Old Kensington Part 14

Raban could not help smiling; but Dolly interposed. She saw that her cousin was only half pleased by the levity with which his remarks were received. 'What had Lord Holland done?' she asked.

'He betrayed everybody,' said Robert; 'first one side, then another. He earned his fate--he was utterly unreliable and inconsistent.'

'How can an honest man be anything else?' cried George, with his usual snort, rushing to battle. 'No honest men are consistent. Take Sir Robert Peel, take Oliver Cromwell. Lord Holland joined the Commonwealth, and then gave his head to save the King's. It was gloriously inconsistent.'

'For my part,' Robert answered, with some asperity, I must confess that I greatly dislike such impulsive characters. They are utterly unscrupulous....'

'Some consciences might have been more scrupulously consistent than Lord Holland's, and kept their heads upon their shoulders,' said Raban, drily.

Dolly wondered what he meant, and whether he was serious. He spoke so shortly that she did not always understand him.

'I am sure I shall often change my mind,' she said, to her cousin.

'You are a woman, you know,' answered Henley, mollified by her sweet looks.

'And women need not trouble themselves about their motives?' said Frank, speaking in his most sententious way, and ignoring Henley altogether.

'Their motives don't concern anybody but themselves, cried Dolly, rather offended by Frank's manner. He seemed to look upon her as some naughty child, to be constantly reproved and put down. Why did he dislike her?

Dolly wondered. She couldn't understand anybody disliking her. Perhaps it says well for human nature, on the whole, that people are so surprised to find themselves odious to others.

Just then some church-bell began to ring for evening service. Five o'clock had come to Kensington, and George proposed that they should walk on with Raban to the house in Nightingale Lane.

'This way, Rhoda,' he said; 'are you tired? Take my arm.'

Rhoda, however, preferred tripping by Dolly's side.

A painter lived in the house to which Raban was going. It stood, as he said, in Nightingale Lane, within garden-walls. It looked like a farm-house, with its many tiles and chimneys, standing in the sweet old garden fringed with rose-bushes. There were poplar-trees and s...o...b..ll-trees, and may-flowers in their season, and lilies-of-the-valley growing in the shade. The lawn was dappled with many shadows of sweet things. From the thatched porch you could hear the rural clucking of poultry and the lowing of cattle, and see the sloping roof of a farm-house beyond the elms. Henley did not want to come in; but Dolly and Rhoda had cried out that it was a dear old garden, and had come up to the very door, smiling and wilfully advancing as they looked about them.

The old house--we all know our way thither--has stood for many a year, and seen many a change, and sheltered many an honoured head. One can fancy Addison wandering in the lanes round about, and listening to the nightingale 'with a much better voice than Mrs. Tofts, and something of Italian manners in her diversions;' or Newton, an old man with faded blue eyes, pa.s.sing by on his way from Pitt House, hard by. Gentle Mrs.

Opie used to stay here, and ugly Wilkes to come striding up the lane in the days of Fox and Pitt and fiery periwigs. Into one of the old raftered rooms poor Lord Camelford was carried to die, when he fell in his fatal duel with Mr. Best in the meadows hard by. Perhaps Sir Joshua may have sometimes walked across from Holland House, five minutes off, where he was, a hundred years ago, painting two beautiful young ladies.

Only yesterday I saw them; one leant from a window in the wall, the other stood without, holding a dove in her extended hand; a boy was by her side. Those ladies have left the window long since; but others, not less beautiful, still come up Nightingale Lane, to visit the Sir Joshua of our own time in his studios built against the hospitable house. My heroine comes perforce, and looks at the old gables and elm-trees, and stands under the rustic porch.

Robert was seriously distressed. 'Do come away,' said he; 'suppose some one were to see us.'

Rhoda, with a little laugh, ran down one of the garden-walks, and George went after her. Dolly stood leaning up against the doorway. She paid no attention to Robert's remonstrance, and was listening, with upraised eyes, to the bird up in the tree. Frank's hand was on the bell, when, as Robert predicted, the door suddenly opened wide. A servant, carrying papers and parcels, came out, followed by a lady in a flowing silk dress, with a lace hood upon her head, and by a stately-looking gentleman, in a long grey coat; erect, and with silver hair and a n.o.ble and benevolent head.

'Why is not the carriage come up?' said the lady to the servant, who set off immediately running with his parcels in his arms; then seeing Dolly, who was standing blushing and confused by the open door, she said kindly, 'Have you come to see the studios?'

'No,' said Dolly, turning pinker still: 'it was only the garden, it looked so pretty; we came to the door with Mr. Raban.'

'I had an appointment with Mr. Royal,' said Raban, also shyly, 'and my friends kindly showed me the way.'

'Why don't you take your friends up to see the pictures?' said the gentleman. 'Go up all of you now that you are here.'

'My servant shall show you the way,' said the lady, with a smile, and as the servant came back, followed by a carriage, she gave him a few parting directions. Then the Councillor and the lady drove off to the India Office as hard as the horses could go.

