Old Kensington Part 30

Near the corner of one of these terraces, a little green weather-c.o.c.ked summer-house stands boldly facing the regattas in their season, and beyond it again are a steep bank and some steps to a second terrace, from whence there is the side-door leading to the boats.

On this particular evening Frank Raban came quietly zigzagging along these terraces, perhaps with some vague hope of meeting Dorothea on her return.

There are some years of one's life when one is less alive than at others, as there are different degrees of strength and power to live in the course of the same existence. Frank was not in the despairing state in which we first knew him, but he was not yet as other people are, and in hours of depression such as this, he was used to feel lonely and apart. He was used to see other people happy, anxious, busy, hurrying after one another, and he would look on as now, with his hands in his pockets, not indifferent, but feeling as if Fate had put him down solitary and silent, into the world--a dumb note (so he used to think) in the great music. And yet he knew that the music was there--that mighty human vibration which exists independent of all the dumb notes, cracked instruments, rifted lutes, and broken lyres of which we hear so much, and he had but to open his ears to it.

Two voices, anything but dumb, were talking inside the little summer-house. Raban had scarcely noticed them as he came along, listening with the vaguest curiosity, as people do, to reproaches and emotions which do not concern them; but presently, as he approached the summer-house, a tone struck him familiarly, and at the same instant he saw a dark figure rush wildly from the little wooden house, and leap right over the side of the terrace on to the path below; and then Frank recognised the frantic action--it could only be George. A moment afterwards a woman--he knew her too--came out of the summer-house and stood for an instant panting against the doorway, leaning with her two hands against the lintel. She looked pale, troubled; her hair was pushed back from her white face; her eyes looked dark, beautiful. Never before had Raban seen Rhoda (for it was Rhoda) so moved. When she saw him a faint flush came into her cheeks. She came forward a few steps, then she stopped short again.

She was dragging her silk mantle, which had fallen off. One end was trailing after her along the gravel.

'Mr. Raban, is that you?' she said, in an agitated way. 'Why did you come? Is it--is it nearly time to go? Is Mrs. Palmer come back? Oh, _please_ take me to her!' And then she suddenly burst into tears, and the long black silk mantle fell to the ground as she put out two fluttering hands.

Raban had flung his cigar over the terrace after George.

'What is it?' he said, anxiously. 'Can I help you in any way? What has happened?'

The young man spoke kindly, but in his usual matter-of-fact voice; and Rhoda, even in her distress, wondered at his coldness. No one before ever responded so calmly to whom she had appealed.

'Oh, you don't know,' she said; 'I can't tell you.' And the poor little hands went up again with a desperate gesture.

Raban was very much touched; but, as I have said, he had little power of showing his sympathy, and, foolish fellow, doing unto others as he would be done by; he only said, 'I have guessed something before now, Miss Parnell. I wish I could help you, with all my heart. Does not Miss Vanborough know of this? Cannot _she_ advise...?'

Rhoda was in no mood to hear her friend's praises just then.

'Dolly, cried Rhoda, pa.s.sionately, 'she would have every one sacrificed to George. I _would_ love him if I could,' she said, piteously, 'but how _can_ I? he frightens me and raves at me; how can I love him? Oh! Mr.

Raban, tell me that it is not wrong to feel thus?' And once more the fluttering hands went up, and the dark wistful eyes gazed childishly, piteously into his face. Rhoda was looking to Frank for the help that should have come to her from her own heart; she dimly felt that she must win him over, that if he would he could help her.

Rhoda pitied herself sincerely, she sobbed out her history to Frank with many tears. 'How can I tell them all? she said; 'it will only make wretchedness, and now it is only I who am unhappy.'

Was it only Rhoda who was unhappy? George, flying along the garden half distracted, aching, repentant, might have told another story. She had sent him away. He would do nothing that she wished, she said, he would not accept the independence that Lady Sarah had offered him, Rhoda did not believe in his love, she only wanted him to go, to leave her. Yes, she meant it. And poor George had rushed away frantic and indignant. He did not care where he went. He had some vague idea that he would get a boat and row away for ever, but as he was hurrying headlong towards the boat-house he saw Dorothea and Robert coming arm-in-arm up the little path, and he turned and hurried back towards the inn. Dolly called to him, but he did not answer. Rhoda had sent him away, poor Dolly could not call him back. Robert shrugged his shoulders.

