Old Kensington Part 42

Robert's letter was not very short: it was sufficiently stamped: it said all that had to be said; and yet, 'How unreasonable I am! how can men feel as women do?' thought Dolly, kissing the letter to make up for her pa.s.sing disappointment. Then came a thought, but she put it away with a sort of anger and indignation. She would not let herself think of Frank with pity or sympathy. It seemed disloyal to Robert to be sorry for the poor tutor.

Lady Henley also received a blotted scrawl from Jonah by that same post, and she made up her mind at last to go home, and she sent the brougham for Dolly and her mother to come and wish her good-by. On her first arrival Dolly was pounced upon by her cousins and taken in to Sir Thomas. When she came upstairs at last, she found her aunt and her mother in full committee, apparently on good terms, and with their heads close together. The little lady was upon the sofa. Mrs. Palmer was upon the floor, in a favourite att.i.tude. There only could she find complete rest, she said. Lady Henley had a great heap of Jonah's clothes upon the sofa beside her; she had been folding them up and marking them with her own hands. The drawing-room seemed full of the sound of the bells from the towers outside, and autumn leaves were dropping before the windows.

'Come here,' said Lady Henley, holding out her hand to Dolly. 'I have been talking to your mother about you. Look at her--as if there were no chairs in the room! I wanted to show you Jonah's letter. Foolish boy, he sends you his love! I don't know why I should give the message. You know you don't care for him, Dolly. Have you heard from Robert? Is he properly heart-broken?' with a sort of hoa.r.s.e laugh. 'Jonah mentions that he seems in very good spirits.' Then Lady Henley became agitated.

Dolly stood silent and embarra.s.sed. 'Why don't you answer,' said her aunt, quite fiercely. 'You can't answer; you can't show us his letter; you know in your heart that it has been a foolish affair. Your mother has told me all.'

Lady Henley was flushed and getting more and more excited, and, at the same time, Philippa gave one of her silvery laughs, and starting actively to her feet, came and put her arm round Dolly's waist.

'All! no, indeed, Joanna. Delightful creature as he is, Robert tells one nothing. Forgive me, dearest, it is a fact. He really seemed quite to forget what was due to me, a lady in her own drawing-room, when he said good-by to you. I only mention it, for he is not generally so _empresse_, and if he had only explained himself----'

'What have you been saying, mamma?' said Dolly, blushing painfully.

'There is nothing to explain.'

'There is everything to explain,' burst in Lady Henley from her corner; 'and if you were my own daughter, Dolly, I should think it my duty to remonstrate with you, and to tell you frankly what I have always said from the beginning. There never was the slightest chance of happiness in this entanglement for either of you; take the advice of an older woman than yourself. Robert has no more feeling for you than--than--a fish, or do you think he would consent to be free? Ah! if you were not so blinded.... There is one honest heart,' she said, incoherently, breaking down for an instant. She quickly recovered, however, and Dolly, greatly distressed, stood looking at her, but she could not respond; if ever she had swerved, her faithful heart had now fully returned to its first allegiance. All they said seemed only to make her feel more and more how entirely her mind was made up.

'Robert and I understand each other quite well,' said Dolly, gravely. 'I wish him to be free. It is my doing, not his; please don't speak of this to me, or to any one else again.'

She had promised to herself to be faithful, whatever came. Her whole heart had gone after Robert as he left her. She knew that she loved him.

With all her humility, the thought that she had made a mistake in him had been painful beyond measure. It seemed to her now that she was answerable for his faith, for his loyalty, and she eagerly grasped at every shadow of that which she hoped to find in him.

She walked away to the window to hide her own gathering tears. The bells had come to an end suddenly. Some children were playing in the middle of the road and pursuing one another, and a stray organ-man, seeing a lady at the window, pulled out his stop and struck up a dreary tune--'Partant pour la Syrie, le jeune et beau Dunois.' It was the tune of those times, but Dolly could never hear it afterwards without a sickening dislike.

Dolly, hearing the door bang, turned round at last.

'My dear Dolly, she is gone--she is in a pa.s.sion--she will never forgive you,' said Philippa, coming up in great excitement.

But she was mistaken. Lady Henley sent Dolly a little note that very evening:--

My Dear,--I was very angry with you to-day. Perhaps I was wrong to be angry. I will not say forgive an old woman for speaking the truth; it is only what you deserve. You must come and see us when you can in Yorkshire. We all feel you belong to us now.

Yours affectionately,

JOANNA HENLEY.

P.S.--I see in this evening's paper that our poor old neighbours at Ravensrick died at Harrogate within a day of one another. I suppose your friend Frank Raban comes into the property.

CHAPTER XLIII.

CRAGS AND FRESH AIR.

My prayers with this I used to charge: A piece of land not very large, Wherein there should a garden be; A clear spring flowing ceaselessly; And where, to crown the whole, there should A patch be found of growing wood.

