Old Kensington Part 9

He looked so odd and angry that she stopped quite frightened. Dark fierce lines used to come under his heavy eyes at the smallest attempt to revive what was still so recent and vivid. If it was rude he could not help it.

He never spoke of himself. Strangers used to think Raban odd and abrupt when he sometimes left them in the middle of a sentence, or started away and did not answer. His old friends thought him changed, but after a great crisis we are used to see people harder. And this one talks, and you think he has told you all; and that one is silent, and he thinks he has told you nothing. And feelings come and go, the very power to understand them comes and goes, gifts and emotions pa.s.s, our inmost feelings change as we go on wandering through the narrow worlds that lie along the commonest common-places and ways of life. Into what worlds had poor Frank been wandering as he stood watching the red lights dull into white ashes by the blue tiles of the hearth!

Presently a lantern and two dark heads pa.s.sed the window.

'Where is he?' said a voice in the hall. 'Dolly, did you say Mr. Raban was here? What! all in the dark?'

The voice had reached the door by this time, and some one came and stood there for an instant. How well he remembered the kindly croaking tones!

When he heard them again, it seemed to him as if they had only finished speaking a minute before.

Some one came and stood for an instant at the doorway. No blooming young girl with a bright face and golden head, but a grey-haired woman, stooping a little as she walked. She came forward slowly, set her light upon the table, and then looked at him with a pair of kind s.h.a.ggy eyes, and put out her long hand as of old.

Raban felt his heart warm towards the shabby face, the thick kindly brows. Once that woman's face had seemed to him like an angel's in his sorest need. Who says angels must be all young and splendid; will there not be some comforting ones, shabby and tender, whose radiance does not dazzle nor bewilder; whose faces are worn, perhaps, while their stars shine with a gentle tremulous light, more soothing to our aching, earth-bound hearts than the glorious radiance of brighter spirits? Raban turned very red when he saw his old friend. 'How could you know I was here? You have not forgotten me?' he said; not in his usual reluctant way, but speaking out with a gentle tone in his voice. 'I should have come before, but I----' Here he began to stammer and to feel in his pocket. 'Here it is,' and he pulled out a packet. 'If it hadn't been for you I should never have had the heart to set to work again. I don't know what I should have done,' he repeated, 'but for you.' And then he looked at her for an instant, and then, with a sudden impulse, Raban stooped--as he did so she saw his eyes were glistening--he stooped and kissed her cheek.

'Why, my dear?' said Lady Sarah, blushing up. She had not had many kisses in her life. Some people would as soon have thought of kissing the poker and tongs.

Frank blushed up too and looked a little foolish; but he quickly sobered down again. 'You will find it all right,' said Raban, folding her long thin hand over the little parcel, 'and good-night, and thank you.'

Still Lady Sarah hesitated. She could not bear to take it. She felt as though he had paid her twice over; that she ought to give it back to him, and say, 'Here, keep it. I don't want your money, only your kiss and your friendship. I was glad to help you.' She looked up in his pale face in a strange wistful way, scanning it with her grey eyes. They almost seemed to speak, and to say, 'You don't know how I want it, or I would not take it from you.'

'How changed you are!' she said at last, speaking very slowly. 'I am afraid you have been working too hard to pay me. I oughtn't to----' He was almost annoyed by this wistful persistency. Why did she stand hesitating? Why did she not take it, and put it in her pocket, and have done with it? Now again she was looking at the money with a pathetic look. And meanwhile Raban was wondering, Could it be that this woman cared for money--this woman, who had forced her help upon him so generously? He hated himself for the thought. This was the penalty, he told himself, for his own past life. This fatal suspicion and mistrust of others: even his benefactress was not to be spared.

'I must be going,' he said, starting away in his old stiff manner. 'You will let me come again, won't you?'

'Come again! Of course you will come again,' Lady Sarah said, laying her thin fingers on his arm. 'I shall not let you go now until you have seen my Dolly.' And so saying, she led him back into the hall. 'Go in, you will find her there. I will come back,' said Lady Sarah, abruptly, with her hand on the door-handle. She looked quite old and feeble as she leant against the oak. Then again she seemed to remember herself.

'You--you will not say anything of this,' she added, with a sudden imploring look; and she opened her thin fingers, still clutching the packet of bank-notes and gold, and closed them again.

