beat her foot impatiently upon the carpet. What had come over Dick?
He must have known perfectly well the utter falsity of the mask he was
wearing; if not, self-deception was one of his accomplishments. Or
perhaps those tears in his mother's eyes caused a pang of shame to shoot
through him. In any case, he made a hasty effort to change his tone.
"How are you two? That is the main point with me. Bother my seediness!"
"We are always well," sighed Mrs. Edmonstone.
"And Maurice?"
"Maurice was never brisker."
"Lucky dog!" said Dick, involuntarily; and the bitterness was back in
his tone before he knew it.
"Your friend Mr. Flint," said Mrs. Edmonstone, "is Maurice's friend now,
and Mr. Flint finds all his friends in good spirits."
"Do you mean to say old Jack is doing the absentee landlord altogether?
Did he never go back?"
"Yes. But he is over again--he is in town just now," said Mrs.
Edmonstone.
"He's fast qualifying for buckshot, that fellow," said Dick, with light
irony.
"I rather fancy," observed Fanny, with much indifference, "that you will
see him this evening. I half think he is coming back with Maurice." And
Miss Fanny became profoundly interested in the world out of the window.
"Good!" cried Dick; and there was a ring of sincerity in that
monosyllable which ought to have made it appreciated--as much as a
diamond in a dustheap!
In a little while Dick went up to his room. He had letters to write, he
said; but he was heard whistling and singing as he unpacked his
portmanteau. Neither of the ladies saw much more of him that day. They
sat together in wretched silence; there was some constraint between
them; they felt hurt, but were too proud to express the feeling even to
each other. The fact was, they did not quite know why they felt hurt.
Dick had greeted them kindly enough--it was only that there was a
something in his manner which they didn't like and could not
understand. And so both these women longed heartily for evening, and the
coming of Maurice and merry Mr. Flint--Fanny, however, the more heartily
of the two.
Maurice and Flint did come--in excellent time, too; and it so happened
that when the little table-gong rang out its silvery call, Mr. Flint and
Miss Edmonstone were still perambulating the dewy, twilit tennis-court.
It further happened, in spite of the last-mentioned fact, that Miss
Fanny contrived to reach the drawing-room before her mother was finally
disentangled from the wools and needles that beset her at most hours of
the day; that mother and daughter were the last to enter the little
dining-room, hand in hand; that Miss Fanny looked uncommonly radiant,
and that the usual stupid tears were standing in gentle Mrs.
Edmonstone's soft, loving eyes.
Dick was unusually brilliant in his old place at the head of the
table--so brilliant that his friend Flint was taken by surprise, and,
for his own part, silenced; though it is true that the latter had
something on his mind which would have made him, in any case, worse
company than usual. Dick rattled on incessantly, about the dales, and
the moors, and the grouse, as though his stay in Yorkshire was
associated with no tragedy, and no sickness nigh unto death. His mood,
indeed, was not taken up by the others, but he did not seem to notice or
to mind that; only when he was quiet, all were quiet, and the sudden
silences were embarrassing to all save their prime author.
The longest and most awkward of these pauses occurred while the crumbs
were being removed. When the maid had withdrawn, Dick drank of his
wine, refilled his glass, held it daintily by the stem between finger
and thumb, leant back in his chair, and proceeded deliberately to break
the spell.
"Ladies and gentlemen," he began, speaking the trite words in the same
disagreeable tone that had pained the ladies that morning, "I am going
to make you a little speech; a very little one, mind, so don't look
uncomfortable--you needn't even feel it."
He glanced from one to another of them. They did look uncomfortable;
they felt that somehow Dick was not himself; they heartily wished he
would be quiet. His manner was not the manner to carry off a sneer as so
much pleasantry.
Dick continued:
"All good things must come to an end, you know--and, in fact, that's my
very original text. Now look at me, please--mother, look at your sheep
that was lost: thanks. You will, perhaps, agree with me that I'm hardly
the fellow I was when I landed; the fact being that this beautiful
British climate is playing old Harry with me, and--all good things come
to an end. If I may class myself among the good things for a moment--for
argument's sake--it seems to me that one good thing will come to an end
pretty soon. Look at me--don't you think so?"
