IN BERRIE DOWN LANE.
It was all over! Skill could do nothing more for her. Love itself was
impotent now.
They brought flowers, and strewed them on her; but their bright colours,
their sweet perfume, could delight the child no longer. They passed into
the room where she lay a score times a day; but Lally never said, “Who’s
’at?” or weakly put out her hand to welcome one of them.
Bessie might steal in at night to look once again, and still once more,
at the child she had loved so much; but Lally needed no one to sing her
to sleep now—she had ceased wearying for her old playmate, and tears for
her loss could trickle down her little white face no more.
Even Arthur, who stealthily and like a criminal watched his opportunity
of visiting the chamber at times when no one should witness his
grief—even he, with all his sorrow and contrition, could not win a word
from Lally, whom he had so persistently, until the very end, indeed,
declared to be in no danger.
Not from any evil intention, but merely because his vanity and his
weakness were great, he had suffered himself to be led away by the still
beautiful woman who had been the love of his youth. He had neglected
Heather in days which he now understood must have been very dark to her;
he had seen little of his child, who lay before him with her formerly
eager face cold and fixed, with her limbs still, with her hands at rest,
with the bright flowers already fading on her breast, very quiet—oh! so
perfectly still.
What was Heather’s grief to his—her passionate woman’s sorrow to his?
She had sat with the child, nursed her, heard every word the lips now so
mute had uttered, supplied every want the body, which now needed
nothing, had fretfully desired. Her grief might be very terrible, very
hard to bear, but there was no remorse mingled with it. Her tears might
flow unceasingly, but there was no bitterness in them. She could talk of
her lost one, and receive sympathy from every person around; but
Arthur—he had rarely seen Lally—he had been glad to forget her
illness—he had listened to false words of comfort, and now, when his
eyes were opened, it was only to look on—death.
An awful repentance had seized him when Alick, having at length
succeeded in tracing his brother to one of the theatres, whither he was
gone with Mr. and Mrs. Croft to see a new piece which at the time
chanced to be creating a sensation, brought him out of the building with
one sentence—
“If you want to see Lally alive, come home immediately!”
How he ever reached Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Arthur did not know. He had
some faint remembrance of walking down steps, and entering a cab, and
driving—it might have been for miles, or only for a hundred yards, so
far as his recollection of the matter enlightened him.
The blow Tifford dealt him at the door blotted every antecedent event
out of his memory.
“Too late, sir,” said that individual, in a low tone to Alick. “It is
all over!”
“What is over?” Tifford subsequently informed his friends, Mr. Dudley
demanded, adding, “And then, poor gentleman, I told him she was gone.”
Arthur was precisely the man to feel a shock of this kind keenly; a
stronger nature could never have suffered itself to be so deluded; and
the servants about the house, the only people who noted his visit to the
close shut room, suspected that Mrs. Dudley’s grief was less bitter than
his; that her open lamentations, her fast-flowing tears were preferable
to this silent sorrow—to this tardy repentance which kept him haunting
the death-chamber—dragging him continually away both from business and
from rest to look on the face of the child he had only grown to love
much when she needed no more love from any human being.
It has before been stated, that Arthur Dudley always rated more highly
the blessings he lacked than the blessings he enjoyed, and this very
peculiarity of his temperament increased the grief which his affection,
and his repentance alike were sure to produce when once affection and
repentance were useless.
Never before in his life had Arthur Dudley felt so lonely and so
miserable as during the week which succeeded Lally’s death. For some
time previously he had been gradually estranging himself from every
member of his family, and now there was a restraint evident in their
manner towards him—a restraint and an awkwardness which neither he nor
they, knew exactly how to overcome.
In those days even Heather grew hard, and would not of her own free will
speak to him as she did to others about their child, whom he had, as she
fancied, neglected.
