A BRIDGE OF SIGHS.
When Bramwell entered Crawford's House the first sight that met his
eyes was the form of Hetty Layard lying prone on the floor of the
passage.
With a cry of dismay he sprang to her and raised her. He looked round
for help and called out, but there was no succour in sight; no
response came to his cry. He took her up and carried her into the
sitting-room, and laid her on the couch.
"I might have guessed she would faint," he moaned; "and now what am I
to do?"
There was water on the table laid for dinner. He sprinkled some on her
face. "What am I to do? Shall I run for help?" he cried, looking
frantically round the room.
At that moment there was the sound of a latch-key in the door.
Bramwell rushed out eagerly into the passage, saying to himself, "This
must be either her brother or Mr. Crawford; Philip told me there are
only two keys."
If instead of going up the river in the steamboat Crawford had come
back to Welford, he would have arrived at about this time.
The front door opened, and a man with a remarkably long beard entered,
and for an instant stood looking in speechless amazement at the other
man.
"My name is Bramwell. Your sister has fainted. She is in the front
room."
"Fainted!" cried Alfred Layard in alarm, as he dashed past the other.
At that moment Hetty opened her eyes and sighed.
"Hetty, Hetty, dear Hetty! what is this. What is the matter?"
Bramwell remained in the passage. He walked up and down in great
agitation.
"I don't know what happened," said the girl, in a weak, tremulous
voice.
Her brother got some wine, and made her drink a little.
"Try and remember, dear," said Layard with passionate tenderness. "Did
any accident occur? Drink just a little more. Did you get a fright,
dear? Has anything happened to the boy?"
"No, Alfred. O, I am better now. I remember it all. A dreadful man
terrified me, and Mr. Bramwell came to my assistance, and I ran into
the house; and I can remember no more."
Bramwell, hearing voices, knew that Hetty had recovered, and that he
could be of no further use; so he stole quietly out of the house, and
returned to his own island domain.
He did not seek the boys, who were playing in the timber-yard that the
old barrow was a Punch-and-Judy show. He took the canal side of the
wharf, and began pacing up and down hurriedly.
His condition was one of extreme exultation; he knew not, inquired
not, at what. He trod the clouds, and surveyed below his feet a
subjugated and golden world. The air was intoxication, and life a
dream of jocund day. He did not pause to ask a reason for these
feelings and sensations; they were his; that was enough.
Of late the hideous gloom in which he had lived for two years, a
solitary upon that lonely and unlovely islet, had been leaving him as
darkness leaves a hill at the approach of day. Now from the summit to
the base, his nature seemed bathed in an extraordinary midday
splendour. His soul was shining among the stars. He was a blessed
spirit amid the angels. He was the theme to which all the rest of the
world answered in harmonious parts.
It was not passion or love, but a spiritual effulgence. It was like
the elation induced by a subtle perfume. He would have been satisfied
to be, and only to be, if he might be thus. He was in clear air at a
stupendous height of happiness, and yet did not feel giddy. He could
think of no higher earthly joy than he experienced. It was a joy
the very essence of which seemed of the rapture of heaven. It was
a kind of ecstatic and boundless worship from a self-conscious and
self-centred soul. It idealised the world, and restored Paradise to
earth.
In his mind was no thought, no defined thought, of love for his
beautiful neighbour, Hetty Layard. He was in the delicious spiritual
experiences of that hour merely celebrating his emancipation from
bondage. The note from Kate which had come with Frank and the
subsequent announcement of Kate's death in the newspapers had left him
no room to doubt that he was free. That day he had struck a man an
angry blow for the first time in all his life. And he had struck that
blow in defence of this beautiful girl, who was so good and so devoted
to the little orphan boy, the son of her brother. He had an orphan boy
too, and she was very gentle to his son. He had known for some time
that he was a free man, free to look upon the face of woman with a
view to choosing another wife; but until this day, until this hour, he
had not realised what this freedom meant.
The notion that he might take another companion for life had not taken
concrete form since Frank's coming, and now the only way in which it
presented itself to him was that he might smile back to Hetty's smile,
and glory in her beauty.
He was startled by hearing a voice saying behind him, "Mr. Bramwell, I
have taken the liberty of coming over uninvited to thank you from the
bottom of my heart for your timely and much-needed aid to my sister."
Bramwell coloured, and became confused. He was unaccustomed to new
faces, unaccustomed to thanks, unaccustomed to pleasant thoughts of
woman.
"I--I did nothing," he said. "It was merely by accident I knew about
it."
To be thanked made him feel as though he had done something shameful.
"However it happened," said Layard, taking his hand in both his own
and shaking it cordially, "you have placed me under a deep debt of
gratitude to you."
"If you do not wish to make me very uncomfortable, you will not say
another word about it. I hope Miss Layard is nothing the worse of the
affair?"
"My sister is all right. Of course it gave her an ugly turn. It isn't
a nice place to encounter a bullying rowdy alone. Since you ask me to
say no more about your share in the business, I shall be dumb."