The wretched smile that crossed his lean, pale face was not at variance
with his words. He was much altered. His cheeks were sunken and
bloodless, dark only under the eyes. His eyes to-night were unnaturally
bright. His lips too were bloodless; to-night they were quivering
incessantly. His question was left unanswered, as he meant that it
should be. Flint was trying mentally to compute the quantity of wine his
friend might possibly have taken; the others could not have spoken at
that moment even if they would.
"Now," continued Dick, still toying with his wine, "the country I left a
few months ago never allows a man to fall into my unhappy plight. It
puts a man in good health at the beginning, and keeps him in it to the
end, somewhere in the nineties. Why, Maurice, if he went out there,
would find that he has never known what health is! Fanny, we know, is a
hardy plant, and would thrive anywhere; yet she was made for the life
out there, if girl ever was. As for you, mother, it would clap twenty
years on to your dear old life--no, it would make you twenty years
younger. No one who has once lived there will live anywhere else. Even
old Flint here is dying to go back; he confessed as much last month. Now
what I say is this: all good things, etcetera--England among them.
Therefore let us all go out there together, and live happily ever
afterwards! Stop; hear me out, all of you: it's arranged already--I go
out first, to stock the station, and all the rest of it. The fact is, I
booked my passage this morning! Come, you have had good patience; my
speech, like better 'good things,' has come to an end!"
His tone had changed from half-jest to whole earnest--from earnestness
to ardour--from ardour to something bordering on defiance. But, with the
last word scarcely out of his mouth, he checked himself, and ejaculated
below his breath: "Good heavens!"
Mrs. Edmonstone had rushed sobbing from the room.
No one followed her. The others stared blankly, then indignantly, at
Dick, in whose face concern began to show itself. Then young Maurice
spoke up.
"If I were you," he said hotly to his brother, "I'd go after her, and
tell her you have taken too much wine, and beg her pardon for making a
fool of yourself!"
Dick darted an angry glance at him, but rose and stalked from the room.
In point of fact, the wine had not had much to do with it--no more and
no less than it has to do with anybody's after-dinner speech. At the
same time, Dick had not been altogether in his right senses, either then
or any time that day. He found his mother weeping as though her heart
would break; whereat his own heart smote him so that he came to his
senses there and then, and knelt in humility and shame at her feet.
"Dearest mother, forgive me!" he murmured again and again, and took her
hand in his and kissed it.
"But are you--are you really going back--back over the seas?" she
sobbed.
"Yes. I can't help it, mother! No one knows how miserable I have been
over here. Forgive me--forgive me--but I can't stay! I can't indeed!
But--but you shall come out too, and the others; and your life will be
happier than it has been for years, once you are used to it."
Mrs. Edmonstone shook her head.
"No; it is impossible," she said with sudden decision.
"How so? Both Fanny and Maurice, once when I sounded them--"
"Fanny will never go, and I cannot leave her."
"Why? Mother dear, what do you mean?"
"I mean that your sister is going to be married."
Married! The mere word ought not to have cut him to the heart; yet, in
the state that he was in then, it did. He rose uncertainly to his feet.
"You take my breath away, mother! I know of nothing. Whom is it to?"
"Can you ask?"
"I cannot guess."
"Then it is to your friend, Mr.--no, Jack--Jack Flint."
"God bless old Jack!"
That was what Dick said upon the instant. Then he stood silent. And
then--Dick sank into a chair, and laid his face upon his hands.
"I can go out alone," he whispered. "And--and I wish them joy; from my
heart I do! I will go and tell them so."
XXXIII
HOW DICK SAID GOOD-BYE
The month was October; the day Dick's last in England. Both the day and
the month were far spent: in an hour or two it would be dark, in a week
or so it would be November. This time to-morrow the R.M.S. Rome, with
Dick on board, would be just clear of the Thames; this time next month
she would be ploughing through the Indian Ocean, with nothing but
Australia to stop her.
"Last days," as a rule, are made bearable by that blessed atmosphere of
excitement which accompanies them, and is deleterious to open sentiment.
That excitement, however, is less due to the mere fact of impending
departure than to the providential provision of things to be done and
seen to at the last moment. An uncomfortable "rush" is the best of
pain-killers when it comes to long farewells. The work, moreover, should
be for all hands, and last to the very end; then there is no time for
lamentation--no time until the boxes are out of the hall and the cab has
turned the corner, and the empty, untidy room has to be set to rights.
