Old Kensington Part 55

'Why should I be angry with you?' he answered, more gently.

CHAPTER LIII.

THAT THOU ART BLAMED SHALL NOT BE THY DEFECT.

Yesterday _this_ day's madness did prepare, To-morrow's silence, triumph, or despair.

Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why; Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.

--Omar Khayyam.

Once, as Dolly was hurrying away through the pa.s.sages to the great front entrance, she looked back, for she thought she heard Robert's step coming after her. It was only Casimir, the servant, who had been loitering by a staircase, and had seen her pa.s.s. She came to the great wide doors of the music-hall, where the people were congregated, the servants carrying their mistresses' carriage cloaks over their arms, the touters and vendors of programmes. The music was still in her ears; she felt very calm, very strange. Casimir would have darted off for the carriage if she had not stopped him.

'Is Mademoiselle indisposed? Shall I accompany her?' he asked.

But although Dolly looked very pale, she said she was not ill; she would go home alone: and when she was safely seated in the little open carriage he called for her, the colour came back into her cheeks. She leant back, for she was very tired. As she drove along she tried to remember what had happened, to think what more would happen, but she could not do so. It was a feeling, not an event, that had moved her so; and the outward events that relate these great unseen histories to others are to the actors themselves of little consequence. As for the future, Dolly could scarcely believe in a future. Was anything left to her now? Her life seemed over, and she was scarcely twenty; she was sorry for herself. She did not regret what she had done, for he did not love her. It was Rhoda whom he loved; Rhoda who seemed to have absorbed everything, little by little. There was nothing that she had spared.

Dolly wondered what they would say at the Court. She thought of Frank Raban, too. If the Squire's news was true, Frank Raban would be thinking no more of her, but absorbed in other interests. Even Frank--was any one faithful in life? Then she thought of George: he had not failed: he had been true to the end, and this comforted her.

Everything seemed to have failed with her, and yet--how shall I explain it?--Dolly was at peace with herself. In her heart she knew that she had tried, almost tried to do her best. No pangs of conscience a.s.sailed her as she drove home through this strange chaos of regrets and forgetfulness. Her hands fell into her lap as she leant back in the little carriage: it was bringing her away through the dull rattle of the streets to a new home, a new life, swept and garnished, so it seemed to Dolly, where everything was strange and bare--one in which, perhaps, little honour was to be found, little credit. What did she care! She was too true a lady to trouble herself about resentments and petty slights and difficulties. They had both meant to do right. As for Rhoda, Dolly would not think of Rhoda just then, it hurt her. For George's sake she must try to think kindly of her; was it for _her_ to cast a stone? Dolly came upstairs slowly and steadily, opened the door, which was on the latch, and came in, looking for her mother. Miss Vanborough had never, not even in the days of her happy love, looked more beautiful than she did as she came into the little sitting-room at home. A light was in her face; it was the self-forgetful look of someone who has pa.s.sed for a moment beyond the common state of life, escaping the a.s.saults of selfish pa.s.sion, into a state where feeling is not destroyed but multiplied beyond itself. In these moods sacrifice scarcely exists. The vanities of the world glitter in vain, discord cannot jar, and in the midst of tumult and sorrow souls are at peace.

Mrs. Palmer was not alone; the Squire was there. He had brought news. He had been detained by a peremptory telegram from Norah--'_Jonah arrives Paris to-morrow; mamma says, remain; bring Jonah home_'--and Jonah, who had come almost at the same time as the telegram, had accompanied the Squire, and was waiting impatiently enough hoping to see Dolly. He had been somewhat bored by the little elderly flirtation which had been going on for the last half-hour between his aunt and his G.o.dfather (which sort of _pot-pourri_, retaining a certain faint perfume of bygone roses, is not uncommon); but he did not move, except to go and stand out upon the balcony and stare up and down the street; he was leaning over the slender railing when Dolly came in, and so it happened that at first she only saw the Squire sitting by her mother's easy-chair. She gave him her hand. He stood holding it in his, and looking at her, for he saw that something had happened.

