THE FALLING OF THE WATERS.
The readers of this history must be prepared to pass over an interval of
something less than seven years from the end of the last chapter. I
allow that it is a most undesirable break, but yet it has been involved
from the beginning as a necessity of the narrative.
Nearly seven years had elapsed since Mr. Renton’s death at the moment
when we again approach Renton Manor. He died in September, and it was
the beginning of August when Mrs. Renton received a note from Mr.
Ponsonby, the lawyer, announcing his intention of arriving at the Manor
the next day. Mrs. Renton had not improved much in health, but she had
laid aside her mourning, and wore grey and violet, and pretty caps, once
more. Her existence had known very little change during all these years.
Now and then the tonics had been changed, and she had substituted for a
whole year the Revalenta Arabica for the arrowroot; but the difference
was scarcely perceptible except to the maid and the cook, and I
believe, on the whole, the arrowroot was found to agree with her best.
She had taken her drive almost every day with a feeling that she was
doing her duty. ‘My dear husband always made such a point of my drive,’
she said, plaintively, though for her own part she would have preferred
her sofa; and so had lived on, very punctual in taking her medicine, a
woman humbly conscious of fulfilling all the duties of her life. Mary
Westbury had been generally her companion in these drives; and as she
was younger and not so settled in mind, had sometimes, it must be
allowed, felt as if life was no better than a leisurely promenade
between two rows of hedgerows, sometimes green and sometimes brown. The
carriage was very comfortable and the horses were very fat, and there
were a great many charming points of view within a radius of fifteen
miles round Renton; but still there were moments in which Mary was such
an infidel as to wish herself jogging to market in the passing cart, or
carrying a basket along the road, or anywhere rather than in that
luxurious corner. If anything had happened to make Mrs. Renton ‘put
down,’ as people say, her carriage, she would have regarded it as a
calamity altogether immeasurable; but I think that both she and her
niece would have felt a burden taken off their minds. She would have
been left at peace on her sofa, and Mary could have taken needful
exercise in her own way. But such a blessing in disguise was beyond
praying for. Mr. Renton, though he had been so hard upon his sons, had
provided very tenderly for his wife’s comfort.
Renton had been hers for these seven years, and had been kept precisely
as it was when it was the home of the whole family,--not a servant
dismissed nor a change made; and thus the height of comfort had been
secured. Mary, too, was very comfortable,--no young woman could be more
so. She had a maid of her own, which would have been an impossible
luxury at home, and a liberal allowance for her dress, and a fire in her
room, if she chose, from October to May, or indeed all the year through,
if such was her pleasure; and the freedom of various libraries, and an
excellent piano, and any amount of worsted work she chose. And then the
drive every afternoon, wet and dry, ‘so that she has the air and the
change, when we poor people, who have no carriage, must stay indoors,’
Mrs. Westbury said when she described her daughter’s happiness. And this
felicity had gone on for nearly seven years.
‘I wonder what Mr. Ponsonby wants,’ said Mrs. Renton. ‘He might have
come without any intimation. I am sure he generally does. Why he should
send word like this, as if he had some news to bring, I cannot conceive.
I do hope it is nothing about the boys.’
‘It cannot be anything about them,’ said Mary. ‘Consider, godmamma, you
had a letter from Ben just the other day, and Frank and Alice wrote by
the last mail.’
‘That is all very true,’ said Mrs. Renton; ‘but how can I tell that they
may not have telegraphed or something? And then there is Laurie always
wandering all over the world. He may have gone off, as he did the first
time, without letting any one know.’
‘But he would never have dreamed of sending Mr. Ponsonby to tell you,’
said Mary; ‘he would have written direct. Laurie is the best
correspondent of them all.’
‘Or he may be going to be married,’ said Mrs. Renton,--‘he or Ben. By
the way, he says something about Ben; but all those business people
write such bad hands. Perhaps you can make it out. I am sure it is too
much for me.’