“She was mine,” the poor mother repeated, when Bessie would fain have
had her talk to Arthur of Lally, “she was mine, and mine only; he never
cared for her. Even strangers—even Mr. Croft and Mr. Stewart, and Mr.
Henry—were kinder to my darling than her own father. No, Bessie, I am
not unfeeling—it is the truth. He was never with me nor with her; always
with that wicked, cruel woman—always—always.”
It is a curious anomaly to notice how harsh the very excess of a woman’s
sensibility frequently renders her.
She feels one side of a question so deeply, that there is no room left
in her nature for considering even the possibility of there being
another side at all. And, in that hour of mortal sorrow, Heather had no
leisure to bestow a thought on any one except her dead child. Even her
love for Arthur seemed blotted out in indignation at his neglect of
their first-born.
And yet the iron had entered very deep into the man’s soul—so deep, that
the day when he followed Lally to her last resting-place was perhaps the
bitterest of his life.
They buried her at Fifield. Not so very far from the old home—under the
shadow of the grey church-tower—they laid Heather’s darling down to
sleep.
“Lilian, aged six years and four months”—that was the legend her little
coffin bore. “Lilian!” No fear of offending the unities now, she was
gone where names do not convey much meaning.
“Six years and four months!” She was gone, also, where age and time are
not of much account either.
Poor Lally—nay, happy Lally—to have had a life at once so bright and so
short, so brimful of everything which can be packed by possibility into
the longest span of human existence.
Sunshine and mirth, and love and friendship, and care and devotion.
What—though “finis” was written to the earthly story after a few short
chapters—say, friends, was the story less round and perfect in its
symmetry for that?
Was the ending in Fifield churchyard all sorrow? Nay, rather there came
a time when Heather was able to think, almost with thankfulness, of that
child face which should never grow old, nor changed, nor wrinkled, nor
careworn, nor other than innocent and pure, waiting for her in that
far-off land, where the “ransomed of the Lord shall obtain joy and
gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”
All who had been so kind to her in her first illness, came to see the
last they could of “poor little Lally Dudley,” together with those who
had grown fond of the child towards the end.
Alick was glad there were so many round the grave, for he felt that the
presence of strangers would exercise a beneficial influence on his
brother, who had been in such grief all the way down—in such sore
distress for the loss of the little one he should never in this world
see again.
Returning on such an errand to the old place—which he had left with high
hopes of success, with almost the certainty, as he thought, of
conquering fortune—would have been inexpressibly bitter to Arthur, even
without the reflection that his child had died far from him—farther away
than though oceans and continents, mountains and rivers, had divided
them; and it needed all his strength to carry him through the ordeal
bravely, and with good courage.
Mr. Croft was present; but from him, Alick Dudley kept aloof. Even
amongst the moss-grown headstones in Fifield graveyard, he could not
forget what he had seen amidst the tombs at North Kemms.
He would not break faith with Bessie; but he could not be cordial to the
man, although he had been kind to Heather and fond of Lally.
Alick was able, perhaps, now to guess the reason of his fancy for the
child; but that did not soften him much towards the offender.
Rather the reverse, possibly; young people are, like most women, apt to
be a trifle intolerant. They are very ignorant, and they are very
virtuous; their standard of right is happily high, their idea of sin is,
fortunately, that it is black as night. There are two colours only for
them in this world; of the delicate shades of grey into which, as the
years go by, every human feeling seems ultimately to resolve itself,
they have no understanding. It is entire innocence, or entire vice—it is
either devil or angel. What is the good of a man being a man, if he
cannot resist temptation? where is the boasted purity of a woman, if she
have ever even looked on sin?
Very nice sentiments, doubtless, and appropriate to the season and state
of life in which they are generally expressed and believed. Too much
toleration in the young would prove as dangerous as too many open
windows in the spring; to the fleshly mansions, doubtful winds of
doctrine would thus be permitted ingress. It is better for young people
to continue, as their charming fashion is, delightfully bigoted, than to
learn charity from practical knowledge of those temptations which make
older persons question whether it be not possible for virtue to drag her
spotless robes through the mire, and for vice to go through such an
explanatory purification as might almost make a blackamoor clean.
