This little tragedy, as it appeared to me at the time, made a great
impression on my mind. It did not make me ill; that would have been
absurd. But still it helped, I suppose, to depress me generally and
enhance the effect of the cold that had hung about me so long, and for
which the elder ones, taking counsel together, decided that the desire
of the younger ones should be gratified, and I should be made to go to
Italy for the spring. The girls were wild to go, and my long-continued
lingering cold was such a good excuse. For my own part, I was not
willing at all; but what can one woman, especially when she is their
mother, do against so many? I had to give in and go. I went to see Ellen
before we started, and it was a very painful visit. She was still
keeping up with a certain defiance of everybody. But in the last two
months she had changed wonderfully. For one thing, she had shrank into
half her size. She was never anything but a little woman; but now she
seemed to me no bigger than a child. And those cheerful, happy brown
eyes, which had so triumphed over and smiled at all the privations of
life, looked out from two hollow caverns, twice as large as they had
ever been before, and with a woeful look that broke one’s heart. It was
not always that they had this woeful look. When she was conscious of
inspection she played them about with an artificial activity as if they
had been lanterns, forcing a smile into them which sometimes looked
almost like a sneer; but when she forgot that any one was looking at
her, then both smile and light went out, and there was in them a woeful
doubt and question which nothing could solve. Had she been wrong? Had
she misjudged him whom her heart could not forget or relinquish? Was it
likely that she could give him up lightly even had he been proved
unworthy? And oh, Heaven! was he proved unworthy, or had she done him
wrong? This was what Ellen was asking herself, without intermission, for
ever and ever; and her mother, on her side, watched Ellen piteously with
much the same question in her eyes. Had she, too, made a mistake? Was it
possible that she had exacted a sacrifice which she had no right to
exact, and in mere cowardice, and fear of loneliness, and desire for
love and succour on her own part, spoiled two lives? This question,
which was almost identical in both, made the mother and daughter
singularly like each other; except that Ellen kept asking her question
of the air, which is so full of human sighs, and the sky, whither so
many ungranted wishes go up, and the darkness of space, in which is no
reply--and the mother asked hers of Ellen, interrogating her countenance
mutely all day long, and of every friend of Ellen’s who could throw any
light upon the question. She stole into the room when Ellen left me for
a moment, and whispered, coming close to me, lest the very walls should
hear--
‘How do you think she is looking? She will not say a word to me about
him--not a word. Don’t you think she has been too hasty? Oh! I would
give everything I have if she would only go with you and look for John,
and make it up with him again.’
‘I thought you could not spare her,’ I said with perhaps some cruelty in
my intention. She wrung her hands, and looked piteously in my face.
‘You think it is all my fault! I never thought it would come to this; I
never thought he would go away. Oh, if I had only let them marry at
first! I often think if she had been happy in her own home, coming to
see her father every day, it would have been more of a change for him,
more company than having her always. Oh! if one could only tell what is
going to happen. She might have had a nice family by this time, and the
eldest little girl big enough to run in and play at his feet and amuse
her grandpa. He always was fond of children. But we’ll never see Ellen’s
children now!’ cried the poor woman. ‘And you think it is my fault!’
I could not reproach her; her black cap with the flowers, her little
woollen shawl about her shoulders, grew tragic as she poured forth her
trouble. It was not so dignified as the poet’s picture, but yet, like
him, she
Saw the unborn faces shine
Beside the never lighted fire;
and with a groan of misery felt herself the slayer of those innocents
that had never been. The tragic and the comic mingled in the vision of
that ‘eldest little girl,’ the child who would have amused her grandpa
had she been permitted to come into being; but it was all tragic to poor
Mrs. Harwood. She saw no laugh, no smile, in the situation anywhere.