'Alone!' said Mrs. Palmer. 'Is Robert with you? I have some news for you; guess, Dolly;' and Philippa looked archly towards the window.

Dolly looked at her mother. 'I left them at the concert,' she said, not asking what the news was.

'What made you leave them? Why do you stare at me like that?' cried Mrs.

Palmer, forgetting her news. 'Have you had another quarrel? Dolly, I have only just been saying so to Mr. Anley; under the circ.u.mstances you really should _not_--you _really_ should----'

'It has all been a mistake, mamma,' said Dolly, looking up, though she did not see much before her. 'Everything is over. Robert and I have parted, quite parted,' she repeated sadly.

'Parted!' exclaimed the Squire; 'has it come to this?'

'Parted!' cried poor exasperated Philippa. 'I warned you. It is your own fault, Dolly; you have been possessed all along. Mr. Anley, what is to be done?' cried the poor lady, turning from one to the other. 'Is it your doing or Robert's? Dolly, what is it all about?'

Dolly did not answer for an instant, for she could not speak.

The Squire began muttering something between his teeth, as he strode up and down the room with his hands in his pockets.

'Take care, you will knock over the jardiniere,' cried Mrs. Palmer.

Dolly's eyes were all full of tears by this time. As he turned she laid her hand upon the old man's arm. 'It is my doing, not his,' she said.

'You must not be hard upon him; indeed it is all my doing.'

'It is your doing now, and most properly,' said the Squire, very gravely, and not in the least in his usual half-joking manner. 'I can only congratulate you upon having got rid of that abominable prig; but you must not take it all upon yourself, my poor child.'

Dolly blushed up. 'You think it is not my fault,' she said, and the glow spread and deepened; 'he was not bound when he left me, only I had promised to wait'--then with sudden courage, 'You will not blame him when I tell you this,' she said: 'I have not been true to him, not quite true--I told him so; it was a pity, all a pity,' she said, with a sigh.

She stood with hanging hands and a sweet, wistful, tender face; her voice was like a song in its unconscious rhythms, for deep feeling gives a note to people's voices that is very affecting sometimes.

'You told him so--what will people say?' shrieked poor Mrs. Palmer; 'and here is Jonah, whom we have quite forgotten.'

Jonah was standing listening with all his honest ears. It seemed to the young soldier that he also had been listening to music, to some sweet sobbing air played with tender touch. It seemed to fill the room even after Dolly had left it; for when she turned and suddenly saw her cousin it was the climax of that day's agitation. She came up and kissed him with a little sob of surprise and emotion, tried to speak in welcome, and then shook her head and quickly went away, shutting the door behind her. As Dolly left the room the two men looked at one another. They were almost too indignant with Henley to care to say what they thought of his conduct. 'Had not we better go?' said Jonah, awkwardly, after a pause.

But Mrs. Palmer could not possibly dispense with an audience on such an occasion as this; she made Jonah promise to return to dinner, she detained the Squire altogether to detail to him the inmost feelings of a mother's heart; she sent for cups of tea. 'Is Miss Dolly in her room, Julie?' she asked.

'Yes, Madame; she has locked the door,' said Julie.

'Go and knock, then, immediately, Julie; and come and tell me what she says, poor dear.'

Then Mrs. Palmer stirs her own tea, and describes all that she has felt ever since first convinced of Robert's change of feeling. Her experience had long ago taught her to discover those signs of indifference which.... The poor Squire listens in some impatience.