After this little introduction, Mary took the lawyer’s letter with some
slight tremulousness. She was nearly seven-and-twenty by this time, and
ought, she said to herself, to have been quite steady about such
matters. Of course some day Ben would marry, and so long as it was any
one who would make him happy she could only be glad. Many a wandering
thought about Millicent Tracy had come into her mind. Had she been
faithful to him? Had there been any intercourse between them? Had he
kept steadfast to his imagination of her for all these years? For it
was only an imagination, as Mary felt sure. Every letter that came from
Ben had caused her a certain tremor,--not, as she said to herself, that
it would make any difference to her; but if he were to bind himself to a
woman unworthy of him! And now that he was coming back so soon, it was
with a thrill of more intense expectation than usual that she took Mr.
Ponsonby’s letter in her hand. But there was nothing about marrying or
giving in marriage in that sober epistle. It intimated to Mrs. Renton,
in the first place, that the time specified in her husband’s will had
nearly expired; that he had received a letter from her son Ben,
informing him that he intended to meet him at the Manor, along with the
other members of the family, on the 15th of September; and that,
accordingly, Mr. Ponsonby was coming to Renton next day to go over the
property with the bailiff, and see with his own eyes the condition in
which everything was, that there might be no delay, when the time came,
in making everything over to the heir. All that Mrs. Renton had made of
this very distinct letter was the fact that the lawyer was to pay her a
visit, and that there was something about Ben. But indeed Mr. Ponsonby
did not write a legible hand.
‘Then it is just what Ben told us about coming home,’ said Mrs. Renton,
‘though he was not so particular to me in naming the day. He said the
beginning of September, if you recollect, Mary; and Frank and his wife
are coming by the next mail. I am afraid the children will make a
dreadful commotion in the house, and altogether it will be so odd to see
Renton full of people again. Of course, Laurie is coming, too. I don’t
know what I shall do with them all. They can’t expect me to have parties
and that sort of thing for them, Mary, in my state of health?’
‘No, dear godmamma,’ said Mary, soothingly, ‘they will not expect
anything of the kind; and you will never think of the trouble when you
have all the boys at home. Fancy Frank having boys of his own!’ she
cried, with a little laugh. The choice lay between laughing and crying,
and the first was certainly the best.
‘I hope his wife has kept up her practice,’ said Mrs. Renton, still with
a cloud on her brow, ‘since that was what he married her for.’
‘Godmamma!’ cried Mary, with consternation.
‘Well, my dear, I don’t know what else she had to recommend her. No
family, nor connexions; not a penny,--not even expectations! If it was
not for her music, what was it for? And so many women give up practice
when they marry. I always forget,--is it three or four children they
have?’
‘Two, godmamma,’ said Mary, gently; ‘don’t you remember the poor, dear,
little baby died?’
‘Well, it is quite enough,’ said Mrs. Renton; ‘with nothing but their
pay to depend upon. And there will be a black nurse, you may be sure,
driving the servants out of their senses. But if she has kept up her
practice, it will be an amusement for the boys. And things might have
been worse. There might have been three families instead of one, you
know, Mary; and then I think I should certainly have run away.’
‘Yes,--perhaps it is selfish,’ said Mary; ‘but I am glad, too, that they
are not all married. It will be more like old times.’
‘Selfish!’ said Mrs. Renton. ‘I can’t see how it can be selfish. Of
course Ben will have to marry some time or other, for the sake of the
property. But I never can make out why young men marry, for my part.
Haven’t they everything that heart can desire? and no care, and much
more petted and taken notice of in society than if they were dragging a
wife about with them everywhere? A girl is quite different. She has
everything to gain, you see. I often wondered whether I have been doing
my duty by you, Mary, keeping you out of the way of a good establishment
in life.’
‘Pray don’t speak so, godmamma,’ said Mary, with a blush of indignation;
‘not to me at least.’
