Old Kensington Part 39

'Will you promise me never to see Raban, for instance?' said Robert.

'How can I make such a promise?' cried Dolly, indignant. 'To turn off a kind friend for an unjust fancy! If you trust me, Robert, you must believe what I say. Anyhow, you are free. Only remember that I shall trust in your love until you yourself tell me that you no longer care for me.'

The carriage stopped as she spoke. Robert got out and helped her down, produced the tickets, and paid the flyman.

The two went back in a dreary _tete-a-tete_; she wanted a heart's sympathy, and he placed a rug at her feet and pulled up the carriage window for fear of a draught. She could not thank him, nor look pleased.

Her head ached, her heart ached; one expression of love, one word of faithful promise would have made the world a different place, but he had not spoken it. He had taken her at her word. She was to be bound, and he was to be free. The old gentleman opposite never looked at them, but instantly composed himself to sleep; the old lady in the corner thought she had rarely seen a more amiable and attentive young man, a more ungracious young lady.

Once only Robert made any allusion to what had pa.s.sed. 'There will be no need to enter into explanations at present,' he said, in a somewhat uneasy manner. 'You may change your mind, Dora.'

'I shall never change my mind.' said Dolly, wearily, 'but it is no use troubling mamma and Aunt Sarah; I will tell them that I am not going away. They shall know all when you are gone.'

Dolly might have safely told Mrs. Palmer, who was not often disquieted by other people's sacrifices. With Lady Sarah it was different. But she was ill, and she had lost her grasp of life. She asked no question, only she seemed to revive from the day when Dolly told her that she was not going to leave her. It was enough for her that the girl's hand was in hers.

What is Dolly thinking of, as she stands by the sick bed, holding the frail hand? To what future does it guide her? Is it to that which Dolly has sometimes imagined contained within the walls of a home; simple, as some people's lives are, and hedged with wholesome briers, and darling home-ties, and leading straight, with great love and much happiness and sacred tears, to the great home of love? or is it to a broad way, unhedged, unfenced, with a distant horizon, a way unsheltered in stormy weather, easily missed, but wide and free and unshackled...?

Mrs. Palmer, who troubled herself little about the future, was for ever going off to Dean's Yard, where the Henleys were comfortably established. The eldest daughter was married, but there were two lively girls still at home; there were young officers coming and going about the place. There was poor Jonah preparing to depart on his glorious expedition. He was in good spirits, he had a new uniform. One day, hearing his aunt's voice, he came in to show himself, accoutred and clanking with chains. He was disappointed to find that Dolly was not there as he had expected. Bell admired loudly, but her mother almost screamed to him to go and take the hideous thing off. The dry, brisk-tongued little woman was feeling his departure very acutely. She still made an effort to keep up her old cynical talk, but she broke down, poor soul, again and again; she had scarcely spirit left to contradict Philippa, or even to forbid her the house.

The first time she had seen Dolly, she had been prepared to criticise the girl; Norah and Bell were more cordial, but Lady Henley offered her niece a kid glove and a kid cheek, and was slightly disappointed to find that Dolly's frivolity, upon which she had been descanting all the way to Church House, consisted in an old grey gown and a black ap.r.o.n, and in two black marks under her eyes, for poor Dolly had not had much sleep after that dismal talk with Robert. This was the day after the Cambridge expedition. Miss Vanborough was looking very handsome, notwithstanding the black marks, and she unconsciously revenged herself upon Lady Henley by a certain indifference and pre-occupation, which seemed to put her beyond the reach of that lady's pa.s.sing shafts; but one of them wounded her at last.

'I suppose Lady Sarah will be left to servants when you go?' says Lady Henley. 'Your mother is certainly not to be counted on; Hawtry is a much better nurse than she is. Poor dear Philippa! she sees everything reflected in a looking-gla.s.s. Your school is a different one altogether from our plain, old-fashioned country ways.'

Dolly looked surprised; she had not deserved this unprovoked attack from the little gaily-dressed lady perched upon the sofa. Norah was very much distressed by her mother's rudeness; Bell was struggling with a nervous inclination to giggle, which was the effect it always produced upon her.

'I have no doubt mamma would take care of my aunt if it were necessary,'

said Dolly, blushing with annoyance. 'But I am not going away,' she said. 'Robert and I have settled that it is best I should stay behind.