It was a white-letter day with Dolly. She followed the servant up an oak pa.s.sage, and by a long wall, where flying figures were painted. The servant opened a side door into a room with a great window, and my heroine found herself in better company than she had ever been in all her life before. Two visitors were already in the studio. One was a lady with a pale and gentle face--Dolly remembered it long afterwards when they met again--but just then she only thought of the pictures that were crowding upon the walls sumptuous and silent--the men and women of our day who seem already to belong to the future, as one looks at the solemn eyes watching from the canvas. Sweet women's faces lighted with some spiritual grace, poets, soldiers, rulers, and windbags, side by side, each telling their story in a well-known name. There were children too, smiling, and sketches, half done, growing from the canvas, and here and there a dream made into a vision, of Justice or of Oblivion. Of Silence, and lo! t.i.tans from their everlasting hills lie watching the mists of life: or infinite Peace, behold, an Angel of Death is waiting against a solemn disc. Dolly felt as though she had come with Christian to some mystical house along the way. For some minutes past she had been gazing at the solemn Angel--she was absorbed, she could not take her eyes away.

She did not know that the painter had come in, and was standing near her.

'Do you know what that is?' said he, coming up to her.

'Yes,' answered Dolly in a low voice; 'I have only once seen death. I think this must be it; only it is not terrible, as I thought.'

'I did not mean to make it terrible,' the painter said, struck by her pa.s.sing likeness to the face at which she was gazing so steadfastly.

Raban also noticed the gentle and powerful look, and in that moment he understood her better than he had ever done before; he felt as if a sudden ray of faith and love had fallen into his dark heart.

Before they left, Mr. Royal introduced Dolly to the two ladies who were in the studio. He had painted the head of one of them upon a little wooden panel that leant upon an easel by which the two ladies were standing. One of them spoke: 'How her children will prize your gift, Mr.

Royal; it is not the likeness only, it is something more than likeness.'

'Life is short; one cannot do all things,' said the painter, quietly. 'I have tried not so much to imitate what I see as to paint people and things as I feel them, and as others appear to me to feel them.'

Dolly thought how many people he must have taught to feel, to see with their eyes, and to understand.

All the way home she was talking of the pictures.

'I saw a great many likenesses which were really admirable,' said Robert. 'I have met several of the people out at dinner.'

Rhoda could not say a single word about the pictures.

'Why, what were you about?' said Dolly, after she had mentioned two or three one after another. 'You don't seem to have looked at anything.'

'You didn't come into the back room, Dolly. I had an excellent cup of tea there,' said George; 'that kind lady had it sent up for us.'

CHAPTER XVII.

'INNER LIFE.'

The idea of a man's interviewing himself is rather odd to be sure. But then that is what we are all of us doing every day. I talk half the time to find out my own thoughts, as a schoolboy turns his pockets inside out to see what is in them.

--O. W. Holmes.

The next time Raban came to town, he called again at Church House. Then he began to go to John Morgan's, whom he had known and neglected for years. He was specially kind to Rhoda and gentle in his manner when he spoke to her. Ca.s.sie, who had experience, used to joke her about her admirer. Not unfrequently Dolly would be in Old Street during that summer, and the deeply-interested recipient of the girls' confidences.

'Ca.s.sie, do you really mean that he has fallen in love with Rhoda?' said Dolly. 'Indeed he is not half good enough for her.' But all the same, the thought of his admiration for her friend somewhat softened Dolly's feelings towards Raban.

Rhoda herself was mysterious. One day she gave up wearing her diamond cross, and appeared instead with a pretty pearl locket. She would not say where she had got it. Zoe said it was like Ca.s.sie's. 'Had John given it to her?' Rhoda shook her head.

Dolly did not like it, and took Rhoda seriously to task. 'Rhoda, how silly to make a mystery about nothing!' Rhoda laughed.

Except for occasional troubles about George, things were going well at Church House that autumn. Raban sent a warning letter once, which made Dolly very angry. The Admiral talked of coming home in the following spring. Dolly's heart beat at the thought of her mother's return. But meanwhile she was very happy. Robert used to come not unfrequently.

Rhoda liked coming when he was there; they would all go out when dinner was over, and sit upon the terrace and watch the sun setting calmly behind the medlar-tree and the old beech walk. Kensington has special tranquil hours of its own, happy jumbles of old bricks and sunset. The pigeons would come from next door with a whirr, and with round b.r.e.a.s.t.s shining in the light; the ivy-leaves stood out green and crisp; the birds went flying overhead and circling in their evening dance. Three together, then two, then a lonely one in pursuit.

Dolly stood watching them one evening, in the autumn of that year, while her aunt and Henley were talking. John Morgan, who had come to fetch Rhoda home, was discoursing, too, in cheerful tones, about the voice of nature I think it was. 'You do not make enough allowance for the voice of nature,' the curate was saying. 'You cannot blame a man because he is natural, because his impulse cries out against rules and restrictions.'