‘But I do, my dear. And I am sure no one ever deserved to be comfortably
settled better than you do. However, I have always found, in my
experience,’ said Mrs. Renton, with a profound look of wisdom, ‘that
when these things are coming they come, however quietly you may be
living; and, if they are not to come, they don’t, however much you may
go into society. Look at Jane Sutton, who never was seen out of her
father’s house, and now she’s Lady Egmont! I suppose we must expect Mr.
Ponsonby to lunch.’
‘I should think he would come early,’ said Mary, with a smile; and, as
it was Mrs. Renton’s hour for taking something, she went away to tell
the housekeeper of the guest. And then she made a little tour of the
house; peeping into the rooms, in some of which preparations had already
begun. The west wing, in which the ‘boys’ rooms’ were, was all in
commotion,--carpets taken up, women with pails and brooms in every
corner. The only one as yet untouched was the little sitting-room, or
dressing-room, attached to Ben’s chamber, where his old treasures were
still hanging about,--his books and his pictures, and all his
knicknacks. Into this oasis Mary strayed, with a strange thrill of
expectation creeping over her. Seven years! what a slice it was out of a
life; and how much had happened to the others and how little to herself!
Mary felt as if she had done nothing but drive all these years in that
most comfortable of family coaches, with her aunt by her side, and a
bottle of medicine in the pocket of the carriage. And now they were all
coming back! To what? What change should she find in them? and ah! what
changes would they find in her? Ben must be thirty-two by this time; and
Mary was seven-and-twenty, which, for a woman, is about twenty years
older, as all the world knows!
As for ‘the Frank Rentons,’ they were not to be placed in the west wing
at all, but in a suite of rooms over the great doorway, the
guest-chambers of the house, as became their dignity as married people
with children and nurses to be accommodated. How funny that was! Frank,
who had always been the youngest in every way, whom they all,--even Mary
herself in a manner,--had bullied and domineered over,--and here had he
attained a point of social dignity to which none of the others had yet
approached! Mary laughed to herself, and then she dried her eyes. It was
an agitating crisis altogether, to which she looked forward with the
strangest mixture of feelings. Laurie, it was true, had come home long
since; and came to the Manor now and then, and had not drifted out of
knowledge. But, then, one always knew exactly how Laurie would be, and
it did not matter if he were in London or at the end of the world, so
far as that went; but Ben---- And to think everything was going to be
settled, and they were all coming home!
Mr. Ponsonby arrived next day; not, as they expected, to luncheon, but
in the evening. He was an old friend of the family, and Mr. Renton, as
people say, had no secrets from him. But that was a figure of speech,
for the Ponsonbys had managed the Rentons’ affairs for generations, and
there were no secrets to keep. ‘I shall want the whole day for what I
have to do,’ he told Mary when he arrived; ‘so I thought it best to come
overnight.’ And he dined with the two ladies, and did his best to make
himself agreeable. His coming and his talk were the most tangible sign
that they had yet had that their long vigil was over, and that the tide
of life was about to flow back to them. He spoke in a very guarded way,
betraying nothing of the secret he had kept those seven years; but when
Mrs. Renton spoke of one thing and another which she wanted to have
done, Mr. Ponsonby made answers which infinitely piqued Mary’s
curiosity. ‘We must see what the will says about it,’ said the lawyer.
‘It is not worth while doing anything now till he is here to decide for
himself. All that is the heir’s business, not mine.’
‘Do you mean Ben?’ said Mrs. Renton; for even she was moved to a little
surprise.
‘I cannot tell whom I mean until the will is read,’ he said; ‘but, of
course, whoever is the heir will be but too happy to do what you wish,
my dear Mrs. Renton. It must be a great pleasure to you to have all your
boys at home.’
‘Ye-es,’ said Mrs. Renton; ‘but when one does not know whether they are
coming to disappointment or to satisfaction! If they should have had to
travel all this way for nothing, what a thing it would be,--if it were
only for the expense!’