We have made up our minds to part.'

The two girls were listening open-eared. 'Then she has never cared for him, after all,' thought Bell.

But Lady Henley knew better: notwithstanding a more than usual share of jealousy and cross-grainedness, she was not without a heart. Dolly's last words had been spoken very quietly, but they told the whole story.

'My dear,' said the little woman, jumping up suddenly and giving her a kiss, 'I did not know this' (there were tears shining among the new green bonnet-strings)--'my trial is close at hand. You must forgive me, I--I am very unhappy.' She made a struggle, and recovered herself quickly, but from that minute Dolly and her Aunt Joanna were good friends.

The next time Robert called in Dean's Yard he was put through a cross-examination by Lady Henley. 'When was he coming back for Dolly?

what terms were they on?' Sir Thomas came in to hear all about it, and then Jonah sauntered in. 'Only wish I could get a chance,' said Jonah.

Robert felt disinclined to give Jonah the chance he wished for. Lady Henley was now praising Dolly as much as she had abused her before, and Robert agreed to everything. But he gave no clue to the state of his mind. He was surprised to find how entirely Lady Henley ignored his feelings and sympathised with Dolly's determination to remain behind. He walked away thinking that it was far from his intention to break entirely with Dolly, but he had not forgiven her yet; he was not sorry to feel his liberty in his own hands again. He meant to come back, but he chose to do it of his own free will, and not because he was bound by any promise.

As for Dolly, she was absorbed, she was not feeling very much just then, she had been over-wrought and over-strained. A dull calm had succeeded to her agitation, and besides Robert was not yet gone.

CHAPTER XL.

UNDER THE CLOCK-TOWER.

I will tell you when they parted.

When plenteous autumn sheaves were brown, Then they parted heavy-hearted.

The full rejoicing sun looked down As grand as in the days before: Only to them those days of yore Could come back nevermore.

--C. Rossetti.

An archway leads out of the great thoroughfare from Westminster Bridge into the sudden silence of Dean's Yard, where Sir Thomas had taken the house of a country neighbour. It stood within the cloisters of the Abbey, over-towered, over-clocked, with bells pealing high overhead (ringing the hours away, the poor mother used to think). Dolly found time one day to come for half-an-hour to see Jonah before he left. She had a great regard for him. She had also found a staunch friend in Norah with the grey eyes like her own. Bell told Dolly in confidence that her mother had intended Robert to marry Norah, but this had not at all interfered with the two girls' liking for one another. Mrs. Palmer, who was going on farther, set Dolly down at the archway, and as the girl was crossing the Yard she met Robert coming from the house. He was walking along by the railing, and among the dead leaves that were heaped there by the wind. Dolly's heart always began to beat now when she saw Robert.

This time he met her, and, with something of his old manner, said, 'Are you in a hurry? Will you come with me a little way? I have something to say.' And he turned into the cloister: she followed him at once.

From Dean's Yard, one gateway leads to common life and to the day's work, struggling by with creaks and whips and haste; another gateway brings you to a cloister arched, silent. The day's work is over for those who are lying in the peaceful enclosure. A side door from this cloister leads into the Abbey, where, among high piles and burning windows, and the shrill sweet echoes of the Psalms, a silent voice sometimes speaks of something beyond rest, beyond our feeble mode of work and praise, and our music and Gothic types--of that which is, but which we are not.

The afternoon service was pealing on and humming within the Abbey as Dolly and Robert walked slowly along the cloister. He was silent a long time. She tried to ask him what he had to say, but she found it difficult to speak to him now. She was shy, and she scarcely knew upon what terms they were: she did not care to know. She had said that he should be free, and she meant it, and she was too generous to seek to extort unwilling promises from him, or to imply that she was disappointed that he had given none.

At last Robert spoke. 'Dolly, shall you write to me?' he said.

'Yes, Robert, if you wish it,' she answered, simply. 'I should like to write to you.'

As she looked at him, fair and blushing, Robert said suddenly, 'Tell me, Dora, have you never regretted your decision?'

Dolly turned away--she could not meet his eyes. Hers fell upon a slab to the memory of some aged woman, who had, perhaps, gone through some such experience before she had been turned into a stone. Dolly was anything but stone. Tears slowly gathered in her eyes, and Robert saw them, and caught hold of her hand, and at that minute there came some pealing echo of an organ, and of voices bursting into shrill amens. All her life Dolly remembered that strange moment of parting, for parting she felt it to be. She must tell him the truth. She turned. 'No, Robert--never once,' she said; 'although it is even harder than I thought to let you go.'