Then, if you like, is the time for tears.
Now Dick had made a great mistake. He had booked his passage too far in
advance. For six weeks he had nothing to think of but his voyage;
nothing to do but get ready. Everything was prearranged; nothing, in
this exceptional case, was left to the last, the very luggage being sent
to the boat before the day of sailing. If Dick had deliberately set
himself to deepen the gloom that shadowed his departure, he could not
have contrived things better. Maurice, for instance, with great
difficulty obtained a holiday from the bank because it was Dick's last
day. He might just as well have stopped in the City. There was nothing
for him to do. The day wore on in dismal idleness.
About three in the afternoon Dick left the house. He was seen by the
others from the front windows. The sight of him going out without a look
or a word on his last day cut them to the heart, though Dick had been
everything that was kind, and thoughtful, and affectionate since that
evening after his return from Yorkshire. Besides, the little family was
going to be broken up completely before long: Fanny was to be married in
the spring. No wonder they were sad.
Dick turned to the right, walked towards the river, turned to the right
again, and so along the London road towards the village.
"It is the right thing," he kept assuring himself, and with such
frequency that one might have supposed it was the wrong thing; "it is
the right thing, after all, to go and say good-bye. I should have done
it before, and got it over. I was a fool to think of shirking it
altogether; that would have been behaving like a boor. Well, I'll just
go in naturally, say good-bye all round, stop a few minutes, and then
hurry back home. A month ago I couldn't have trusted myself, but
now----"
It was a joyless smile that ended the unspoken sentence. The last month
had certainly strengthened his self-control; it had also hardened and
lined his face in a way that did not improve his good looks. Yes, he was
pretty safe in trusting himself now.
At the corner opposite the low-lying old churchyard he hesitated. He had
hesitated at that corner once before. He remembered the other occasion
with peculiar vividness to-day. Why should he not repeat the performance
he had gone through then? Why should he not take a boat and row up to
Graysbrooke? An admirable idea! It harmonised so completely with his
humour. It was the one thing wanting to complete the satire of his
home-coming. That satire had been so thoroughly bitter that it would be
a pity to deny it a finishing touch or two. Besides, it was so fitting
in every way: the then and the now offered a contrast that it would be a
shame not to make the most of. Then, thought Dick, his foolish hopes had
been as fresh and young and bright as the June leaves. Look at his bare
heart now! look at the naked trees! Hopes and leaves had gone the same
way--was it the way of all hopes as well as of all leaves? His mind, as
well as his eye, saw everything in autumnal tints. Nor did he shirk the
view. There is a stage of melancholy that rather encourages the cruel
contrasts of memory.
"I'll row up," said Dick, "and go through it all again. Let it do its
worst, it won't touch me now--therefore nothing will ever touch me as
long as I live. A good test!"
He did row up, wearing the same joyless smile.
He stood the test to perfection.
He did not forget to remember anything. He gave sentimentality a
princely chance to play the mischief with him. It was a rough and gusty
day, but mild for the time of year; a day of neither sunshine nor rain,
but plenty of wind and clouds; one of those blustering fellows, heralds
of Winter, that come and abuse Autumn for neglecting her business, and
tear off the last of the leaves for her with unseemly violence and
haste. The current was swift and strong, and many a crisp leaf of
crimson and amber and gold sailed down its broad fretted surface, to be
dashed over the weir and ripped into fragments in the churning froth
below.
Dick rowed into the little inlet with the white bridge across it,
landed, and nodded, in the spirit, to a hundred spots marked in his mind
by the associations of last June; those of an older day were not thought
of. Here was the place where Alice's boat had been when he had found her
reading a magazine--and interrupted her reading--on the day after his
return. There were the seven poplars, in whose shadows he had found
Miles on the night of the ball, when the miscreant Pound came inquiring
for him. There was the window through which he, Dick, had leapt after
that final scene--final in its results--with Alice in the empty
ballroom. A full minute's contemplation and elaborate, cold-blooded
recollection failed to awake one pang--it may be that, to a certain
quality of pain, Dick's sense had long been deadened. Then he walked
meditatively to the front of the house, and rang the bell--a thing he
was not sure that he had ever done before at this house.