‘But I trust it will be satisfaction this time, and not disappointment,’
said the lawyer. ‘I am heartily glad, for my part, that the seven years
are over. I hear the boys have all done so well, which is immensely to
their credit, and, of course, is just what their excellent father
meant.’
‘I never could think what he meant,’ said Mrs. Renton. ‘Lydia always
says it was her fault; but he was not a man to follow anybody’s opinion
but his own. As for doing well, I am not so sure about that. Ben has
become a railway man;--think of that, Mr. Ponsonby! I never even
approved of the railroad myself. I don’t see what use there is for so
much hurry. I am sure I went a great deal oftener to town when we used
to drive our own horses than now that there is a railway close to the
gates. But he has pleased himself, which is always something. And Laurie
has pleased himself, too. He paints very pretty pictures sometimes; but
I don’t believe he will ever earn enough to keep him in gloves. And as
for Frank,--a poor soldier with nothing but his pay and a family of
little children! It is very different from what I had once hoped.’
‘But probably this is all over now,’ said Mr. Ponsonby,--‘or at least,
we have every reason to believe so; and in the meantime they have had
their struggles, and know what they are capable of. Let us hope, my dear
madam, that everything will prove to have been for the best.’
‘I don’t doubt that everything is for the best,’ Mrs. Renton answered in
plaintive tones. And then Mr. Ponsonby was left to his wine in the great
old dining-room, which he had not been in since that dismal day when he
read the will,--or rather the preface of the will,--to the startled
family. It was a bright room enough in the morning when the sunshine
came in, or on winter nights when the fire sparkled and glimmered in the
wainscot; but it was very sombre in the dimness of a summer night, with
one lamp on the table and the windows open, admitting the night with all
its ghosts of sound and profound soft glooms. The family solicitor was
not an imaginative man, and yet he could not help feeling that his old
friend might come in any moment through the curtains, which hung half
over the open window, and dictate to him some new condition in the will
which had already wrought so much mischief. ‘Not a word more,’ Mr.
Ponsonby caught himself saying; and then he roused up and went to Mary
in the drawing-room, where she was seated alone in much the same magical
half-darkness as that he had left.
‘I suppose it is the instinct of a Londoner,’ he said; ‘but I declare I
don’t think this is safe. Sitting with windows open to the lawn, all
alone at this hour! Suppose some one should walk in upon you before you
had time to give an alarm?’
‘Who could walk in upon me?’ said Mary, laughing. ‘We are at Renton, you
know, and not in Harley Street.’
‘Sure enough,’ said the townsman. ‘No, thanks; I prefer to face that
window. Let me not be approached from behind; let me see what is coming,
at least.’
‘How odd to think of such a thing!’ said Mary. ‘I sit here every evening
after godmamma has gone to bed, and one cannot live unless all the
windows are open. But oh, Mr. Ponsonby, do talk to me a little! Do you
think,--do you really think,--that now, at last, things will be
comfortable for the boys?’
‘Let us hope so,’ said the man of law, arranging himself comfortably in
an easy-chair. ‘I suppose Mrs. Renton has gone to bed. Let us hope so,
at least.’
‘Hope!’ cried eager Mary,--‘of course we all hope; but what do you
think?’
‘My dear, I can’t tell you what I don’t know, and I must not tell you
what I do know,’ said Mr. Ponsonby. ‘Do you never have any change from
Renton? It is very fine air; but I don’t think it is exhilarating for
young people. Do you ever go out?’
‘We drive every day,’ said Mary, with the faintest little grimace; and
then she looked at her old friend, and permitted herself the relief of a
laugh. ‘It is dismal sometimes,’ she said; ‘but when the boys are back I
shall be free again, and go home.’
Mr. Ponsonby looked at her in silence as she spoke. ‘Home’ was a
cottage, instead of a great house; but otherwise, in the eyes of the man
accustomed to the world, there was not much difference between the one
widow’s house and the other. ‘How do these women live?’ he said to
himself. When the boys came home there might be a little movement,
perhaps, and feeling of life about the old place,--and then she would go
home! ‘That is just the time you ought to stay, I think, and see if they
cannot make it a little more amusing for you,’ he said. ‘Do you never
ride now?’