All this and more the G.o.ds have sent.

--Horace: T. Martin.

The old town of Pebblesthwaite, in Yorkshire, slides down the side of a hill into the hollow. Rocks overtop the town-hall, and birds flying from the crags can look straight down into the greystone streets, and upon the flat roofs of the squat houses. Pebblesthwaite lies in the heart of Craven,--a country little known, and not yet within the tramp of the feet of the legions. It is a district of fresh winds and rocky summits, of thymy hill-sides, and of a quaint and arid sweetness. The rocks, the birds, the fresh rush of the mountain streams as they dash over the stones, strike Southerners most curiously. We contrast this pleasant turmoil with the sleepy lap of our weed-laden waters, the dull tranquillity of our fertile plains. If we did not know that we are but a day's journey from our homes, we might well wonder and ask ourselves in what unknown country we are wandering. Strange-shaped hills heave suddenly from the plains; others, rising and flowing tumultuously, line the horizon: overhead great clouds are advancing, heaped in ma.s.sive lines against a blue and solid sky. These clouds rise with the gusts of a sudden wind that blows into Frank Raban's face as he comes jogging through the old town on his way to the house, from which he had been expelled seven years before, and to which he was now returning as master. Smokethwaite is the metropolis of Pebblesthwaite, near which is Ravensrick. The station is on a little branch line of rail, starting off from the main line towards these rocks and crags of Craven.

Frank had come down with the Henleys, and seen them all driving off in the carriages and carts that had come down to meet them from the Court.

Nothing had come for him, and he had walked to the inn and ordered the trap.

'Where art goin'?' shouts a pair of leather-gaiters standing firm upon the door-step of an old arched house opposite.

'Ravensrick Court,' says the driver.

''Tis a bl.u.s.tering day,' says old leather-gaiters.

The driver cracks his whip, and begins to do the honours of Pebblesthwaite as the horse clatters over the stones. 'Do ye ken t'

shambles?' he says, pointing to an old arched building overtopped by a great crag.

'I know it as well as you do,' says Frank, smiling.

Can it be seven years since he left? Raban looks about: every stone and every pane of gla.s.s seems familiar. The town was all busy and awake. The farmers, st.u.r.dy, crop-headed, with baskets on their arms, were chattering and selling, standing in groups, or coming in and out of shops and doorways, careful as any housewives over their purchases.

There were strange stores--shoes, old iron, fish, all heaped together; seven years older than when the last market-day Frank was there, but none the worse for that. There was the old auctioneer, in his tall, battered hat, disposing of his treasures. He was holding up a horse's yoke to compet.i.tion. 'Three shillin'! four shillin'!' says he. The people crowd and gape round. One fellow, in a crimson waistcoat, driving past in a donkey-cart, stops short and stares hard at the trap and at Raban. Frank knew him, and nodded with a smile. Two more stumpy leather-gaiters, greeting each other, looked up as he drove by, and grinned. He remembered them too. There was the old Quaker, in his white neckcloth, standing at the door of his handsome old shop; and Squire Anley, walking along to the bank, all dressed from head to foot in loose grey clothes, with his bull-terrier at his heels. And then they drove out into the straight country roads, under the bridge between stone hedges, beyond which the late flames of summer green were still gleaming,--the meadows still shone with spangling autumn flowers. Far away in the hollow hung the smoke of the factory, with its many windows; a couple of tall chimneys spouted blackness; a train was speeding northward; close at hand a stream was dashing; the great trees seemed full of birds. It was a different world from that in which he had been basking. Frank already felt years younger as he drove along the road,--the old boyish impulses seemed waiting at every turn. 'Why, there goes old Brand,' he cried, leaning forward eagerly to look after an old keeper, with a couple of dogs, walking off with a gun towards the hills.

Frank called after the keeper, but the wind carried away his voice. As he drove along by each stile and corner that seemed to have awaited his coming, he suddenly thought of his talk with Dorothea. She had been cruelly hard to him, but he was glad to think now that he had followed her advice about forgiveness of injuries, and made an advance to the poor old people who were now gone. It would have been absurd to pretend to any great sorrow for their death. They had lived their life and shown him little kindness while it lasted. It was a chance now that brought him back to Ravensrick again.

He had written an answer to his grandfather's letter and accepted his offer, but the only answer which ever came to this was the telegram summoning him to Harrogate. It had been delayed on the way; and as he went down in the train, the first thing he saw was a paragraph in _The Times_,--'At the Mitre Hotel, Harrogate, on the 28th instant, John Raban, Esq., of Ravensrick, Pebblesthwaite, aged 86; and on the following day, Antonia, widow of the above John Raban, Esq., aged 75.'

