|On arriving in London, George Haldane was driven straight to the
house of an old friend at Chelsea, where he always stayed during
his visits to the Metropolis. This friend was Lovell Blakiston, as
eccentric a being in his own way as Haldane himself was in his. He
had been, since boyhood, in the India Office, where he still put in
an appearance several hours a day, and whence he still drew a large
income, with the immediate right to a retiring pension whenever he
choose to take it. He was a great student, especially of the pagan
poets and philosophers; and the greater part of his days and nights
were spent in his-old-fashioned library, opening with folding doors on
to a quiet lawn, which led in its turn to the very river-side. He
had two pet aversions--modern progress, in the shape of railroads,
electricity, geology; all the new business of science and modern
religion, especially in its connection with Christian theology. He
was, in short, a pagan pure and simple, fond of old books, old wine,
old meditations, and old gods. However he might differ with Haldane on
such subjects’ as the nebular hypothesis, which he hated with all his
heart, he agreed with him sufficiently on the subject of Christianity.
Both had a cordial dislike for church ceremonies and church bells.
The two gentlemen had another taste in common. This was the opera,
which both enjoyed hugely, though Blakiston never ceased to regret
the disappearance of that old operatic institution, the ballet,
which, like a rich dessert wine, used to bring the feast of music to
a delightfully sensuous conclusion. Haldane was too young a man to
remember such visions of loveliness as Cerito, whom his old friend had
often gone to see in company with Horne Took.
So it happened that two or three days after his arrival, Haldane
accompanied his host to the opera house, where Patti was to appear in
“Traviata.”
Seated comfortably in the stalls, he was glancing quietly round the
house between the acts, when his attention was attracted to a face in
one of the private boxes. A pale, Madonna-like, yet girlish face, set
in golden hair, with soft blue eyes, and an expression so forlorn, so
wistful, so ill at ease, that it was almost painful to behold.
Haldane started in surprise.
“What is the matter?” said his friend; “Have you recognized anybody?”
“I am not certain,” returned Haldane, raising his opera-glass and
surveying the face through them. Then, after a long look, he added’ as
if to himself, “I am almost sure it is the same.”
“Do you mean that young lady in black, seated in the second tier?”
“Yes. Oblige me by looking at her, and tell me what you think of her.”
Blakiston raised his opera-glass, and took a long look.
“Well?” asked Haldane.
“She reminds me of one of your detestable pre-Raphaelistic drawings,
shockheaded and vacuous. She is pretty, I grant you, but she has no
expression.”
“I should say, on the contrary, a very marked expression of deep
pain.”
“Tight lacing,” grunted Blakiston. “Your modern women have no shape,
since Cerito.”
Here Haldane rose from his seat. Looking up again, he had met the
young lady’s eyes, and had perceived at once that she recognized him.
“I am going to speak to her,” he explained. “She is a neighbour of
ours, and a friend of my wife.”
He made his way to the second tier, and finding the door of the box
open, he looked in, and saw the person he sought, seated in company
with an elderly lady and a young man.
“Miss Dove!” he said, advancing into the box. “Although we have only
met twice, I thought I could not be mistaken.” Edith (for it was she)
turned quickly and took his outstretched hand..
“How strange to find you here!” she exclaimed. “Is Mrs. Haldane with
you?
“No, indeed. I left her to the pious duties of the parish, which she
is fulfilling daily, I expect, in company with your seraphic friend
the minister.”
Edith looked at him with strange surprise, but said nothing.
“When did you come to town?” he asked. “I thought you were quite
a country young lady, and never ventured into the giddy world of
London.”
“I was not very well,” replied Edith, “and my aunt invited me to stop
with her a few weeks. This is my aunt, Mrs. Hetherington; and this
gentleman is my cousin Walter.” Here Edith went somewhat nervously
through the ceremony of introduction. She added, with a slight flush,
“My cousin insisted on bringing us here to-night. I did not wish to
come.”
“Why not?” demanded Haldane, noticing her uneasiness.
“Because I did not think it right; and I have been thinking all the
evening what the vicar will say when I tell him I have been to such a
place.”
Here the old lady shook her head ominously, and gave a slight groan.
“Is the place so terrible,” asked Haldane, smiling, “now you have seen
it?”
“No, it is very pretty; and of course the singing is beautiful. But
Mr. Santley does not approve of the theatre, and I am sorry I came.”
“Nonsense, Edith,” said young Hetherington, with a laugh. “You know
you wanted to see the ‘Traviata,’ The fact is,” he continued, turning
to Haldane, “my mother and my cousin are both terribly old-fashioned.