Colonel Bristo was out, but Mrs. Parish was in. Dick would see Mrs.
Parish; he would be as civil to his old enemy as to the rest of them;
why not?
But Mrs. Parish received him in a wondrous manner; remorse and
apology--nothing less--were in the tones of her ricketty voice and the
grasp of her skinny hand. The fact was, those weeks in Yorkshire had
left their mark upon the old lady. They had left her older still, a
little less worldly, a little more sensible, and humbler by the
possession of a number of uncomfortable regrets. She had heard of Dick's
probable return to Australia, long ago; but her information had been
neither definite nor authentic. When he now told her that he was
actually to sail the next day, the old woman was for the moment visibly
affected. She felt that here there was a new and poignant regret in
store for her--one that would probably haunt her for the rest of her
days. At this rate life would soon become unbearable. It is a terrible
thing to become suddenly soft-hearted in your old age!
"Colonel Bristo is out," said Mrs. Parish, with a vague feeling that
made matters worse. "You will wait and see him, of course? I am sure he
will not be long; and then, you know, you must say good-bye to
Alice--she will be shocked when you tell her."
"Alice?" said Dick, unceremoniously, as became such a very old friend of
the family. "I hope so--yes, of course. Where is she?"
"She is in the dining-room. She spends her days there."
"How is she?" Dick asked, with less indifference in his manner.
"Better; but not well enough to stand a long journey, or else her father
would have taken her to the south of France before this. Come and see
her. She will be so pleased--but so grieved when she hears you are going
out again. I am sure she has no idea of such a thing. And to-morrow,
too!"
Dick followed Mrs. Parish from the room, wishing in his heart that
convalescence was a shorter business, or else that Alice might have the
advantages of climate that in a few days, and for evermore, would be
his; also speculating as to whether he would find her much changed, but
wishing and wondering without the slightest ruffling emotion. He had
some time ago pronounced himself a cure. Therefore, of course, he was
cured.
There were two fireplaces in the dining-room, one on each side of the
conservatory door. In the grate nearer the windows, which were all at
one end, overlooking lawn and river, a fire of wood and coal was burning
brightly. In a long low structure of basketwork--half-sofa, half-chair,
such as one mostly sees on shipboard and in verandahs--propped up by
cushions and wrapped in plaids and woollen clouds, lay Alice, the
convalescent. There was no sign that she had been reading. She did not
look as though she had been sleeping. If, then, it was her habit to
encourage the exclusive company of her own thoughts, it is little wonder
that she was so long in parting company with her weakness.
Dick stood humbly and gravely by the door; a thrill of sorrow shot
through him on seeing her lying there like that; the sensation was only
natural.
"Here is Mr. Richard come to--to--to ask you how you are," stammered
poor Mrs. Parish.
Alice looked up sharply. Mr. Richard crossed the room and held out his
hand with a smile.
"I hope from my heart that you are better--that you will very soon be
quite better."
"Thank you. It was kind of you to come. Yes, indeed, I am almost well
now. But it has been a long business."
Her voice was weak, and the hand she held out to him seemed so thin and
wasted that he took it as one would handle a piece of dainty, delicate
porcelain. Her hair, too, was cut short like a boy's. This was as much
as he noticed at the moment. The firelight played so persistently upon
her face that, for aught he could tell, she might be either pale as
death or bathed in blushes. For the latter, however, he was not in the
least on the look-out.
"Won't you sit down?" said Alice. "Papa will come in presently, and he
will be so pleased to see you; and you will take tea with us. Have you
been away?"
"No," said Dick, feeling awkward because he had made no inquiries
personally since the return of the Bristos from Yorkshire, now some days
back. "But I have been getting ready to go." He put down his hat on the
red baize cover of the big table, and sat down a few chairs further from
Alice than he need have done.
"What a capital time to go abroad," said Alice, "just when everything is
becoming horrid in England! We, too, are waiting to go; it is I that am
the stumbling-block."
So she took it that he was only going on the Continent. Better enlighten
her at once, thought Dick. Mrs. Parish had disappeared mysteriously from
the room.
