginable colour, though our minds
had no room for its beauty, and it only touched my eyesight in coming
and going. There she told me much about Colin, which I had not known or
guessed--about his inclinations and tastes, which were not like any of
the others, and how his friends and his ways were unknown to them. “But
we have always hoped this would pass away,” she said, “for his heart is
good; oh, his heart is good! You remember how kind he was to me when we
met you first? He is always kind.” Thus we walked and talked until I
had seen a new side at once of her character and life. The home had
seemed to me so happy and free from care; but the dark shadow was there
as everywhere, and her heart often wrung with suspense and anguish. We
then returned slowly towards the house, still absorbed in this
conversation, for it was time that I should go in and eat my last meal
at Ellermore.
We had come within sight of the door, which stood open as always, when
we suddenly caught sight of Mr. Campbell posting towards us with a wild
haste, so unlike his usual circumspect walk that I was startled. His
feet seemed to twist as they sped along, in such haste was he. His hat
was pushed back on his head, his coat-tails flying behind
him--precipitate, like a man pursued, or in one of those panics which
take away breath and sense, or, still more perhaps, as if a strong wind
were behind him, blowing him on. When he came within speech of us, he
called out hurriedly, “Come here! come here, both of you!” and turning,
hastened back with the same breathless hurry, beckoning with his hand.
“He must have heard something more,” Charlotte said, and rushed after
him. I followed a few steps behind. Mr. Campbell said nothing to his
daughter when she made up to him. He almost pushed her off when she put
her hand through his arm. He had no leisure even for sympathy. He
hurried along with feet that stumbled in sheer haste till he came to the
Lady’s Walk, which lay in the level sunshine, a path of gold between the
great boles of the trees. It was a slight ascent, which tried him still
more. He went a few yards along the path, then stopped and looked round
upon her and me, with his hand raised to call our attention. His face
was perfectly colourless. Alarm and dismay were written on every line of
it. Large drops of perspiration stood upon his forehead. He seemed to
desire to speak, but could not; then held up his finger to command our
attention. For the first moment or two my attention was so concentrated
upon the man and the singularity of his look and gesture, that I thought
of nothing else. What did he want us to do? We stood all three in the
red light, which seemed to send a flaming sword through us. There was a
faint stir of wind among the branches overhead, and a twitter of birds;
but in the great stillness the faint lap of the water upon the shore was
audible, though the loch was at some distance. Great stillness--that was
the word; there was nothing moving but these soft actions of nature. Ah!
this was what it was! Charlotte grew perfectly pale too, like her
father, as she stood and listened. I seem to see them now: the old man
with his white head, his ghastly face, the scared and awful look in his
eyes, and she gazing at him, all her faculties involved in the art of
listening, her very attitude and drapery listening too, her lips
dropping apart, the life ebbing out of her, as if something was draining
the blood from her heart.
Mr. Campbell’s hand dropped. “She’s away,” he said, “she’s away,” in
tones of despair; then, with a voice that was shaken by emotion, “I
thought it was maybe my fault. By times you say I am getting stupid.”
There was the most heart-rending tone in this I ever heard--the pained
humility of the old confessing a defect, lit up with a gleam of feverish
hope that in this case the defect might be a welcome explanation.
“Father dear,” cried Charlotte, putting her hand on his arm--she had
looked like fainting a moment before, but recovered herself--“it may be
only a warning. It may not be desperate even now.”
All that the old man answered to this was a mere repetition, pathetic in
its simplicity. “She’s away, she’s away.” Then, after a full minute’s
pause, “You mind when that happened last?” he said.
“Oh, father! oh, father!” cried Charlotte. I withdrew a step or two from
this scene. What had I, a stranger, to do with it? They had forgotten my
presence, and at the sound of my step they both looked up with a wild,
eager look in their faces, followed by blank disappointment. Then he
sighed, and said, with a return of composure, “You will throw a few
things into a bag, and we’ll go at once, Chatty. There is no time to
lose.”