We went to Mentone, and stayed there till the bitterness of the winter
was over, then moved along that delightful coast, and were in Genoa in
April. To speak of that stately city as a commercial town seems
insulting--and yet so it is now-a-days. I recognized at once the type I
had known in other days when I sat at the window of the hotel and
watched the people coming and going. It reminded me of my window in the
Road, where, looking out, I saw the respectable City people--clerks like
John Ridgway, and merchants of the same cut though of more substantial
comfort--wending their way to their business in the morning, and to
their suburban homes in the evening. I do not know that I love the
commercial world; but I like to see that natural order of life--the man
‘going forth unto his work and to his labour until the evening.’ The
fashion of it is different in a foreign town, but still the life is the
same. We changed our quarters however after we had been for some time in
that city, so-called of palaces, and were lodged in a suite of rooms
very hard to get up to (though the staircase was marble), but very
delightful when one was there; rooms which overlooked the high terrace
which runs round a portion of the bay between the inns and the quays. I
forget what it is called. It is a beautiful promenade, commanding the
loveliest view of that most beautiful bay and all that is going on in
it. At night, with all its twinkling semicircle of lights, it was a
continual enchantment to me; but this or any of my private admirations
are not much to the purpose of my story. Sitting at the window, always
my favourite post, I became acquainted with various individual figures
among those who haunted this terrace. Old gentlemen going out to sun
themselves in the morning before the heat was too great; children and
nursemaids, Genoese women with their pretty veils, invalids who had got
up the stairs, I cannot tell now, and sat panting on the benches,
enjoying the sea air and the sunshine. There was one however among this
panorama of passing figures, which gave me a startled sense of
familiarity. It was too far off to see the man’s face. He was not an
invalid; but he was bent, either with past sickness or with present
care, and walked with a dropping head and a languid step. After watching
him for a time, I concluded (having always a great weakness for making
out other people’s lives, how they flow) that he had some occupation in
the town from which he escaped, whenever he had leisure, to rest a
little and refresh himself upon the terrace. He came very regularly,
just at the time when Italian shops and offices have a way of shutting
up, in the middle of the day--very regularly, always, or almost always,
at the same hour. He came up the steps slowly and languidly, stopped a
little to take breath, and then walked half way round the terrace to a
certain bench upon which he always seated himself. Sometimes he brought
his luncheon with him and ate it there. At other times, having once
gained that place, he sat quite still in a corner of it, not reading,
nor taking any notice of the other passers-by. No one was with him, no
one ever spoke to him. When I noticed him first he startled me. Who was
he like? His bent figure, his languid step, resembled no one I could
think of; but yet I said to myself, He is like somebody. I established a
little friendship with him, though it was a friendship without any
return; for though I could see him he could not see me, nor could I
distinguish his face; and we never saw him anywhere else, neither at
church, nor in the streets, not even on the _festas_ when everybody was
about; but always just there on that one spot. I looked for him as
regularly as the day came. ‘My mother’s old gentleman,’ Chatty called
him. Everybody is old who is not young to these children; but though he
was not young he did not seem to me to be old. And he puzzled as much as
he interested me. Who was he like? I never even asked myself, Who was
he? It would be no one I had any chance of acquaintance with. Some poor
_employé_ in a Genoa office; how should I know him? I could not feel at
all sure, when I was cross-examined on the subject, whether I really
remembered any one whom he was like; but yet he had startled me more
than I can say.
Genoa, where we had friends and family reasons for staying, became very
hot as the spring advanced into early summer, and we removed to one of
the lovely little towns on the coast at a little distance, Santa
Margherita. When we had been settled there for a few days, Chatty came
in to me one evening with a pale face. ‘I have just seen your old
gentleman,’ she said. ‘I think he must live out here; but I saw by the
expression of her eyes that there was more to say. She added after a
moment, ‘And I know who he is like.’
‘Ah! you have seen his face,’ I said; and then, before she had spoken,
it suddenly flashed on myself in a moment, ‘John Ridgway!’ I cried.
‘Mother,’ said Chatty, quite pale, ‘I think it is his ghost.’
I went out with her instantly to where she had seen him, and we made
some inquiries, but with no success. When I began to think it over, he
was not like John Ridgway. He was bent and stooping, whereas John was
erect; his head drooped, whereas how well I recollected poor John’s head
thrown back a little, his hat upon the back of it, his visionary outlook
rather to the skies than to the ground. No, no, not like him a bit; but
yet it might be his ghost, as Chatty said. We made a great many
inquiries, but for the moment with no success, and you may suppose that
I watched the passers-by from my window with more devotion than ever.
One evening in the sudden nightfall of the Italian skies, when darkness
comes all at once, I was seated in my usual place, scarcely seeing
however the moving figures outside, though all the population of the
place seemed to be out, sitting round the doors, and strolling leisurely
along enjoying the heavenly coolness and the breeze from the sea. At the
further end of the room Chatty was at the piano, playing to me softly in
the dark which she knows is what I like, and now and then striking into
some old song such as I love. She was sure to arrive sooner or later at
that one with which we now had so many associations; but I was not
thinking of the song, nor for the moment of Ellen or her faithful (as I
was sure he was still) lover at all. A woman with so many children has
always plenty to think of. My mind was busy with my own affairs. The
windows were open, and the babble of the voices outside--high pitched,
resounding Italian voices, not like the murmur of English--came in to us
as the music floated out. All at once, I suddenly woke up from my
thinking and my family concerns. In the dusk one figure detached itself
from among the others with a start, and came forward slowly with bent
head and languid step. Had he never heard that song since he heard Ellen
break off, choked with tears unshed, and a despair which had never been
revealed? He came quite close under the window where I could see him no
longer. I could not see him at all; it was too dark. I divined him. Who
could it be but he? Not like John Ridgway, and yet John; his ghost, as
Chatty had said.