And it was perfectly natural, considering his age, his character, his
education, and the circumstances of the case so far as he knew them,
that Alick Dudley should take the worst view possible of Mr. Croft’s
conduct.
Had he not deliberately, and of malice aforethought, come like a wolf in
the night, and stolen Bessie away—he with a wife living, too?
Well might Bessie not write to Heather (Alick was not aware that Bessie
had returned to the one friend, of whose love and faithfulness she felt
confident); well might the guilty creature hold herself aloof from all
communication with relative or acquaintance. That Bessie had been
deceived, Alick never imagined; that Mr. Croft had not jumped into sin
at a single leap, was an idea he would have scouted. How easy, how
gradual, how pleasant are the slopes leading down into the valley where
Vice holds her court, this young Joshua had no conception. He thought
that every offender, every one who went so far wrong as he felt
confident Mr. Croft had strayed, ought to be stoned like Achan, so that
he might trouble the peace of Israel no more.
Comfortable thoughts these, to fill the mind when standing beside an
open grave; but they were Alick Dudley’s thoughts, nevertheless, and
they made him hold himself aloof as far as possible from the man who
had, he believed, first stolen Bessie away, and then striven to be kind
to Lally, as a sort of offset against the shame he had brought amongst
them.
He was contemptible altogether, the lad decided, too mean for him even
to despise, and yet Alick would have liked to fight this despicable
individual—to put some terrible affront on him—to do him a serious
bodily injury—to tell him, that although Bessie was not worth fretting
after, still the man who had lured her away was worth punishing.
Nothing Mr. Croft could say or do, Alick kept declaring to himself,
should ever induce him to grasp his hand in friendship; and when all was
over, when the body of the child who had never known of her own
experience the meaning of the word “loneliness,” was left to lie
solitary under the shadow of that grey church-tower till the day of
judgment, Alick acted upon this decision, and drawing back from the
little group which clustered around Arthur, found himself walking side
by side with Lord Kemms.
Heaven knows what put such a thought into the young man’s mind at the
moment; but, after they had passed through the gates, Alick suddenly
asked his companion:
“How is Nellie?”
“Stone blind, as you said she would be,” was the reply.
“And I have not yet made the fortune out of which I was to repay you,”
remarked Alick.
“I am sorry to hear it, though not for the reason you mention,” Lord
Kemms answered. “It would have been better, however, perhaps, for all of
you had I never bought her. The money she fetched was the first your
brother advanced into the Protector.”
“Poor Arthur!” murmured the Squire’s brother; “but it was not the
Protector that brought us back to Fifield to-day.”
“True,” rejoined his companion; “but, perhaps, your brother’s child
might have lived a little longer had she never left Berrie Down.”
“You are wrong there, my Lord,” Alick replied; “nothing could have saved
her; she was dying when she left here, and it was owing entirely to the
care and skill of the London doctors she stayed with us so long. It is
bad enough as it is, but we could scarcely have borne the loss had it
been as you supposed.”
Which view of the case happened to be perfectly true, although Lord
Kemms imagined the speaker was mistaken.
Having had a hand in damaging the Protector, his Lordship felt,
naturally, anxious to prove that Company the origin of all evil.
Since, in the course of a mysterious Providence, Lally was to die, he
would have felt happy to demonstrate that the Protector had, directly or
indirectly, been instrumental in killing her.
Now, however, Alick Dudley cut the ground from under his feet. If
Lally’s short existence had been prolonged, even for an hour, by the
skill and kindness of the London doctors, it was impossible for Lord
Kemms ever again to insinuate that residing in town had hastened her
death.
On that score, at all events, Arthur had no reason to reproach himself,
which was fortunate, since when he returned to Berrie Down after the
funeral, he felt his burden was quite as heavy as he could bear.
