One September evening, four months later, when Mrs. Barnet was in
perfect health, and Mrs. Downe but a weakening memory, an errand-boy
paused to rest himself in front of Mr. Barnet’s old house, depositing
his basket on one of the window-sills. The street was not yet lighted,
but there were lights in the house, and at intervals a flitting shadow
fell upon the blind at his elbow. Words also were audible from the same
apartment, and they seemed to be those of persons in violent
altercation. But the boy could not gather their purport, and he went on
his way.
Ten minutes afterwards the door of Barnet’s house opened, and a tall
closely-veiled lady in a travelling-dress came out and descended the
freestone steps. The servant stood in the doorway watching her as she
went with a measured tread down the street. When she had been out of
sight for some minutes Barnet appeared at the door from within.
‘Did your mistress leave word where she was going?’ he asked.
‘No, sir.’
‘Is the carriage ordered to meet her anywhere?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Did she take a latch-key?’
‘No, sir.’
Barnet went in again, sat down in his chair, and leaned back. Then in
solitude and silence he brooded over the bitter emotions that filled
his heart. It was for this that he had gratuitously restored her to
life, and made his union with another impossible! The evening drew on,
and nobody came to disturb him. At bedtime he told the servants to
retire, that he would sit up for Mrs. Barnet himself; and when they
were gone he leaned his head upon his hand and mused for hours.
The clock struck one, two; still his wife came not, and, with
impatience added to depression, he went from room to room till another
weary hour had passed. This was not altogether a new experience for
Barnet; but she had never before so prolonged her absence. At last he
sat down again and fell asleep.
He awoke at six o’clock to find that she had not returned. In searching
about the rooms he discovered that she had taken a case of jewels which
had been hers before her marriage. At eight a note was brought him; it
was from his wife, in which she stated that she had gone by the coach
to the house of a distant relative near London, and expressed a wish
that certain boxes, articles of clothing, and so on, might be sent to
her forthwith. The note was brought to him by a waiter at the
Black-Bull Hotel, and had been written by Mrs. Barnet immediately
before she took her place in the stage.
By the evening this order was carried out, and Barnet, with a sense of
relief, walked out into the town. A fair had been held during the day,
and the large clear moon which rose over the most prominent hill flung
its light upon the booths and standings that still remained in the
street, mixing its rays curiously with those from the flaring naphtha
lamps. The town was full of country-people who had come in to enjoy
themselves, and on this account Barnet strolled through the streets
unobserved. With a certain recklessness he made for the harbour-road,
and presently found himself by the shore, where he walked on till he
came to the spot near which his friend the kindly Mrs. Downe had lost
her life, and his own wife’s life had been preserved. A tremulous
pathway of bright moonshine now stretched over the water which had
engulfed them, and not a living soul was near.
Here he ruminated on their characters, and next on the young girl in
whom he now took a more sensitive interest than at the time when he had
been free to marry her. Nothing, so far as he was aware, had ever
appeared in his own conduct to show that such an interest existed. He
had made it a point of the utmost strictness to hinder that feeling
from influencing in the faintest degree his attitude towards his wife;
and this was made all the more easy for him by the small demand Mrs.
Barnet made upon his attentions, for which she ever evinced the
greatest contempt; thus unwittingly giving him the satisfaction of
knowing that their severance owed nothing to jealousy, or, indeed, to
any personal behaviour of his at all. Her concern was not with him or
his feelings, as she frequently told him; but that she had, in a moment
of weakness, thrown herself away upon a common burgher when she might
have aimed at, and possibly brought down, a peer of the realm. Her
frequent depreciation of Barnet in these terms had at times been so
intense that he was sorely tempted to retaliate on her egotism by
owning that he loved at the same low level on which he lived; but
prudence had prevailed, for which he was now thankful.
Something seemed to sound upon the shingle behind him over and above
the raking of the wave. He looked round, and a slight girlish shape
appeared quite close to him, He could not see her face because it was
in the direction of the moon.
‘Mr. Barnet?’ the rambler said, in timid surprise. The voice was the
voice of Lucy Savile.
‘Yes,’ said Barnet. ‘How can I repay you for this pleasure?’
‘I only came because the night was so clear. I am now on my way home.’
‘I am glad we have met. I want to know if you will let me do something
for you, to give me an occupation, as an idle man? I am sure I ought to
help you, for I know you are almost without friends.’
She hesitated. ‘Why should you tell me that?’ she said.
‘In the hope that you will be frank with me.’
‘I am not altogether without friends here. But I am going to make a
little change in my life—to go out as a teacher of freehand drawing and
practical perspective, of course I mean on a comparatively humble
scale, because I have not been specially educated for that profession.
But I am sure I shall like it much.’
‘You have an opening?’
‘I have not exactly got it, but I have advertised for one.’
‘Lucy, you must let me help you!’
‘Not at all.’
‘You need not think it would compromise you, or that I am indifferent
to delicacy. I bear in mind how we stand. It is very unlikely that you
will succeed as teacher of the class you mention, so let me do
something of a different kind for you. Say what you would like, and it
shall be done.’