‘I have no one to ride with me. I could not go out alone, you know,’
Mary answered, without raising her eyes.
‘Well, I am not much of a man to ride with a young lady, but you shall
come out with me to-morrow and go over the estate,--if there is anything
you can ride in the stables. It will do you good. I must see that
everything is in order for the heir. And you will not mind giving up the
drive,--not for one day,--for the sake of an old friend?’ said the
lawyer. ‘Good Lord! there’s a fellow coming in at the window, as I
said. Ring the bell, my dear! Quick, and leave the rest to me!’
‘Why, it is Laurie!’ cried Mary, springing up, as Mr. Ponsonby seized
the gilded stick which supported a little screen, and brandished it in
the face of the new-comer. ‘That is just his way, frightening people out
of their wits. Come in quickly, Laurie, if it is you, and not your
ghost.’
‘It is not my ghost,’ said the figure at the window, advancing to shake
hands with Mr. Ponsonby, who was still a little excited. ‘A ghost was
never so dusty nor so thirsty. I have walked down from town all the way,
to get a breath of air, and very much mystified I was to see a man in
the dining-room from the end of the avenue as I came along. I thought at
first it must be Ben.’
‘So there was some one about!’ said Mr. Ponsonby; ‘that explains my
sensation. I had just been giving your cousin a lecture upon sitting
alone with the windows open. Yes, Laurie, my boy, here I am, come to
look over the ground for the last time, before it is given up to the
heir.’
‘Ben will not be hard upon you,’ said Laurie, with a laugh; but as he
spoke he looked fixedly at the solicitor, hoping,--which was like
Laurie,--to beguile that astute practitioner into self-betrayal.
‘I don’t know any thing about Ben,’ he answered, smiling at the simple
artifice; ‘but I know I must set my affairs in order, and be prepared
to give up my trust. I want Mary to go with me over the estate. She is
moping and pale, and a brisk canter will do her good. Will you see if
there is anything she can ride?’
And then there ensued a little consultation as to whether Fairy was up
to it. Fairy was a pet pony, as old as the hills, who had been eating
herself into a plethoric condition for years; but Mary, who was not a
very bold horsewoman, believed in the venerable animal, as did every
soul about Renton. ‘She’s hold in years, but she’s young at ‘art, Miss;
she’ll carry you like a bird,’ was the coachman’s opinion when he was
called into the consultation. And then Laurie had a vast tankard brought
to him, and refreshed himself after his long walk. When Mr. Ponsonby
retired, the cousins stepped out again on to the lawn, and Mary looked
on and talked while Laurie had his cigar. The moon, which was half over
and late of rising, began to lighten slowly upwards, shining upon the
river far below, while they were still left in darkness on the higher
bank. ‘It is so strange to think we are all on the brink of a new life,’
Mary said, as she gazed down through an opening in the trees upon that
silvery gleam, which was framed in by the dark, rustling branches. ‘Are
we?’ said Laurie, with a kind of echo in his voice. Somehow he had taken
his life awry, by the wrong corner, and there did not seem vigour
enough left in him to care for a new beginning,--at least for himself.
‘Laurie,’ she said, encouraged by the darkness. He had thrown himself
down in a garden-chair, and was visible only as a shadow, with a red
point of cigar indicating his face; while she stood leaning on one of
the lower branches of the lime-tree which framed in that glimpse of the
light below. Their voices had the softened, mysterious sound which such
a moment gives, and as neither of them was happy enough to draw new
delight out of the influence of the night, both of them, by natural
necessity, grew a little sad. ‘Laurie,’ Mary said, and faltered.
‘Sometimes I think I should like to know a little about you. I do know
something about the others,--even Ben,--but you have always been a
mystery to me since you first went away.’