He was pressed for money; his dreams of wealth were vanishing away like
mist wreaths; his shares he feared would never return him even a quarter
of the sum he had expected to make by them; the half-yearly dividend had
been unsatisfactory; his directors were irritable, the shareholders
discontented.
He knew he must shortly let the Hollow, in order to rid himself of
farming expenses, and to provide certain funds for paying the interest
of the money for which Berrie Down was already mortgaged. He had not
merely lost money senselessly, but squandered it foolishly; and to a man
who had for so many years of his life looked honestly after sixpences,
there was something very terrible in the reflection that he had got
himself into debt through unthinkingly spending sovereigns.
In addition to all these causes for regret, Arthur added that
peculiarity of his own temperament, which valued whatever was lost or in
jeopardy far above any secure or present possession; and the feeling
that the Hollow would soon to a great extent cease to be his own
property, caused him to view every tree and shrub about it, every stick
and thorn, with an appreciative affection as novel as it was painful.
His love for wife, children, property, kindred lay latent until some
chance circumstance accidentally revealed its existence to himself; and
most probably the first time he ever really placed a proper value on
Berrie Down was when he saw it in the dead of winter, its evergreens
bright and glossy as ever; its lawn sloping away towards the west, the
grand old trees tossing their branches in the keen north blast, all
passing away from him and his; passing away from the descendants of
those who had held the place for centuries.
He meant to remain at the Hollow for the night; he had much to talk over
with Ned, many arrangements to make, fifty things to see to; and so he
and Cuthbert, and Mr. Croft, who had declined the hospitality of Kemms’
Park, were all to stay in the now deserted-looking rooms until the
following morning, while Alick returned to town by the latest
night-train from Palinsbridge.
It was necessary for him, if he wished to catch this train, to start
away from Berrie Down before nine o’clock; and while the young man was
out in the yard impressing this fact on Ned’s comprehension, Mr. Croft
came and stood beside him.
It was a moonlight night, stormy but still fine. The wind blew great
masses of clouds over the moon’s face, and then swept it clean and
bright again.
“You will have rather a rough drive over,” Mr. Croft remarked; and
Alick, backing the pony into the shafts, sulkily answered, “Yes, it
looks like it.”
“Can Ned not harness the pony for you?” was the next question.
“If he tried very hard, perhaps he might,” Alick replied.
“Perhaps he will be good enough to try hard, then,” said Mr. Croft; “and
perhaps you would have the kindness to walk a few yards with me down the
Lane. I want to speak to you.”
“To me?” repeated Alick, in surprise.
“Yes; to you, particularly,” was the reply.
“I will bid Arthur ‘good-night,’ and be with you directly,” the other
agreed; and accordingly in a few minutes Mr. Croft and he were walking
along Berrie Down Lane, past the pond, and under the elms and beeches
that sheltered the road beyond.
“There is bad blood between us,” began the elder man, after they had
paced on for a short distance side by side in silence. “There is bad
blood between us, and I am sorry for it; but it is natural that you
should both dislike and distrust me.”
“Was that what you brought me here to say?” Alick inquired.
“No; consider it as my opening sentence,—the stamp with which I have
broken the conversational ice; now I can go on. You remember, of course,
where you first saw me?”
“It is not likely I should soon forget such a pleasure,” was the reply.
“You are satirical, but I am shot proof,” Mr. Croft remarked; “you
recollect, then, that Sunday afternoon in North Kemms’ church, and the
girl who kept her eyes fixed so demurely on her prayer-book, which I had
afterwards the happiness of restoring to her?”
“And in which you placed a letter,” added Alick.
“And in which I placed one of a series of letters,” amended Mr. Croft;
“good—you remember her?”
“As well as I remember you,” was the reply.
“Where is she now?”
The moon sailed out from behind a cloud, as suddenly and sharply Mr.