I did not stop to think what I was to do, but rose up in the dark room
where the child was singing, only a voice, herself invisible in the
gloom. I don’t know whether Chatty saw me go; but, if so, she was
inspired unawares by the occasion, and went on with her song. I ran
down-stairs and went out softly to the open door of the inn, where there
were other people standing about. Then I saw him quite plainly by the
light from a lower window. His head was slightly raised towards the
place from which the song came. He was very pale in that pale, doubtful
light, worn and old and sad; but as he looked up, a strange illumination
was on his face. His hand beat the air softly, keeping time. As she came
to the refrain his lips began to move as if he were repeating after his
old habit those words, ‘I will come again.’ Then a sudden cloud of pain
seemed to come over his face--he shook his head faintly, then bowed it
upon his breast.
In a moment I had him by the arm. ‘John,’ I said in my excitement; ‘John
Ridgway! we have found you.’ For the moment, I believe, he thought it
was Ellen who had touched him; his white face seemed to leap into light;
then paled again. He took off his hat with his old formal, somewhat shy
politeness--‘I thought it must be you, madame,’ he said. He said
‘madame’ instead of the old English madam, which he had always used:
this little concession to the changed scene was all the difference. He
made no mystery about himself, and showed no reluctance to come in with
me, to talk as of old. He told me he had a situation in an office in
Genoa, and that his health was bad. ‘After that _fiasco_ in the Levant,
I had not much heart for anything. I took the first thing that was
offered,’ he said, with his old vague smile; ‘for a man must live--till
he dies.’ ‘There must be no question of dying--at your age,’ I cried.
This time his smile almost came the length of a momentary laugh. He
shook his head, but he did not continue the subject He was very silent
for some time after. Indeed, he said nothing, except in reply to my
questions, till Chatty left, the room and we were alone. Then all at
once, in the middle of something I was saying--‘Is she--married again?’
he said.
‘Married--again!’
‘It is a foolish question. She was not married to me; but it felt much
the same: we had been as one for so long. There must have been
some--strong inducement--to make her cast me off so at the end.’
This he said in a musing tone, as if the fact were so certain, and had
been turned over in his mind so often that all excitement was gone from
it. But after it was said, a gleam of anxiety came into his half-veiled
eyes. He raised his heavy, tired eyelids and looked at me. Though he
seemed to know all about it, and to be resigned to it when he began to
speak, yet it seemed to flash across him, before he ended, that there
was an uncertainty--an answer to come from me which would settle it,
after all. Then he leaned forward a little, in this sudden sense of
suspense, and put his hand to his ear as if he had been deaf, and said
‘What?’ in an altered tone.
‘There is some terrible mistake,’ I said. ‘I have felt there was a
mistake all along. She has lost her hold on life altogether because she
believes you to be changed.’
‘Changed!’ His voice was quite sharp and keen, and had lost its languid
tone. ‘In what way--in what way? how could I be changed?’
‘In the only way that could matter between her and you. She thought,
before you left the Levant, that you had got to care for some one
else--that you had ceased to care for her. Your letter,’ I said, ‘your
letter!’--half frightened by the way in which he rose, and his
threatening, angry aspect--‘would bear that interpretation.’
‘My letter!’ He stood before me for a moment with a sort of feverish,
fierce energy; then he began to laugh, low and bitterly, and walk about
as if unable to keep still. ‘My letter!’ The room was scarcely
lighted--one lamp upon the table, and no more; and the half-darkness, as
he paced about, made his appearance more threatening still. Then he
suddenly came and stood before me as if it had been I that had wronged
him. ‘I am a likely man to be a gay Lothario,’ he cried, with that laugh
of mingled mockery and despair which was far more tragical than weeping.
It was the only expression that such an extreme of feeling could find.
He might have cried out to heaven and earth, and groaned and wept; but
it would not have expressed to me the wild confusion, the overturn of
everything, the despair of being so misunderstood, the miserable sum of
suffering endured and life wasted for nothing, like this laugh. Then he
dropped again into the chair opposite me, as if with the consciousness
that even this excitement was vain.
‘What can I say? What can I do? Has she never known me all
along?--Ellen!’ He had not named her till now. Was it a renewal of life
in his heart that made him capable of uttering her name?
‘Do not blame her,’ I cried. ‘She had made up her mind that nothing
could ever come of it, and that you ought to be set free. She thought of
nothing else but this; that for her all change was hopeless--that she
was bound for life; and that you should be free. It became a fixed idea
with her; and when your letter came, which was capable of being
misread----’
‘Then the wish was father to the thought,’ he said, still bitterly. ‘Did
she show it to you? did you misread it also? Poor cheat of a letter! My
heart had failed me altogether. Between my failure and her slavery----
But I never thought she would take me at my word,’ he went on piteously,
‘never! I wrote, don’t you know, as one writes longing to be comforted,
to be told it did not matter so long as we loved each other, to be
bidden come home. And there never came a word--not a word.’