The old squire had gone to Harrogate for the benefit of his health, but he had died quite suddenly; and the poor lady to whom he had left everything, notwithstanding his injunctions and elaborate directions as to her future disposal of it, sank the night after his death, unable to struggle through the dark hours.

And then came confusion, undertakers, lawyers, and agents, in the midst of which some one thought of sending for Frank. He was the old couple's one grandson, and the old lady had left no will. So the tutor came in for the savings of their long lives--the comfortable old house, the money in the bank, the money in the funds, the ox and the a.s.s, and the man-servant and the maid-servant, who had had their own way for so many years past, and preyed upon the old couple with much fidelity. They all attended the funeral in new suits of mourning ordered by the agent.

Frank recognised many of them. There was the old housekeeper who used to box his ears as a little boy; the butler who used to complain of him. He was oppressed by all these yards of black cloth and these dozens of white pocket-handkerchiefs; and he let them return alone to Ravensrick, and followed in the course of a day or two.

There are harsh words and unkind judgments in life, but what a might of nature, of oblivion and distraction is arrayed in battle against them; daylight, lamplight, sounds of birds and animals come in between, and turn the slander, the ill-spoken sentence and its fierce retort from its path. What do harsh words matter that were spoken a week ago? Seven days' sunshine have brightened since then. While I am railing at false friends and harsh interpretations, the clematis' flowers have starred the wavering curtain of green that shades my window from the light; the old Norman steeple has clanged the blue hours, the distant flow of the sea has reached me, with a sound of the twitter of birds in accompaniment. Is it six months ago since A. judged B. unkindly? A. and B., walking by the opal light of the distant horizon, are thinking no more of coldness and unkindness, but of the fresh sweetness of the autumnal sea.

As Frank comes driving along the well-known road, and the fresh bl.u.s.tering winds blow into his face, past unkindness matters little, every gust sends it farther away. He thinks, with a vague sense of pity, of a poor little ghost that used to run hiding and shrinking away in dark corners, a little fatalist doomed to break windows, slam doors, and leave gates ajar, through which accusing geese, sheep, ponies would straggle to convict him. He used to think they were all in one league against him. Twice a week on an average he was led up into his grandfather's study to be cross-examined and to criminate himself hopelessly before that inexorable old judge:--a handsome old man with flowing white locks and a grand manner and opinion upon every subject.

If old Mrs. Raban generally supplied the opinions, the language was the Squire's own. Mrs. Raban had been a spoiled old beauty, rouged and frizzed and rustling; she disliked every one who interfered with her own importance. She adored her husband, and was jealous of him to the last.

Some chance speech had set her against the poor little 'heir' as some one called him, and she had decreed that he was a naughty and stupid little boy and was to be kept in his place. There rises Frank's little doppelganger before him, hanging his head, convicted of having broken the carriage-window, or some such offence; there sits the old judge in his arm-chair by the library-table, dignified, stately, uttering magnificent plat.i.tudes, to which the ancestor in the cauliflower wig is listening with deep attention. Frank seems to hear the echo of his voice and the rustle of his grandmother's dress as she leaves the room: but the horse starts, a partridge scuffles across the road, and he comes back to the present again.

'Yan goes,' says the driver, excitedly, standing up on his box. Then they pa.s.s a little tumble-down village, and there at a turn of the road rise the chimneys of Ravensrick, and Pen-y-ghent rearing its huge back behind them, and the iron gates, and the old avenue, and the crows flying, whirling, dancing, sliding in twos and threes and twenties--how often the little doppelganger had watched their mystic dance. Had it been going on for seven years?

'There's t' Court,' said Frank's companion--a good-humoured, talkative man. 'T' owd Squire, he were respect.i.t, but he let things go.' As he spoke they were pa.s.sing by a cottage with a broken roof and a generally dilapidated, half-patched look; a ragged woman was standing at the door, two wild-looking children were rolling in the dust; at the same time a man on horseback, coming the contrary way, rode past them on the road.

The driver touched his cap, the woman disappeared into the house.

'That's Thomas Close, t' agent,' said Frank's companion.

Frank, looking back as the carriage turned, saw a curious little scene.

One of the children, who was standing in the road, suddenly stamped and clenched his little fist at the agent as he pa.s.sed. The man reined in his horse, leant back, and cut at the child with his whip; the little boy, howling, ran into the cottage.

Frank asked the driver what he knew of the people in the cottage.

The man shrugged his shoulders. 'Mary Styles she is queer in her ways,'

said he: 'i' t' habit o' snuffin' and drinkin'. Joe Styles he follows t'

Squire's cart; t' agent give him notice la-ast Monday--he wer' down at our ya-ard wantin' work, poor chap,' said the man, with a crack of the whip. 'Thomas Close he says he will have nought nor bachelors upon t'

farm. He's a----'

'Stop,' said Frank: 'I'll get down here: take my portmanteau to the front door and tell them to pay you, and say that--a--I am coming.'