Croft put this question, looking full in Alick’s face while he did so.
“Where is she now?” the younger man repeated, “why, do _you_ not know?”
“If I did, I should not come to you for information. Listen to me,” he
rapidly proceeded, “I would give my right hand to know where she is. I
would give a man anything almost he liked to ask, if he only proved to
me she were alive and well. You were fond of her, were you not, boy? it
vexes you to hear that there is no one belonging to her, no one on whom
she has a claim—not even myself who can say where she is, whether living
or dead; but what is your trouble to mine? When I looked in your face a
moment since, my last hope vanished. I thought perhaps she might have
gone to Heather—to Mrs. Dudley, I mean.”
“Would you have me understand that she never went off with you?” Alick
interrupted. He stood still in the very middle of Berrie Down Lane as he
spoke, and the shifting light gave a wild, curious expression to his
face. “Do you think I am so simple as to believe——”
“My dear fellow, I do not think you simple, and it is immaterial to me
what you believe; but I want to know where your cousin is to be found. I
desire, at least, assurance of her safety, comfort, and—should such a
miracle be possible—happiness.”
“And by what right do you dare to ask anything about her,” demanded
Alick; “you a married man, you who never ought to have written her a
line, or met her, or—or——”
“I did not beg you to walk on here with me to-night in order to answer
your questions,” Mr. Croft interrupted; “my object was merely to put one
or two of my own. To my first, your face has already replied. I see you
know nothing of your cousin’s whereabouts. If you should do so, will you
at all events let me know that you have heard from or seen her, and that
she is well?”
“No,” Alick Dudley replied, “I will not.”
“That settles my second question,” observed Mr. Croft. “Now, the last
point on which I desire information is this: does Mrs. Dudley know we
have met before, and where?”
“She knows I have seen you,” was the answer; “but I have not told her
when, or where, or what I suspect.”
“That is to say, Mrs. Dudley does not in any way connect me with your
cousin’s disappearance?” Mr. Croft remarked inquiringly; and when Alick
answered in the affirmative, he proceeded:
“Will you still respect my secret, so far as you know it?”
“I shall make no promise,” Alick answered.
“At least, will you let me tell my story for myself?”
“There is nothing to prevent your doing that,” the other replied, “any
more than there is to prevent my telling mine.”
“You are sternly uncompromising,” said Mr. Croft.
“I should be sorry to compromise with a seducer and a villain,” was the
reply.
“You are talking at random, boy, on a matter concerning which you know
literally nothing,” the person so politely addressed observed, sadly.
“Had I spoken to an older man, as I have spoken to you to-night, I
should not have been so repulsed.”
“Possibly not by an older man like yourself,” retorted Alick, with a
sneer.
“Good-night,” said Mr. Croft, “we will not spoil our naturally sweet
tempers by further argument. Here comes Ned. Shall we shake hands over
it? No; good-bye then, and pleasant thoughts as you travel to town. Some
day you will think you have not been all in the right in your judgment
of me; but I do not quarrel with you for that judgment. It is human to
err, and your humanity has erred, perhaps, on the safest side. On a
safer side than mine, certainly,” he muttered, as Alick, jumping up
beside Ned, took the reins, and, with a cold farewell to Mr. Croft,
drove off at a rattling trot along Berrie Down Lane, and thence through
Fifield to Palinsbridge.
As they passed Fifield church, the moonlight fell clear and cold on the
mound of freshly-turned mould, which was heaped over the spot where
Heather’s darling lay all alone, and the tears came welling up into
Alick’s eyes when he thought of the dead child.
Any one might have imagined that such tears must soften the heart, and
render it for the time, at least, pitiful and tender even to a sinner;
but no such change was wrought on Alick Dudley’s mood.
All the way up to town, sitting in a corner of the compartment, he
pondered over his interview with Mr. Croft—pondered and wondered; but it
never once occurred to him that perhaps he had judged the man harshly,
that he had repulsed his semi-confidence very rudely.