They went down to the house together, arm in arm, and I remained alone
in the Lady’s Walk. My head was turning round. Was it the most
superstitious folly? What was it? Common sense, which will come in at
inconvenient moments and drive one into a corner, stalked forth and
looked me, with cynical eyes, in the face. Well! were they mad, or
idiots, or what was it? I stood still and listened till my sense of the
incongruous and absurd was too much for me. The footsteps which I had
once heard so clearly going along this way, and which had in my hearing
turned and gone back, were no longer audible. The wind in the branches,
the stir of a bird on the bough, the blackbirds singing clear and high
in the shrubberies, even, as I have said, the lap of the water on the
shore, were audible, but nothing else. I walked along to the end and
back again. There was not a sound. Well, I said to myself, I suppose the
sound that caused it must be stilled for some reason or other; and I
laughed. But next moment I felt the skin creep upon me, a sort of cold
shiver rising under the roots of my hair. I was too much, I suppose,
under the influence of the family to regard it in a robust and sensible
way. Certain it is, that however the science of acoustics might account
for it, as a matter of fact those mysterious sounds had ceased and
could be heard no more.
The next hour was to me so confused and incoherent that I could make
nothing of it. I was left alone. Only a servant came to tell me that the
carriage would be at the door at a certain time. Both Charlotte and her
father had disappeared, and whether they were going with me, or meant to
let me depart without further notice, I could not tell. When the
carriage drove to the door, however, they both appeared. Mr. Campbell
was carefully wrapped up, though the evening was not cold. He looked
more feeble than I had supposed him to be, and older; there was a quiver
and twitching about his face, and he tottered as he got with difficulty
into the carriage. We drove to the station with scarcely a word. “Have
you got the bags right, Chatty? Have you a rug for the journey? Are you
sure you brought money enough?”
“Yes, father, yes,” Charlotte said. He was evidently altogether
dependent upon her. She directed me with a look to give him my arm when
we arrived at the railway station, and ran to and fro herself, taking
the tickets and doing all that was needful.
“Let me do it,” I said; “I cannot bear to see you doing such work.”
“You are serving me much better as it is,” she said. And then came the
long journey, swinging through the night with that great clang of
movement and vibration of the separated air, which seems to deafen the
mind as well as the body and crush down anxious thought. Mr. Campbell
slept a little, with his fine white head relieved against the cushions,
and then Charlotte came closer to me and talked. I asked her
instructions humbly as to what I should do, and she begged me, with a
certain terror in her face, to stay with them, to go with them to
Colin’s lodgings. She talked a great deal to me in soft tones during
the night, with a confidence and familiarity that touched me deeply. It
seemed to help her to get through the dreary hours. She told me that it
was when her mother died that the steps had been inaudible before. She
did not use this phraseology. She said, “When the lady went away
before.” “Dear Miss Campbell,” I said, “you who are so reasonable, so
full of sense and thought, what could those sounds have to do with
matters so serious? It was a holiday, and the people were away from the
farm. No doubt that was the cause. There was no echo from the other
road, wherever it may be.”
She looked at me with a pitying air. “Do you really believe that?” she
said. “And don’t you feel the world poor, poor,”--her voice suspended
itself a moment on that little national peculiarity, the repetition
which gives force--“when, instead of being a good guardian, a kind
soul, it is only a vulgar echo, a thing that is nothing?” The water
shone in her eyes when she lingered in the slight chant of her speech
upon the _good_ and _kind_, but dried up and they shone upon me with
defiance when she scorned the vulgar, the material. Then she added, with
a low voice touched with awe, “And who was it, Mr. Temple, that came to
you, that gave you that warning?”
“I have asked myself the question, Miss Campbell.”
“Yes, and you have answered it too. Who else? It is that that makes my
heart fail,” she said.
“If,” said I, “we find your brother, as I hope we shall, well and
happy”--
Her countenance changed. “In that case--God grant it! oh, God grant
it!--you may say what you please, Mr. Temple.” Then after a moment she
said quickly, “What is that the French say about the unforeseen being
always the thing that happens? In that case”--But she did not tell me
what it was that she had foreseen.