‘No; if I can’t be a drawing-mistress or governess, or something of
that sort, I shall go to India and join my brother.’
‘I wish I could go abroad, anywhere, everywhere with you, Lucy, and
leave this place and its associations for ever!’
She played with the end of her bonnet-string, and hastily turned aside.
‘Don’t ever touch upon that kind of topic again,’ she said, with a
quick severity not free from anger. ‘It simply makes it impossible for
me to see you, much less receive any guidance from you. No, thank you,
Mr. Barnet; you can do nothing for me at present; and as I suppose my
uncertainty will end in my leaving for India, I fear you never will. If
ever I think you _can_ do anything, I will take the trouble to ask you.
Till then, good-bye.’
The tone of her latter words was equivocal, and while he remained in
doubt whether a gentle irony was or was not inwrought with their sound,
she swept lightly round and left him alone. He saw her form get smaller
and smaller along the damp belt of sea-sand between ebb and flood; and
when she had vanished round the cliff into the harbour-road, he himself
followed in the same direction.
That her hopes from an advertisement should be the single thread which
held Lucy Savile in England was too much for Barnet. On reaching the
town he went straight to the residence of Downe, now a widower with
four children. The young motherless brood had been sent to bed about a
quarter of an hour earlier, and when Barnet entered he found Downe
sitting alone. It was the same room as that from which the family had
been looking out for Downe at the beginning of the year, when Downe had
slipped into the gutter and his wife had been so enviably tender
towards him. The old neatness had gone from the house; articles lay in
places which could show no reason for their presence, as if momentarily
deposited there some months ago, and forgotten ever since; there were
no flowers; things were jumbled together on the furniture which should
have been in cupboards; and the place in general had that stagnant,
unrenovated air which usually pervades the maimed home of the widower.
Downe soon renewed his customary full-worded lament over his wife, and
even when he had worked himself up to tears, went on volubly, as if a
listener were a luxury to be enjoyed whenever he could be caught.
‘She was a treasure beyond compare, Mr. Barnet! I shall never see such
another. Nobody now to nurse me—nobody to console me in those daily
troubles, you know, Barnet, which make consolation so necessary to a
nature like mine. It would be unbecoming to repine, for her spirit’s
home was elsewhere—the tender light in her eyes always showed it; but
it is a long dreary time that I have before me, and nobody else can
ever fill the void left in my heart by her loss—nobody—nobody!’ And
Downe wiped his eyes again.
‘She was a good woman in the highest sense,’ gravely answered Barnet,
who, though Downe’s words drew genuine compassion from his heart, could
not help feeling that a tender reticence would have been a finer
tribute to Mrs. Downe’s really sterling virtues than such a
second-class lament as this.
‘I have something to show you,’ Downe resumed, producing from a drawer
a sheet of paper on which was an elaborate design for a canopied tomb.
‘This has been sent me by the architect, but it is not exactly what I
want.’
‘You have got Jones to do it, I see, the man who is carrying out my
house,’ said Barnet, as he glanced at the signature to the drawing.
‘Yes, but it is not quite what I want. I want something more
striking—more like a tomb I have seen in St. Paul’s Cathedral. Nothing
less will do justice to my feelings, and how far short of them that
will fall!’
Barnet privately thought the design a sufficiently imposing one as it
stood, even extravagantly ornate; but, feeling that he had no right to
criticize, he said gently, ‘Downe, should you not live more in your
children’s lives at the present time, and soften the sharpness of
regret for your own past by thinking of their future?’
‘Yes, yes; but what can I do more?’ asked Downe, wrinkling his forehead
hopelessly.
It was with anxious slowness that Barnet produced his reply—the secret
object of his visit to-night. ‘Did you not say one day that you ought
by rights to get a governess for the children?’
Downe admitted that he had said so, but that he could not see his way
to it. ‘The kind of woman I should like to have,’ he said, ‘would be
rather beyond my means. No; I think I shall send them to school in the
town when they are old enough to go out alone.’
‘Now, I know of something better than that. The late Lieutenant
Savile’s daughter, Lucy, wants to do something for herself in the way
of teaching. She would be inexpensive, and would answer your purpose as
well as anybody for six or twelve months. She would probably come daily
if you were to ask her, and so your housekeeping arrangements would not
be much affected.’
‘I thought she had gone away,’ said the solicitor, musing. ‘Where does
she live?’
Barnet told him, and added that, if Downe should think of her as
suitable, he would do well to call as soon as possible, or she might be
on the wing. ‘If you do see her,’ he said, ‘it would be advisable not
to mention my name. She is rather stiff in her ideas of me, and it
might prejudice her against a course if she knew that I recommended
it.’
Downe promised to give the subject his consideration, and nothing more
was said about it just then. But when Barnet rose to go, which was not
till nearly bedtime, he reminded Downe of the suggestion and went up
the street to his own solitary home with a sense of satisfaction at his
promising diplomacy in a charitable cause.