"This time to-morrow," Dick accordingly said, "I shall be on board the
Rome."
The effect of this statement upon Alice was startling.
"What!" cried she, raising herself a few inches in suddenly aroused
interest. "Are you going to see them off?"
"See whom off?" Dick was mystified.
"My dear good nurse--the first and the best of my nurses--and her
brother the Sergeant."
"Do you mean Compton?"
"Yes. They sail in the Rome to-morrow."
"So the brother," Dick thought to himself, "is taking the sister back to
her own people, to be welcomed and forgiven, and to lead a better kind
of life. Poor thing! poor thing! Perhaps her husband's death was the
best thing that could have befallen her. She will be able to start
afresh. She is a widow now."
Aloud, he only said: "I am glad--very glad to hear it."
"Did you know," said Alice, seeing that he was thinking more than he
said, "that she was a widow?"
"Yes," said Dick.
It was plain to him that Alice did not know whose widow the poor woman
was. She suspected no sort of bond between the woman who had nursed her
and the man who had made love to her. She did not know the baseness of
that love on his part. This was as it should be. She must never
suspect; she must never, never know.
"Yes," said Dick slowly, "I knew that."
"Oh!" cried out Alice. "How dreadful it all was! How terrible!"
"Ay," said Dick, gravely; "it was that indeed."
There was a pause between them. It was Alice who broke it.
"Dick," she said frankly--and honest shame trembled through her
utterance--"I want to ask your pardon for something--no, you shall not
stop me! I want to tell you that I am sorry for having said
something--something that I just dimly remember saying, but something
that I know was monstrous and inexcusable. It was just before--but I was
accountable enough to know better. Ah! I see you remember; indeed, you
could never forget--please--please--try to forgive!"
Dick felt immensely uneasy.
"Say no more, Alice. I deserved it all, and more besides. I was
fearfully at fault. I should never have approached you as I did, my
discovery once made. I shall never forgive myself for all that has
happened. But he took me in--he took me in, up there, playing the
penitent thief, the--poor fellow!"
His voice dropped, his tone changed: many things came back to him in a
rush.
"Papa has told me the whole history of the relations between you," Alice
said quietly, "and we think you behaved nobly."
"There was precious little nobility in it," Dick said grimly. Nor was
there any mock modesty in this. He knew too well that he had done
nothing to be proud of.
There was another pause. Dick broke this one.
"Forgive me," he said, "if I refer to anything very painful, but I am
going away to-morrow, and--there was something else you said, just after
you administered that just rebuke to me. You said you would tell us what
Miles had said to you. Now I do not mean it as presumption, but we are
old friends"--she winced--"and I have rather suspected that he made some
confession to you which he never made to anyone else. There was a lot of
gold----"
Alice interrupted him in a low voice.
"I would rather not tell you what he said; it was nothing to do with
anything of that kind."
Dick's question had not been unpremeditated. He had had his own
conviction as to the "confession" Alice had listened to; he only wanted
that conviction confirmed. Now, by her hesitation and her refusal to
answer, it was confirmed. Miles had proposed marriage on the way from
Melmerbridge Church, and been accepted! Well, it was a satisfaction to
have that put beyond doubt. He had put his question in rather an
underhand way, but how was he to do otherwise? He had got his answer;
the end justified the means.
"Pray don't say another word," said Dick impulsively. "Forgive me for
prying. Perhaps I can guess what he said."
Alice darted at him a swift glance, and saw his meaning in a flash.
"Do not get up," said she quietly, for Dick was rising to go. "Since it
is possible that you may guess wrong, I will tell you all. I insist in
telling you all! Here, then, are the facts: Mr. Miles scarcely spoke a
word on the way from church, until suddenly, when we were almost in
sight of home, he--he caught hold of my hand."
Dick knew that already. He was also quite sure that he knew what was
coming. It was no use Alice going on; he could see that she was nervous
and uncomfortable over it; he reproached himself furiously for making
her so; he made a genuine effort to prevail upon her to say no more. In
vain; for now Alice was determined. Seeing that it was so, he got up
from his chair and walked over to the windows, and watched the brown
leaves being whisked about the lawn and the sky overhead turning a
deeper grey.
Alice continued in a voice that was firm for all its faintness: