For a week Wareham stayed on at Firleigh, walked with another funeral
through the garden and along the church path, and laid old Sir Michael
down by the side of his young son and younger wife--ashes to ashes, dust
to dust. There was much to arrange, much that a friend--a man--could do
to spare poor women. Death, like life, has its routine, which must be
gone through, though tears proclaim it heartless; and when the head of a
family steps down from his place, another waits to climb into it, all of
which needs moving out of the way for some, advancing for others, and
filling of vacant space.
Here the heir was a nephew, a young lad of fourteen, hastily sent for
from Eton, and present at the funeral with his mother. The boy was a
fine fellow, but the mother had that capacity for irritation which is by
no means the exclusive property of the ill-tempered. Words, kindnesses
even, grated. If it is ourselves that reveal others to us, Wareham
found himself reflecting that she presented the world with a likeness of
herself, painted blackly, when least she intended it, for she seldom
spoke of any one without a depreciatory remark. He resented, too, the
airs of ownership she had already assumed, and her benign patronage of
Ella. Talking to Mrs Newbold, he let fly his dislike.
"The woman fingers everything as if she were appraising it," he said.
"Her hand crooks involuntarily."
"I wish poor Ella could have her last days in peace," sighed Mrs
Newbold.
"Do you mean that she intends to stay?" Mrs Newbold nodded
emphatically, and sighed again.
"Ella said something, and Amelia jumped at it. She said it would be as
well to look round her. Said this to Ella, and not a thank you with
it!"
"If I can prophesy at all, this will quicken your own movements. What
do you think of doing?"
"Ella will come to me in Monmouthshire for the present. That will give
her time to look round, instead of deciding hurriedly." When things had
so far advanced, Wareham felt that he might leave. It annoyed him to
see Mrs Forbes already in possession, and hinting at this or that
change.
"Ella is young, very young," she remarked to him one day. "She does her
best, but _I_ should never allow the coachman to order what he chose,"
and the "I" was imperial. The day before he left, Ella came to Wareham
in the library, Venom at her heels.
"You really must go to-morrow, Dick?"
"I must--to avoid war. I can't be decently civil to your aunt for
twenty-four hours longer. You can. That's the wonder."
"Worries have shrunk into pin-pricks, I think," she said simply. "But I
am sorry for the servants, who will all leave the place, and who have
been here, some of them, as long as I have. Their hope is to return to
me some time, but when the dragging up is going on, one feels as though
one could never take root again. However, I didn't come to say all
this. I came to thank you, and I can't."
"I should be ashamed of you if you could. Look here, Ella, I suppose
this plan of yours about going with Mrs Newbold is the best just at
present?"
"Don't you think so?"
"Hum," said Wareham ruefully. "She's a kind old soul, but body and mind
made up of cotton wool. The finest quality of cotton wool, that I
allow, still--"
Ella smiled.
"There's a time when cotton wool is just what one wants."
"I've never met with it, then."
She did not go on to tell him that he might. What she said was spoken
with hesitation.
"Dick, I've been thinking about Miss Dalrymple."
"Yes?" He drew his breath.
"Shall you see her again?"
He was conscious of the weakness of his answer.
"Perhaps. I hardly know. She spoke of our meeting at Thorpe--Lord
Milborough's--next month. I may or mayn't be there." She took no
notice of these carefully expressed doubts.
"Please tell her that I should have liked to have seen her. She mustn't
think that I reproach her--I know it made Hugh happy at the last."
"Yes," cried Wareham eagerly. "Thank you, Ella. You can be generous."
"If he had lived, perhaps I shouldn't have been," she said quietly.
"But he loved her dearly. I believe it would hurt him if we bore a
grudge. You don't, do you?"
He said "No" with fervour, thinking that our own pre-occupations serve
as a thick bandage for the eyes, for once or twice he had suspected Ella
of reading his secret. It appeared, however, that she was absolutely
unsuspecting. She talked on for some time, and he saw that hers was a
strong soul, facing the inevitable undauntedly, and without murmurs,
strong enough not to refuse tears, but to control them. He said to her
once--"You have learned to live," to which she answered that one hasn't
got to learn that lesson by oneself. It seemed that she feared for the
people in the village, who might lose Firleigh advantages, but she meant
to talk to Catherine Oakleigh about them.
"And Reggie is a nice boy," she went on. "I am not afraid of things by
and by."
So, on the next day, Wareham turned his back on Firleigh. For ever, he
told himself, though Mrs Forbes had expressed a gracious hope that they
might often see him, and was contentedly unconscious that he went away
raging at her, and comparing her to a tremolo stop, to the scrapings of
slate-pencils, and to many other sources of irritation; calling her, to
himself, the trumpet of deterioration, that belittling woman! Relief at
escape from her balanced the real grief it cost him to quit a place
which had been like a home so long.
When he left Firleigh he had hardly made up his mind where to go.
Restlessness was upon him, but travel was impossible, when he was like
some tethered creature, bound not to go out of call, of reach, and
hobbled, as he told himself. Not much more than a fortnight of this
uncertainty remained, yet the time appeared portentous in length. He
had a vague inclination to bury himself in London, and write, but
experience warned him that, pre-occupied, his brains would not answer to
the call. The impulse, however, was strong enough at the station to
lead him to take a ticket for London.
Before he had been there two days he was sorry he had come. Writing was
not for him; the sentences yawned at him like bald-headed idiots. But
here his will stepped in and brought discipline, commanding that so much
should be done at any cost, even probable future consignment to the
fire. Something might be saved from it, at any rate his self-respect.
Wareham ground away at his work, and in the afternoon plunged into
street labyrinths, walking, walking, walking, without care where he
went, so long as it was where he was not likely to meet his fellows.
Oftenest he found himself down by the river, standing by black wharves,
watching the river life with unseeing eyes, the river itself moving
slowly, like the burdened thing it is. But sometimes he wandered round
old city churches, quaintly named, lonely protests against the mammon
around them, echoing emptily on Sundays, when the great human tide had
flowed away from their walls. He passed up a narrow passage one day,
and came full upon a lady sketching in a corner. It was Mrs Ravenhill,
and escape was out of the question. Besides, his better nature was
ashamed of the impulse. They greeted each other without astonishment,
for no one is surprised to meet an acquaintance in great London, and
Mrs Ravenhill explained that she was taking advantage of a fine day to
finish an old sketch.