'Why do you do that?' said Dolly, annoyed; 'he looked quite ill.

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

A BOAT UPON THE WATER.

Ich stand gelehnet an den Mast, Und zahlte jede Welle.

Ade mein schones Vaterland, Mein Schiff, das segelt schnelle!

Ich kam schon Liebchen's Haus vorbei, Die Fensterscheiben blinken; Ich guck' mir fast die Augen aus, Doch will mir Niemand winken.

Ihr Thranen bleibt mir aus dem Aug, Da.s.s ich nicht dunkel sehe.

Mein krankes Herz, brich mir nicht Vor allzugrossem Wehe!

--Heine.

George was shivering and sick at heart; the avenue led to a door that opened into the bar of the hotel, and George went in and called for some brandy. The spirits seemed to do him good; no one seeing a clumsy young fellow in a boating dress tossing off one gla.s.sful of brandy after another would have guessed at all the grief and pa.s.sion that were tearing at his poor foolish heart. Rhoda had sent him away. Had he deserved this? Could not she read the truth? Poor timid faithless little thing. Why had he been so fierce to her, why had he told her he was jealous? George had a curious quickness of divination about others, although he was blind about his own concerns. He had reproached Rhoda because she had been talking to Frank, but he knew well enough that Frank did not care for Rhoda. Poor child, did she know how it hurt him when she shrank from him and seemed afraid? Ah! she would not have been so cruel if she had known all. Thinking of it all he felt as if he had had some little bird in his rough grasp, frightened it, and hurt its wings. Then he suddenly said to himself that he would go back and find his poor frightened bird and stroke it and soothe it, ask it to forgive him. And then he left the place, and as hastily as he had entered; there was a last gla.s.s of brandy untasted on the counter, and he hurried back towards the terrace. He pa.s.sed the window of the room where Mrs. Palmer was ordering tea from the sofa. Dolly, who had just come in, saw him pa.s.s by; she did not like his looks, and ran out after him, although both Robert and her mother called her back. George did not see her this time; he flew past the family groups sitting out in the warm twilight; he came to the terrace where he had been a few minutes before, and where the two were still standing--Raban, of whom he had said he was jealous, Rhoda, whom he loved--the two were slowly advancing, Frank's square shoulders dark against the light and Rhoda's slight figure bending forward; she was talking to Raban as she had so often talked to George himself, with that language of earnest eyes, tremulous tones, shrinking movements--how well he knew it all. What was she saying? Was she appealing to Frank to protect her from his love and despair, from the grief that she had done her best to bring about? Rhoda laid her hand upon Raban's arm in her agitation.

It maddened George beyond bearing, and he stamped his heavy foot upon the gravel. Some people pa.s.sing up from the boats stared at him, but went on their way; and Frank, looking up, saw George coming up swinging his angry arms; his eyes were fierce, his hat was pushed aside. He put Rhoda aside very gently, and took a step forward between her and George, who stood for a minute looking from one to another, as if he did not understand, and then he suddenly burst out, with a fierce oath: 'Who told you to put yourself in my way?' And, as he spoke, he struck a heavy blow straight at Raban, who had barely time to parry it with his arm.

It was an instant's anger--one of those fatal minutes that undo days and months and years that have gone before; and that blow of George's struck Rhoda's feeble little fancy for him dead on the spot, as she gave a shrill cry of 'For shame!' and sprang forward, and would have clung to Raban's arm. That blow ached for many and many a day in poor Dorothea's heart, for she saw it all from a turn of the path. As for Frank, he recovered himself in an instant.

'Go back, George,' he said; 'I will speak to you presently.'

He did not speak angrily. His voice and the steady look of his resolute eyes seemed to sober the poor reprobate. Not so Rhoda's cry of, 'Go, yes go, for shame!'

'Go! What is it to you if I go or stay? Am I in your way?' shouts George. 'Have you promised to marry him too? Have you tortured him too, and driven him half mad, and then--and then----Oh, Rhoda, do you really wish me gone?' he cried, breaking down.