He was a sinner—he was all Alick had said; over and over again the youth
kept repeating these statements to himself; over and over he found it
necessary to refresh his spirit with them, for his conscience did not
feel quite satisfied concerning the interview.
Still he had done right, and though the right might be unpleasant and
ungracious, it was nevertheless necessary to be performed. Young though
he might be, Alick Dudley knew enough of human nature to be aware Mr.
Croft was for some reason or other in very grievous trouble: to be
confident, he never would have spoken to him had the subject not been
one, as he implied, of vital importance to his peace; but what of that?
If he were in trouble, so much the better; if he were anxious and
grieved, it was nothing but what he deserved.
He had been kind to Lally, it is true; but, again, what of that? In the
eyes of Alick Dudley, Douglas Aymescourt Croft seemed the incarnation of
evil, of hypocrisy, of treachery, and of sin.
With all his heart and with all his soul, Alick hated the man—hated him
all the more, perhaps, because he felt quite confident, if Mr. Croft
once told his tale to Heather, he would deceive her also somehow,
perhaps even move her to pity.
And Alick held in those days the pleasant creed, that no human being who
went wrong should ever be pitied. Not even the look of Mr. Croft’s face,
as he stood eager and anxious, waiting for Alick’s answer, had been able
to soften the youth. Rather, in his stern rectitude, he now blamed
himself for having been over-lenient, for having been unduly tender to
this wretch who had deceived Bessie, and wrought for her perhaps such
misery as he himself was unable to contemplate calmly.
Out and away with him; on a gallows as high as Haman’s, Alick would
willingly have hung him; and, after all, to come to me! thought this
modern Joshua—to come to me!
Ay, there was Mr. Croft’s mistake; perhaps he never had been very young
himself, or perhaps the feelings of his youth lay so far back in the
book of years, that he forgot how stern and hard young people, who can
be trusted, usually are in their judgments. Be this as it may, the
result of the interview had proved different to what he expected, and he
returned to the Hollow, smiling a little bitterly as he thought time
would teach Alick Dudley a different lesson; that possibly out of his
own experience he might after a while acquire a little toleration in
judging of others. And in this idea, who may say Douglas Croft was
wrong?
True, it is only God who, knowing all about our sins and our
temptations, is ever entirely merciful; but still, the more men learn of
their own natures, the more fully they come to comprehend how easy it is
to do wrong, and how difficult to do right; the closer they form an
acquaintance with that lore which nothing except sorrow, and trial, and
trouble, and experience can teach, the greater is the toleration with
which they regard error; the greater is the diffidence which they feel
about affirming of any human being, “In the sight of the Almighty, you
are a very grievous sinner.”
In precise proportion, as a man towards the close of his life is harsh
and bitter, as he views with loathing not the crime but the criminal, as
he ventures to pass severe judgments on his fellow-creatures, so we may
be certain his earthly education has been wasted.
It is natural for the young to air their indignation; natural and right,
for they cannot conceive the power and might of those temptations which
are strong enough to lead wiser people than themselves astray; which
meet poor humanity like an armed man; which lurk like lions in the path,
yea, are “like lions roaring on their prey.”
In the young, it may reasonably be hoped that intolerance is an outward
and visible sign of inexperience and innocence, but in the old and the
middle-aged it can be regarded but as a token of folly, as a sign of a
Pharasaic rather than a humble spirit; of a mental constitution swift to
forget personal sins and to notice defects in others; of a bigoted
proneness to measure the corn of all men’s lives out of one bushel; of a
pompous giving thanks to God for having made some people so much better
than that poor, low, wretched, tabooed publican; of a disposition ready
to find a mote in a brother’s eye, forgetful of the beam which was so
utterly displeasing in the sight of Him who has with his own lips
assured us, that “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain
mercy.”