Meanwhile Robert and Rhoda are driving home together from the concert, flattered, dazzled, each pursuing their own selfish schemes, each seeing the fulfilment of small ambitions at hand, and Dolly, sitting at the foot of her bed, is saying good-by again and again. The person she had loved, and longed to see, and thought of day after day and hour after hour, was not Henley, but some other quite different man, with his face, perhaps, but with another soul and nature.... That Robert, who had been so dear to her at one time, so vivid, so close a friend, so wise, so sympathetic, so strong, and so tender, was nothing, no one--he had never existed. The death of this familiar friend, the dispersion of this familiar ghost seemed, for a few hours, as if it meant her own annihilation. All her future seemed to have ended here. It was true that she had accused herself openly of want of faithfulness; but the mere fact of having accused herself seemed to make that self-reproach lighter and more easy to bear. After some time she roused herself; Marker was at the door and saying that it was dinner-time, and Dolly let her in and dressed for dinner in a dreamy sort of way, taking the things, as Marker handed them to her, in silence, one by one. The Squire and Jonah were both in the sitting-room when Dolly came in in the white dress she usually wore, with some black ribbons round her waist, and tied into her bronze hair. She did not want to look as if she was a victim, and she tried to smile as usual.

'You must not mind me,' she said presently, in return for the Squire's look of sympathy. 'It is not to-day that this has happened; it began so long ago that I am used to it now.' Then she added, 'Mamma, I should like to see Robert again this evening, for I left him very abruptly, and I am afraid he may be unhappy about me.'

'Oh, as to that, Dolly, from what the Squire tells me, I don't think you need be at all alarmed,' cried Dolly's mamma: 'Jonah met him on the stairs with Rhoda, and really, from what I hear, I think he must have already proposed. I wonder if he will have the face to come in himself to announce it.'

Both Jonah and the Squire began to talk together, hoping to stop Mrs.

Palmer's abrupt disclosures; but who was there who could silence Mrs.

Palmer? She alluded a great deal to a certain little bird, and repeatedly asked Dolly during dinner whether she thought this dreadful news could be true, and Robert really engaged to Rhoda?

'I think it is likely to be true before long, mamma,' said Dolly, patiently: 'I hope so.'

She seemed to droop and turn paler and paler in the twilight. She was not able to pretend to good spirits that she did not feel; but her sweetness and simplicity went straight to the heart of her two champions, who would have gladly thrown Robert out of the first-floor window if Dolly had shown the slightest wish for it.

After dinner, as they all sat in the front room, with wide-evening windows, Julie brought in the lamp. She would have shut out the evening and drawn down the blinds if they had not prevented her. The little party sat silently watching the light dancing and thrilling behind the house-tops; n.o.body spoke. Dolly leant back wearily. From time to time Mrs. Palmer whispered any fresh surmise into the Squire's ear: 'Why did not Robert come? Was _she_ keeping him back?'

Presently Mrs. Palmer started up: a new idea had occurred to her. She would go in herself, unannounced: she would learn the truth: the Squire, he too, must come. The Squire did as he was bid: as they left the room Jonah got up shyly from his seat, and went and stood out on the balcony.

Dolly asked him whether there was a moon.

'There is a moon rising,' said the Captain, 'but you can't see it from where you sit; there from the sofa you can see it.' And then he came back, and wheeled the sofa round, and began turning down the wheel of the lamp, saying it put the moonlight out.

As the lamp went out suddenly with a splutter, all the dim radiance of the silver evening came in a soft vibration to light the darkened room.

One stream of moonlight trickled along the balcony, another came lapping the stone coping of the window: the moon was rising in state and in silence, and Dolly leant back among her cushions, watching it all with wide open eyes. Jonah's dark cropped head rose dark against the Milky Way. As the moon rose above the gable of the opposite roof a burst of chill light flooded the balcony, and overflowed, and presently reached the foot of the couch where Dolly was lying, worn out by her long day.

Robert, who had been taking a rapid walk on the pavement outside, had not noticed the moon: he was preoccupied by more important matters.

Rhoda's speeches were ringing in his ears. Yet it was Dolly's fault all along; he was ready to justify himself; to meet complaint with complaint; she might have been a happy woman. He had behaved honourably and forbearingly; and now it was really unfair that she should expect anything more from him, or complain because he had found his ideal in another and more feminine character.

Dolly had heard the roll of the wheels of the carriage that brought Robert and Rhoda home, but she had not heard the short little dialogue which was being spoken as the wheels rolled under the gateway. The two had not said much on the way. Rhoda waited for Robert to speak. Robert sat gazing at his boots.

'One knows what everybody will say,' he said at last very crossly.