Then he saw her take the lantern from the chimney and hurriedly toil up the stairs, and he felt somehow that she was going to hide it away.

What would he have thought if he could have seen her safe in her own room, with the sovereigns spread out upon the bed and the bank-notes, while the poor soul stood eagerly counting over her store. Yes, she loved money, but there were things she loved still more. Sarah Francis, alone in the world, might have been a miser if she had not loved Dolly so dearly--Dolly, who was Stan's daughter. There was always just this difference between Lady Sarah and open-handed people. With them money means little--a moment's weakness, a pa.s.sing interest. With Lady Sarah to give was doubt, not pleasure; it meant disorder in her balanced schemes; it meant truest self-denial: to give was to bestow on others what she meant for Dolly's future ease and happiness; and yet she gave.

CHAPTER XII.

DOROTHEA BY FIRELIGHT.

The waunut logs shot sparkles out Towards the pootiest, bless her, An' leetle fires danced all about The chiny on the dresser; The very room, coz she was in, Looked warm from floor to ceilin'.

--Lowell.

Lady Sarah had left Raban to go into the drawing-room alone. It was all very strange, he thought, and more and more like a crazy dream. He found himself in a long room of the colour of firelight, with faded hangings, sweeping mysteriously from the narrow windows, with some old chandeliers swinging from the shadows. It seemed to him, though he could not clearly see them, that there were ghosts sitting on the chairs, denizens of the kingdom of mystery, and that there was a vague flit and consternation in the darkness at the farther end of the room, when through the opening door the gleam of the lantern, which by this time was travelling upstairs, sped on with a long slanting flash. For a moment he thought the place was empty; the atmosphere was very warm and still; the firelight blazed comfortably; a coal started from the grate, then came a breath, a long, low, sleepy breath from a far-away corner. Was this a ghost? And then, as his eyes got accustomed, he saw that the girl who had let him in sat crouching by the fire. Her face was turned away; the light fell upon her throat and the harmonious lines of her figure.

Raban, looking at her, thought of one of Lionardo's figures in the Louvre. But this was finer than a Lionardo. What is it in some att.i.tudes that is so still, and yet that thrills with a coming movement of life and action? It is life, not inanimately resting, but suspended from motion as we see it in the old Greek art. That flying change from the now to the future is a wonder sometimes written in stone; it belongs to the greatest creations of genius as well as to the living statues and pictures among which we live.

So Dolly, unconscious, was a work of art, as she warmed her hands at the fire: her long draperies were heaped round about her, her hair caught the light and burnt like gold. If Miss Vanborough had been a conscious work of art she might have remained in her pretty att.i.tude, but being a girl of sixteen, simple and somewhat brusque in manners, utterly ignoring the opinions of others, she started up and came to meet Raban, advancing quick through the dimness and the familiar labyrinth of chairs.

'Hush--sh!' she said, pointing to a white heap in a further corner, 'Rhoda is asleep; she has been ill, and we have brought her here to nurse.' Then she went back in the same quick silence, brought a light from the table, and beckoning to him to follow her, led the way to the very darkest and shadiest end of the long drawing-room, where the ghosts had been flitting before them. There was a tall oak chair, in which she established herself. There was an old cabinet and a sofa, and a faded Italian shield of looking-gla.s.s, reflecting waves of brown and reddish light. Again Dolly motioned. Raban was to sit down there on the sofa opposite.

Since he had come into the house he had done little but obey the orders he had received. He was amused and not a little mystified by this young heroine's silent imperious manners. He did not admire them, and yet he could not help watching her, half in wonder, half in admiration of her beauty. She, as I have said, did not think of speculating upon the impression she had created: she had other business on hand.

'I knew you at once,' said Dolly, with the hardihood of sixteen, 'when I saw you at the gate.' As she spoke in her girlish voice, somehow the mystery seemed dispelled, and Raban began to realise that this was only a drawing-room and a young lady after all.

'Ever since your letter came last year,' she continued, unabashed, 'I have hoped that you would come, and--and you have paid her the money she lent you, have you not?' said the girl, looking into his face doubtfully, and yet confidingly too.

Raban answered by an immense stare. He was a man almost foolishly fastidious and reserved. He was completely taken aback and shocked by her want of discretion--so he chose to consider it. Dolly, unused to the ways of the world, had not yet appreciated those refinements of delicacy with which people envelop the simplest facts of life.