‘I don’t think I am much of a mystery,’ said Laurie, not moving from his
chair.
‘But you are a mystery,’ Mary repeated, with a little eagerness. ‘I
don’t know what has come to you,--whether it is love, or whether it is
loss,--don’t be angry, Laurie.’
‘It might be love and loss too,’ he said, with a little laugh, which was
not cheerful, and then he rose and tossed away his cigar. ‘What if I
were to say you were a mystery, too?’ he continued, not knowing how
Mary’s cheeks burned in the darkness. ‘We all are, I suppose; and my
poor old father that meant to do so well for us, and tossed us all
abroad to scramble anyhow for life,--what do you say to that for a
mystery, Mary? and here is the moment coming to prove which of us is
preferred and which condemned. I am the poor fellow with one talent, who
laid it up in the napkin. If he had not been so mean as to abuse his
master, I think I should have sympathised with that poor wretch.’
‘I cannot say I sympathise with him,’ cried Mary, woman-like. ‘To be
able to do, and not to do, that is what I cannot understand. But you
have not hid your talent in a napkin, Laurie. I wish you had a better
opinion of yourself.’
Upon which Laurie laughed, and drew her hand through his arm, and the
two strayed together, silent, down under the shadow of the trees towards
the opening which looked on the river. The moon creeping higher every
moment, began to thread through the bewildering maze of branches with
lines and links of silver; and there was always that one brilliant spot
in the midst of the river, far below them, shining like burnished
silver, scarcely dimpling under the moonbeams, which seemed to swell as
well as glorify the rather scanty water. Their hearts were full of
wistfulness and dreams. The world lay all as dark before them as those
rustling, breathing woods, with, for one, a brightness in the future
which might or might not,--most probably should not,--ever be attained;
and for the other, only some fanciful, silvery thread twining through
the sombre life. They paused, arm-in-arm, by that beech-tree at the
corner where Ben and Mary had paused when he was last at home, and where
he had shot that arrow at her,--as she said to herself,--of which she
could still feel the point. But Laurie was very different from Ben. No
spark of emotion went from one soul to the other as they stood so close
and so kindly together. They were the parallel lines that never
meet,--each thinking their own thoughts, each with a sigh that was not
all pain, contemplating the well-known road behind them, the invisible
path before;--and all the world around lying dark and light, stirring
softly, breathing softly, in the long speechless vigil which we call
night.
Next day Mr. Ponsonby went over the home-farm, and all the neighbouring
land, inspecting everything, looking to farms, farm-buildings, drainage,
timber,--all the necessities of the estate. Mary rode by his side on
Fairy, who verified the coachman’s verdict, and carried her mistress
like a bird,--at least as nearly like a bird as Mary wished. Laurie had
gone back to town that morning by the train. When his cousin returned to
luncheon, freshed and roused by her ride, it seemed to her almost as if
the new life had already begun. The work-people who had been sent for
from town had arrived with a van full of upholstery,--bales of fresh,
pretty chintz for ‘the boys’ rooms,’ and new furniture for the extempore
nursery. An air of movement was diffused about the whole house. The
flood which had swept over Renton, almost engulfing the peace of the
family, was almost over,--the waters were going down,--the household ark
standing fast, and the saved ones beginning to appear at the long-closed
windows. Such were Mary’s feelings as she went with her aunt for that
inevitable drive. To-day the hedgerows were not so monotonous, the dust
less stifling; and when they met Mr. Ponsonby on his cob, with the
bailiff in attendance, the returning life rose into a sparkle and glow
in Mary’s face. ‘Her ride has done her no end of good,’ Mr. Ponsonby
cried, waving his hand as he rode past. ‘Good?’ said Mrs. Renton: ‘was
there anything the matter with you, Mary? I am sure, if there is any
good in riding, I wonder Dr. Mixton has never recommended it to me.’ And
then the two drove on, as they had been driving, Mary thought, all these
seven long years.