To have Charlotte there, altogether a thing so far beyond hope,
travelling with me, perhaps to owe something to me, and certainly
without any doubt to find myself woven in with the web of her life, was
so unexpected and so delightful that I could not perhaps be so deeply
affected by their troubles as I might have been otherwise. If it was
pain to them, it was good to me--I could not but feel the heart rise in
my breast, notwithstanding the pathos there was in the old man’s
feebleness, in the broken sleep into which he fell, and the unprotected
openness of his slumbering countenance, all revealed in the pain, the
anxiety, the irritation of his misery under the wavering lamp. And yet
by moments the pity of it would touch me in spite of myself. An old man,
a good man, whose life had been full of kindness done to others--I had
seen that and heard of it on all sides. He had given every kind of aid
to his dependants. At the “works,” to be an orphan was to be the child
of the master; and all round him in the country his hand was ever
ready--his heart, like his door, always open. And yet this man, who had
done so much for others, this was his reward. His own firstborn, the
apple of his eye!--I did not know, in so many words, what they feared,
but it was not disease or death--it was evil in some shape or
other--vice, perhaps crime. God help us all! if justice had been the
rule in this world, he must have been defended from every harm by the
most spotless, the most devoted of children; his own good deeds would
have been returned to him in gratitude and blessing; he would have been
the happy man of the Psalms, unashamed in the gates. Alas! and now his
grey hairs, his white head was bent low.
We reached London in the fresh early daylight, which made us look all
the more fatigued and worn; and then they had a consultation what to do.
The decision at last was to postpone for an hour or two the visit to
Colin, that Mr. Campbell might get a little rest. I went with them to
the hotel. Charlotte said nothing, but she gave me an imploring look,
and her father’s weakness seemed to grow upon him every hour. He wanted
my arm to go upstairs. He looked for me, and called me to his side with
a little querulous movement. Perhaps, by some confusion in his mind, he
seemed to consider that he had somehow a right to my services. But,
though he felt his weakness, he would not suffer Charlotte to go to her
brother alone. “I am all right,” he said; “I am all right. It is because
I have not slept. You young people who sleep, that makes all the
difference.” He was in reality the only one of us who had slept at all.
Breakfast was prepared for us in one of those bare rooms in the great
new caravanserai for travellers which are so associated with fatigue and
vacancy, with hurried, painful recollections, and melancholy meetings
and partings. When I went into it, Charlotte was standing at the window.
She called me hastily as soon as I came in. She seized my arm when I
came up to her, and drew me close by the window. “Look! was that she?”
she cried wildly. “Look! look! or she will be gone.” She pointed to the
street below, which was alive with a constant succession of passers-by.
To make out one from another was difficult enough. They moved and
recrossed in front of us, a stream of men and women, never ending. “Is
that she?” I looked blankly, now here, now there. “No, no; not that
way--to the left,” said Charlotte--“there--there!” I saw nothing but a
stream of people following and crossing each other, all equally
commonplace and unknown. I made her sit down, for she was trembling.
“It is impossible,” I said, “to distinguish any individual in such a
crowded street.”
“Oh, not so! not so! I saw her as plainly as I do you now. She was in
the midst of a group which seemed to open and let her be seen. She was
in a grey cloak and veil, exactly as you described her. She shook her
head at me. I almost thought I could hear her speak.”
“It is your imagination that is excited. How could you see at that
distance, much less hear?”
“I thought,” said Charlotte solemnly, “that she said, ‘Too late, too
late!’ I know I could not hear. Do not find fault with me. I am very
unhappy. There! there! you can see her now?”
Somebody in a cloak indeed disappeared in the crowd as I looked out, but
who it was, how could I tell? Perhaps a workwoman going to her work, or
careful manager out to make her market. I took Charlotte’s hand, which
was trembling, and held it in mine. She was sobbing under her breath.
“All this is too much for you,” I said. “Find fault with you? Oh that I
could take this trouble on my own shoulders, whatever it is!”
She tried to smile as she looked up. “Perhaps,” she said, “it was
imagination, as you say. What is imagination? Does it make any
difference?” She was not aware how much meaning was in her words, but
spoke as one bewildered, not knowing what was real and what unreal about
her.
It was about eleven o’clock when they set out. I put Mr. Campbell into a
cab, where he sat very square, with his staff between his knees, leaning
upon it, and his face like that of a benignant old judge, wound up to
make a painful decision. Charlotte took her place beside him. For my own
part, I sprang into a hansom, and desired the man to follow. It seemed
impossible to predict what might happen. I had begun to be superstitious
and fanciful myself, and a dozen times over fancied that I saw a woman
in a cloak following our course with wistful looks, or shaking her head,
as Charlotte had seen her. Had she seen it, or only imagined it? And if
the latter, I asked myself in her own words, What difference did it
make?