They were standing by the door at the end of the first cloister. For the last time he might have spoken then, and told her that he only loved her the more, that distance was nothing to him, that time was nothing; but the service had come to an end, and while he hesitated a verger came out in his black gown, and the congregation followed--one or two strangers, then Jonah and Bell, with red eyes both of them, looking foolish somehow, and ashamed of being seen; then more strangers, and then with the last remaining verger, came Rhoda and Zoe Morgan, who sometimes went to church at the Abbey. They all joined the young couple and walked back to the house with them.

This was Dolly's last chance for an explanation with her cousin. The time was drawing to an end, fate came in between them now, for this very afternoon it was settled rather suddenly, at Sir Thomas's request, that Robert and Jonah should go as far as Ma.r.s.eilles together. This was Thursday, and the young men were to start on the Sat.u.r.day evening.

Lady Henley bore up very well at first, and clenched her teeth, and said they should all come to dinner on Friday.

'It is no use sitting alone and crying one's eyes out,' said the poor woman valiantly, and she made Sir Thomas ask a couple of Yorkshire friends to the feast. One was a county hero, in great favour with Bell.

The other was Mr. Anley, Jonah's G.o.dfather. He had a great affection for the family, and regularly dined with them upon grave crises and great occasions.

Lady Henley, being liberal in her hospitality, ordered in her viands and her champagne-bottles, and the girls went to Covent Garden and bought fruit and pineapples and autumn flowers to dress the table, and poor Jonah brought in a great baked pie from Gunter's.

'It's pate-de-foie-gras,' said he. 'My father likes it. I thought I might as well have it to celebrate the occasion.' And he held it up triumphantly.

Poor Lady Henley had almost over-rated her powers of endurance, for she looked into his honest sallow face, and then suddenly got up and rushed out of the room.

'Go to her, Jonah,' said the girls, looking very pale.

Jonah came down after a little while with a very red nose, and then he went out again to buy something else. All day long he kept coming and going in cabs, bringing home one thing after another--a folding-chair, a stick to open out suddenly, a whole kitchen battery fitted into a tea-kettle, brooches for the girls, toys for his eldest sister's children. As for the contrivances, they served to make one evening pa.s.s a little less heavily, and amused them for the time, and gave them something to talk about. But soon after, all poor Jonah's possessions went down in the Black Sea, in an ill-fated ship, that foundered with far more precious freight on board than tin pans and folding-chairs.

Punctual to her time on the Friday, Lady Henley was there to receive her guests in her stiffest silks, laces, and jewels, looking like some battered fetish out of a shrine, as she sat at the head of the table.

Dolly came to dinner sorely against her will, but she was glad she had come when she saw how Jonah brightened up, and when the poor little wooden mother held up her face and kissed her.

Lady Henley said, 'How do you do?' to her guests, but never spoke to any of them. It was a dreary feast. Robert failed at the last moment, and they sat down to a table with a gap where his place should have been. No one ate the pie except Sir Thomas, who swallowed a little bit with a gulp; then he called for champagne, and his face turned very red, and he looked hard at his son, and drank a long draught.

Jonah quickly filled his gla.s.s, and muttered something as he tossed it off. He had got his mother's hand under the table in his long bony fingers. Lady Henley was sitting staring fixedly before her. As Jonah drank their healths, Norah gave a little gasp. Mr. Anley took snuff. One of the country neighbours, young Mr. Jack Redmayne, whom Miss Bell used to meet striding, riding, and walking round about Smokethwaite, had begun a story about some celebrated mare; he paused for an instant, then suddenly rallying, went on and on with it, although n.o.body was listening, not even Miss Bell.

'I thought it best to go on talking,' he said afterwards. 'I hope they don't think it unfeeling. I'm sure I don't know what I said. I put my horse a dozen times over the same gate; even old Firefly wouldn't stand such treatment.' So the dinner went on; the servants creaked about, and the candles burnt bright, but no one could rally, and Lady Henley was finally obliged to leave the table.

Immediately after dinner came old Sam with his cab, and Dolly and her mother got up to go.