As for Raban, he was at all times uncomfortably silent respecting himself. 'Dolly' conveyed no meaning whatever to his mind, although he might have guessed who she was. Even if Lady Sarah had not asked it of him, he would not have answered her. Whatever they may say, reserved people pique themselves upon some mental superiority in the reservations they make. Miss Vanborough misinterpreted the meaning of the young man's confused looks and silence.

He had not paid the money! she was sorry. Oh, how welcome it would have been for Aunt Sarah's sake and for George's sake! Poor George! how should she ever ask for money for him now? Her face fell; she tried to speak of other things to hide her disappointment. Now she wished she had not asked the question--it must be so uncomfortable for Mr. Raban she thought. She tried to talk on, one little sentence came jerking out after another, and Raban answered more or less stiffly. 'Was he not at Cambridge? Did he know her brother there--George Vanborough?'

Raban looked surprised, and said, 'Yes, he knew a Mr. Vanborough slightly. He had known him at his tutor's years before.' Here a vision of a stumpy young man flourishing a tankard rose before him. Could he be this beautiful girl's brother?

'Did he know her cousin, Robert Henley?' continued Dolly, eagerly.

Raban (who had long avoided Henley's companionship) answered even more stiffly that he did not see much of him. So the two talked on; but they had got into a wrong key, as people do at times, and they mutually jarred upon each other. Even their silence was inharmonious.

Occasionally came a long, low, peaceful breath: it seemed floating on the warm shadows.

Everything was perfectly common-place, and yet to Raban there seemed an element of strangeness and incongruity in the ways of the old house.

There was something weird in the whole thing--the defiant girl, the sleeping woman, Lady Sarah, with her strange hesitations and emotions, and the darkness.--How differently events strike people from different points of view. Here was a common-place half-hour, while old Sam prepared the seven-o'clock tea with Marker's help--while Rhoda slept a peaceful little sleep: to Raban it seemed a strange and puzzling experience, quite out of the common run of half-hours.

Did he dislike poor Dolly? That off-hand manner was not Frank Raban's ideal of womanliness. Lady Sarah, with her chilled silence and restrained emotions, was nearer to it by far, old and ugly though she was. And yet he could not forget Dolly's presence for a single instant.

He found himself watching, and admiring, and speculating about her almost against his will. She, too, was aware of this silent scrutiny, and resented it. Dolly was more brusque and fierce and uncomfortable that evening than she had ever been in all her life before. Dorothea Vanborough was one of those people who reflect the atmosphere somehow, whose lights come and go, and whose brilliance comes and goes. Dull fogs would fall upon her sometimes, at others sunlight, moonlight, or faint reflected rays would beam upon her world. It was a wide one, and open to all the winds of heaven.

So Frank Raban discovered when it was too late. He admired her when he should have loved her. He judged her in secret when he should have trusted or blamed her openly. A day came when he felt he had forfeited all right even to help her or to protect her, and that, while he was still repenting for the past, he had fallen (as people sometimes do who walk backwards) into fresh pitfalls.

'My cousin Robert has asked me and Rhoda to spend a day at Cambridge in the spring,' said Dolly, reluctantly struggling on at conversation.

Frank Raban was wondering if Lady Sarah was never coming back.

There was a sigh, a movement from the distant corner.

'Did you call me?' said a faint, shrill voice, plaintive and tremulous, and a figure rose from the nest of soft shawls and came slowly forward, dispersing the many wraps that lay coiling on the floor.

'Have I been asleep? I thought Mr. Henley was here?' said the voice, confusedly.

Dolly turned towards her. 'No, he is not here, Rhoda. Sit down, don't stand; here is Mr. Raban come to see us.'

And then in the dim light of the fire and distant candle, Raban saw two dark eyes looking out of a pale face that he seemed to remember.

'Mr. Raban!' said the voice.

'Have you forgotten?' said Dolly, hastily, going up to the distant sofa.

'Mr. Raban, from Paris----' she began; then seeing he had followed her, she stopped; she turned very red. She did not want to pain him. And Raban, at the same moment, recognised the two girls he had seen once before, and remembered where it was that he had known the deep grey eyes, with their look of cold repulsion and dislike.

'Are you Mr. Raban?' repeated Rhoda, looking intently into his face. 'I should have known you if it had not been so dark.' And she instinctively put up her hand and clasped something hanging round her neck.