There was a tone in his voice that touched Raban, for whom the cry was not intended. Nothing would have melted Rhoda just then. She was angry beyond all power of expression. She wanted him gone, she wanted him silent; she felt as if she hated him.

'You are not yourself; you are not speaking the truth,' said the girl, in a hard voice, drawing herself up. Then, as she spoke, all the brandy and all the fury seemed to mount once more into George's head.

'I am myself, and that is why I leave you,' he shouts, 'you are heartless: you have neither love nor charity in you, and now I leave you. Do you hear me?' he cried, getting louder and louder.

Any one could hear. Dolly could hear as she came hurrying up from the end of the terrace to the spot where her poor boy stood shouting out his heart's secret to unwilling ears. More than one person had stopped to listen to the angry voice. The placid stillness of the evening seemed to carry its echo along the dusky garden bowers, out upon the water flowing down below. Some boatmen had stopped to listen; one or two people were coming up through the twilight.

'He is not sober,' said Rhoda to Dolly. She spoke with a sort of cold disgust.

Dolly hardly heard her at the time. All she saw then was her poor George, with his red angry face--Frank trying to pacify him. Should she ever forget the miserable scene? For long years after it used to rise before her; she used to dream of it at night--of the garden, the river, the figures advancing in the dark.

Dolly ran up to her brother, and instinctively put out her arms as if to shield him from every one.

'Come, dear; come with me,' she said flurriedly; 'don't let them see you like this.'

'It would shock their elegant susceptibilities,' cries the irrepressible George; 'it don't shock them to see a woman playing fast-and-loose with a poor wretch who would have given his life for her--yes, his life, and his love, and his heart's blood!'

Dolly had got her arms tight round George by this time. She had a shrinking dread of Henley seeing him so--he might be coming, she thought.

'Robert might see you. Oh, George, please come,' she whispered, still clinging to him; and suddenly, to Dolly's surprise, George collapsed, with a sigh. His furious fit was over, and he let his sister lead him where she would.

'Go down by the river-side,' said Raban, coming after them; 'there are too many people the other way.' He spoke in a grave, anxious tone, and as the brother and sister went their way, he looked after them for a moment. Dolly had got her arm fast linked in George's. The young man was walking listlessly by her side. They neither of them looked back; they went down the steps and disappeared.

The place was all deserted by this time; the disturbance being over, the boatmen had gone on their way. George and Dolly went and sat down upon a log which had been left lying near the water-side; they were silent; they could see each other's faces, but little more. He sat crouching over with his chin resting on his hands. Dolly was full of compa.s.sion, and longing to comfort; but how could she comfort? Such pain as his was not to be eased by words spoken by another person. When George began to speak at last, his voice sounded so sad and so jarred from its usual sweetness that Dorothea was frightened, as if she could hear in it the echo of a coming trouble.

'I wanted that woman to love me,' he said. 'Dolly, you don't know how I loved her.' He was staring at the stream with his starting eyes, and biting his nails. 'We have no luck, either of us,' he said; 'I don't deserve any, but you do. Tell Frank I'm sorry I struck him; she had made me half mad; she looks at me with those great eyes of hers, and says, "Go!" and she makes me mad: she does it to them all.... But now I have left her! left her! left her!' repeated ugly George, with a sort of sob.

'What does she care?' and he got up and shook himself, as a big dog might have done, and went out a step into the twilight, and then came back.

'Thank you, old Dolly, for your goodness,' he said, standing before her.

'I can't face them all again, and Robert with his confounded supercilious airs. I beg your pardon, Dolly; don't look angry. I see how good you are, and I see,' he said, staring her full in the face, 'that we have been both running our heads against a wall.'

He walked on a little way, and Dolly followed. She could not answer him just then. She felt with a pang that George and Robert would never be friends; that she must love them apart; even in heart she must keep them asunder.

They had come to the place where not an hour ago she had jumped ash.o.r.e.

The boat was still there, as they had left it--tied to the stake. The boatmen were at supper, and had not yet taken it in. 'What are you doing?' said Dolly, as George stopped, and began to untie the rope; 'George, be careful.'