The two men were now walking up and down side by side along the tiny
quay of the tiny islet.
A thin film of cloud dulled the glare of the afternoon sun. The whole
expanse of heaven was radiant with diaphanous white clouds; a barge
laded with wood indolently glided by to the clank-clank of the horse's
hoofs on the tow-path; the sounds from Welford Bridge, which in the
mornings came sharp and clear, were now dulled by the muffled hum of
larger noises from afar. There was an air of silence and solitude over
Boland's Ait. Notwithstanding the griminess of the surroundings and
the dilapidations of the buildings on the holm, there was an aspect of
peace and retirement in the place.
Hetty had not told her brother anything of Crawford's visit save as
much as was necessary to explain the admission of Red Jim to the house
and quay.
After a few sentences, Layard said, "You must know, Mr. Bramwell, I
don't think I shall stay in this house a minute longer that I can
possibly help."
"Indeed!" said Bramwell, feeling as though the sunlight from the sky
had been suddenly dulled, and the things upon which his eyes fell had
grown more squalid.
"To be candid with you, I don't care about my landlord. He is, to say
the least of it, eccentric; and after the affair of to-day I shall
never be easy. You see, the house is quite isolated, and no one ever
by any chance passes the door."
"It must be very lonely for Miss Layard," Bramwell said, forgetting in
his sympathy for the girl his own two years of absolute seclusion.
"She says, and I believe her, that she does not feel the want of
company; but after to-day she will, I am afraid, dread the place. Of
course, I must get some person to stay with her all the time I am out
of the house. Could any one have been more helpless than she was
to-day?"
"What you say has a great deal of force in it; but," said he, trying
to restore the full complement of sunlight to the sky, "don't you
think with a second person in the house all would be safe?"
"Well, I should imagine so; but one does not like to be continually
saying, 'all is safe.' One likes to take it for granted, as one takes
the sufficiency of air or the coming of daylight with the sun."
They walked for a few seconds in silence, and then Bramwell said, "No
barge ever comes through the Bay now, but, owing to my habit with the
floating-stage on the canal, I moor the second stage to the Ait every
afternoon when Freddie has gone home, and haul it across in the
morning. For the future I shall leave it across permanently, so that
Miss Layard may feel I am as near to her as some one living next door.
I hope and trust, and believe, she will never have any need of my
help, but it may give her a little confidence to know that I can be
with her instantly in case of need."
"It is extremely kind of you to think of that. It seems you are
determined to place me under obligations I can never discharge. The
worst of it is that when I came over here I had it in my mind to ask
you a favour, and now you have offered to do one unasked."
"If what you came to ask is anything in the world I can do, you may
count on me, Mr. Layard. For, remember, that although this is the
first time we have met, I am quite well acquainted with you through
Philip Ray."
"And I with you, through him also, or I should not speak so freely."
"Isn't Ray a fine fellow?" asked Bramwell enthusiastically.
"The finest fellow I know," answered Layard cordially.
"He is a little enthusiastic, or hot-headed, or fierce, I know, but he
will calm down in years. Indeed, I find that of late he is calming
down a good deal. As I said before, I treat you as an old friend. I
suppose I have been so long an eremite that once I come forth and open
my mouth I shall never stop talking. What I have in my mind about
Philip, who was the only friend of my solitude, is that if he got a
good sensible wife it would be the making of him."
"I have no doubt it would."
"But the worst of it is that I don't think he ever once regarded one
woman with more favour than another. In fact, I have always put him
down as a man who will never marry."
"Indeed!" said Layard. "I wonder does Ray himself share that notion.
If he does, he is treating Hetty badly," he thought.
"And the pity of it is, that if he would only marry he would make the
best husband in England."
"It is indeed a pity," said Layard, but he did not say what
constituted the pity. To himself, "I don't think anything has been
said between them yet, but it seems to me Hetty or he will have some
news for me very soon." He said aloud, "The little favour I told you I
had to ask----"
"Of course; and I told you if it lay within my power I'd do it."
"Yes; and it does lie easily within your power, and I will take no
excuse. Come over and spend an hour with us this evening."
"But I cannot!" cried Bramwell.
"But you must. We will take no excuse."
He wavered. His views of all things had greatly altered since he was
first invited to Crawford's House. "Still the boy. I cannot leave him
alone." He felt half inclined to go.
"The boy will not be alone. Why, now that you have decided to leave
the stage across all night, your house and ours may be looked on as
one."
What a pleasant fancy it was that Crawford's House, where she lived,
and Boland's Ait, where he lived, might be looked on as one!
"If," went on Layard, "you are uneasy about your boy, at any moment
you can run across and see him. You really have no excuse. Our sons
have been friends some time, and now you have placed me under a great
obligation to you, and you refuse to make the obligation greater. Is
that generous of you?"
Bramwell smiled. "I am conquered, fairly conquered."
"Very well; and mind, not later than eight o'clock. Now, where's this
young savage of mine? His aunt will imagine you have sold the two of
us into slavery."