‘She wrote afterwards, but you were gone; and her letter was returned to
her.’
‘Ah!’ he said, in a sort of desolate assent. ‘Ah! was it so? then that
was how it had to be, I suppose; things were so settled before ever we
met each other. Can you understand that?--all settled that it was to end
just so in misery, and confusion, and folly, before ever we met.’
‘I do not believe it,’ I cried. ‘There is no need that it should end so,
even now; if--if you are unchanged still.’
‘I--changed?’ He laughed at this once more, but not so tragically, with
sham ridicule of the foolishness of the doubt. And then all of a sudden
he began to sing--oh, it was not a beautiful performance! he had no
voice, and not much ear; but never has the loveliest of music moved me
more--‘I will come again, my sweet and bonnie: I will come----’ Here he
broke down as Ellen had done, and said, with a hysterical sob, ‘I’m ill;
I think I’m dying. How am I, a broken man, without a penny, to come
again?’
Chatty and I walked with him to his room through the soft darkness of
the Italian night. I found he had fever--the wasting, exhausting ague
fever--which haunts the most beautiful coasts in the world. I did my
best to reassure him, telling him that it was not deadly, and that at
home he would soon be well; but I cannot say that I felt so cheerfully
as I spoke, and all that John did was to shake his head. As we turned
home again through all the groups of cheerful people, Chatty with her
arm clasped in mine, we talked, it is needless to say, of nothing else.
But not even to my child did I say what I meant to do. I am not rich,
but still I can afford myself a luxury now and then. When the children
were in bed I wrote a short letter, and put a cheque in it for twenty
pounds. This was what I said. I was too much excited to write just in
the ordinary way:--
‘Ellen, I have found John, ill, heart-broken, but as faithful and
unchanged as I always knew he was. If you have the heart of a mouse in
you come out instantly--don’t lose a day--and save him. It may be time
yet. If he can be got home to English air and to happiness it will still
be time.
‘I have written to your mother. She will not oppose you, or I am much
mistaken. Take my word for all the details. I will expect you by the
earliest possibility. Don’t write, but come.’
In less than a week after I went to Genoa, and met in the steamboat from
Marseilles, which was the quickest way of travelling then, a trembling,
large-eyed, worn-out creature, not knowing if she were dead or alive,
confused with the strangeness of everything, and the wonderful change in
her own life. It was one of John’s bad days, and nobody who was not
acquainted with the disease would have believed him other than dying. He
was lying in a kind of half-conscious state when I took Ellen into his
room. She stood behind me clinging to me, undistinguishable in the
darkened place. The flush of the fever was going off; the paleness as of
death and utter exhaustion stealing over him. His feeble fingers were
moving faintly upon the white covering of his bed; his eyelids half
shut, with the veins showing blue in them and under his eyes. But there
was a faint smile on his face. Wherever he was wandering in those
confused fever dreams, he was not unhappy. Ellen held by my arm to keep
herself from falling. ‘Hope! you said there was hope,’ she moaned in my
ear, with a reproach that was heart-rending. Then he began to murmur
with his almost colourless yet smiling lips, ‘I will come again, my
sweet and bonnie; I will come--again.’ And then the fingers faintly
beating time were still.
But no, no! Do not take up a mistaken idea. He was not dead; and he did
not die. We got him home after a while. In Switzerland, on our way to
England, I had them married safe and fast under my own eye. I would
allow no more shilly-shally. And, indeed, it appeared that Mrs. Harwood,
frightened by all the results of her totally unconscious domestic
despotism, was eager in hurrying Ellen off, and anxious that John should
come home. He never quite regained his former health, but he got
sufficiently well to take another situation, his former employers
anxiously aiding him to recover his lost ground. And they took
Montpellier Villa after all, to be near Pleasant Place, where Ellen goes
every day, and is, Mrs. Harwood allows, far better company for her
father, and a greater relief to the tedium of his life, than when she
was more constantly his nurse and attendant. I am obliged to say however
that the mother has had a price to pay for the emancipation of the
daughter. There is nothing to be got for nought in this life. And
sometimes Ellen has a compunction, and sometimes there is an unspoken
reproach in the poor old lady’s tired eyes. I hope for my own part that
when that ‘eldest little girl’ is a little older Mrs. Harwood’s life
will be greatly sweetened and brightened. But yet it is she that has to
pay the price; for no argument, not even the last severe winter, and
many renewed ‘attacks,’ will persuade that old tyrant, invisible in his
upper chamber, to die.
A song needs no story perhaps; but a story is always the better for a
song: so that after all I need not perhaps apologize to Beethoven and
his interpreters as I meant to do for taking their lovely music as a
suggestion of the still greater harmonies of life.
THE END
RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LIMITED,
LONDON AND BUNGAY.