My mother here is Scotch, and believes in the kirk, the whole kirk,
and nothing but the kirk; and as for Edith, she is entirely, as they
say in Scotland, under the minister’s ‘thoomb.’ I thought they would
have enjoyed themselves, but they have been doing penance all the
evening.”
Without paying attention to her cousin’s remarks, Edith was looking
thoughtfully at Haldane.
“When do you return to Omberley?” she asked.
“I am not sure--in a fortnight, at the latest. I am going on to
France.”
“And Mrs. Haldane will remain all that time alone?”
“Of course,” he replied. “Oh, she will not miss me. She has her
household duties, her parish, her garden--to say nothing of her
clergyman. And you, do _you_ stay long in London?”
“I am not sure; I think not. I am tired of it already.”
Again that weary, wistful look, which sat so strangely on the young,
almost childish face. She sighed, and gazed sadly around the crowded
house. A minute later, Haldane took his leave, and rejoined his friend
in the stalls. Looking up at the end of the next act, he saw that the
box was empty.
The women had yielded to their consciences, and departed before the
end of the performance.
That night, when Haldane went home to Chelsea, he found a letter from
his wife. It was a long letter, but contained no news whatever,
being chiefly occupied with self-reproaches that the writer had not
accompanied her husband in his pilgrimage. This struck Haldane as
rather peculiar, as in former communications Ellen had expressed
no such dissatisfaction; but he was by nature and of set habit
unsuspicious, and he set it down to some momentary _ennui_. The letter
contained no mention whatever of Mr. Santley, but in the postscript,
where ladies often put the most interesting part of their
correspondence, there was a reference to the Spanish valet, Baptisto.
“As I told you,” wrote Ellen, “Baptisto seems in excellent health,
though he is mysterious and unpleasant as usual. He comes and goes
like a ghost, but if he made you believe that he was ill, he was
imposing upon you. I do so wish you had taken him with you.”
Haldane folded up the letter with a smile.
“Poor Baptisto!” he thought, “I suppose it is as I suspected, and the
little widow at the lodge is at the bottom of it all.”
After a few days’ sojourn at Chelsea, during which time he was much
interested in certain spiritualistic investigations which were
just then being conducted by the London _savants_, to the manifest
confusion of the spirits and indignation of true believers, Haldane
went to Paris, where he read his paper before the French Society
to which he belonged. There we shall leave him for a little time,
returning to the company of Miss Dove, with whom we have more
immediate concern.
Mother and son lived in a pleasant house overlooking Clapham Common,
a district famous for its religious edification, its young ladies’
seminaries, and its dissenting chapels. Mrs. Hethering-ton was the
wealthy widow of a Glasgow merchant, long settled in London, and she
set her face rigidly against modern thought, ecclesiastical vestments,
and cooking on the sabbath. Curiously enough, her son Walter, who
inherited a handsome competence, was a painter, and followed his
heathen occupation with much talent, and more youthful enthusiasm.
His landscapes, chiefly of Highland scenes, had been exhibited in the
Royal Scottish Academy. His mother, whose highest ideas of art were
founded on a superficial acquaintance with the Scripture pieces of
Noel Paton, and an occasional contemplation of biblical masterpieces
in the Doré Gallery, would have preferred to have seen him following
in his fathers footsteps, and even entering the true kirk as a
preacher; but his sympathies were pagan, and a gloomy childish
experience had not fitted him with the requisite enthusiasm for John
Calvin and the sabbath.
Walter Hetherington was a fine fresh young fellow of three and twenty,
and belonged to the clever set of Scotch painters, headed by Messrs.
Pettie, Richardson, and Peter Graham. He was “cannie” painstaking, and
rather sceptical, and, putting aside his art, which he really loved,
he felt true enthusiasm for only one thing in the world--his cousin
Edith, whom he hoped and longed to make his wife.
As a very young girl, Edith had seemed rather attached to him; but of
late years, during which they saw each other only at long intervals,
she seemed colder and colder to his advances. He noticed her
indifference, and set it down somewhat angrily to girlish fanaticism,
for he had little or no suspicion whatever that another man’s image
might be filling her thoughts. Once or twice, it is true, when she
sounded the praises of her Omberley pastor, his zeal, his goodness,
his beauty of discourse, he asked himself if he could possibly have
a rival _there_; but knowing something of the relinquent fancies of
young vestals, he rejected the idea. To tell the truth, he rather
pitied the Rev. Mr. Santley, whom he had never seen, as a hardheaded,
dogmatic, elderly creature of the type greatly approved by his
mother, and abundant even in Clapham. He had no idea of an Adonis in
a clerical frock coat, with a beautiful profile, white hands, and a
voice gentle and low--the latter an excellent thing in woman, but a
dangerous thing in an unmarried preacher of the Word.