Red Pottage Part 15

d.i.c.k was sitting alone on the high-carved stone edge of the round pool where the monks used to wash, and where gold-fish now lived cloistered lives. A moment of depression seemed to have overtaken that cheerful personage.

"Come as far as the post-office," said Lord Newhaven.

d.i.c.k gathered himself together, and rose slowly to his large feet.

"You millionaires are all the same," he said. "Because you have a house crawling with servants till they stick to the ceiling you have to go to the post-office to buy a penny stamp. It's like keeping a dog and barking yourself."

"I don't fancy I bark much," said Lord Newhaven.

"No, and you don't bite _often_, but when you do you take out the piece.

Do you remember that colored chap at Broken Hill?"

"He deserved it," said Lord Newhaven.

"He richly deserved it. But you took him in, poor devil, all the same.

You were so uncommonly mild and limp beforehand, and letting pa.s.s things you ought not to have let pa.s.s, that, like the low beast he was, he thought he could play you any dog's trick, and that you would never turn on him."

"It's a way worms have."

"Oh, hang worms; it does not matter whether they turn or not. But cobras have no business to imitate them till poor rookies think they have no poison in them, and that they can tickle them with a switch. What a great hulking brute that man was! You ricked him when you threw him! I saw him just before I left Adelaide. He's been lame ever since."

"He'd have done for me if he could."

"Of course he would. His blood was up. He meant to break your back. I saw him break a chap's back once, and it did not take so very long either. I heard it snap. But why did you let him go so far to start with before you pulled him up? That's what I've never been able to understand about you. If you behaved different to start with they would behave different to you. They would know they'd have to."

"I have not your art," said Lord Newhaven, tranquilly, "of letting a man know when he's getting out of hand that unless he goes steady there will be a row, and he'll be in it. I'm not made like that."

"It works well," said d.i.c.k. "It's a sort of peaceful way of rubbing along and keeping friends. If you let those poor bullies know what to expect they aren't, as a rule, over-anxious to toe the mark. But you never _do_ let them know."

"No," said Lord Newhaven, as he shot his letter into the bra.s.s mouth in the cottage wall, just below a window of "bulls'-eyes" and peppermints, "I never do. I don't defend it. But--"

"But what?"

Lord Newhaven's face underwent some subtle change. His eyes fixed themselves on a bottle of heart-shaped peppermints, and then met d.i.c.k's suddenly, with the clear, frank glance of a schoolboy.

"But somehow, for the life of me, until things get serious--_I can't_."

d.i.c.k, whose perceptions were rather of a colossal than an acute order, nevertheless perceived that he had received a confidence, and changed the subject.

"Aren't you going to buy some stamps?" he asked, perfectly aware that Lord Newhaven had had his reasons for walking to the post-office.

Lord Newhaven, who was being watched with affectionate interest from behind the counter by the grocer postmaster, went in, hit his head against a pendent ham, and presently emerged with brine in his hair and a shilling's worth of stamps in his hand.

Later in the day, when he and d.i.c.k were riding up the little street, with a view to having a look at the moor--for Middleshire actually has a grouse moor, although it is in the Midlands--the grocer in his white ap.r.o.n rushed out and waylaid them.

"Very sorry about the letter, my lord," he repeated volubly, touching his forelock. "Hope her la'ship told you as I could not get it out again, or I'm sure I would have done to oblige your lordship, and her la'ship calling on purpose. But the post-office is that mean and distrustful as it don't leave me the key, and once hanything is in, in it is."

"Ah!" said Lord Newhaven, slowly. "Well, Jones, it's not your fault. I ought not to have changed my mind. I suppose her ladyship gave you my message that I wanted it back?"

"Yes, my lord, and her la'ship come herself, not ten minutes after you was gone. But I've no more power over that there receptacle than a hunlaid hegg, and that's the long and short of it. I've allus said, and I say it again, 'Them as have charge of the post-office should have the key.'"

"When I am made postmaster-general you _shall_ have it," said Lord Newhaven, smiling. "It is the first reform that I shall bring about."

And he nodded to the smiling, apologetic man and trotted on, d.i.c.k beside him, who was apparently absorbed in the action of his roan cob.

But d.i.c.k's mind had sustained a severe shock. That Lady Newhaven, "that jolly little woman," the fond mother of those two "jolly little chaps,"

should have been guilty of an underhand trick, was astonishing to him.

Poor d.i.c.k had started life with a religious reverence for woman; had carried out his brittle possession to bush-life in Australia, from thence through two A.D.C.-ships, and, after many vicissitudes, had brought it safely back with a large consignment of his own Burgundy to his native land. It was still sufficiently intact--save for a chip or two--to make a pretty wedding-present to his future wife. But it had had a knock since he mounted the roan cob. For, unfortunately, the kind of man who has what are called "illusions" about women is too often the man whose discrimination lies in other directions, in fields where little high-heeled shoes are not admitted.

Rachel had the doubtful advantage of knowing that, in spite of d.i.c.k's shrewdness respecting shades of difference in muscatels, she and Lady Newhaven were nevertheless ranged on the same pedestal in d.i.c.k's mind as flawless twins of equal moral beauty. But after this particular day she observed that Lady Newhaven had somehow slipped off the pedestal, and that she, Rachel, had the honor of occupying it alone.

CHAPTER XVI

"Une grande pa.s.sion malheureaux est un grand moyen de sagesse."

Rachel had left London precipitately after she had been the unwilling confidante of Lady Newhaven's secret, and had taken refuge with that friend of all perplexed souls, the Bishop of Southminster. She felt unable to meet Hugh again without an interval of breathing-time. She knew that if she saw much more of him he would confide in her, and she shrank from receiving a confidence the ugliest fact of which she already knew. Perhaps she involuntarily shrank also from fear lest he should lower himself in her eyes by only telling her half the truth. Sad confessions were often poured into Rachel's ears which she had known for years. She never alluded to that knowledge, never corrected the half-lie which accompanies so many whispered self--accusations. Confidences and confessions are too often a means of evasion of justice--a laying of the case for the plaintiff before a judge without allowing the defendant to be present or to call a witness. Rachel, by dint of long experience, which did slowly for her the work of imagination, had ceased to wonder at the faithfully chronicled harsh words and deeds of generous souls.

She knew or guessed at the unchronicled treachery or deceit which had brought about that seemingly harsh word or deed.

She had not the exalted ideas about her fellow-creatures which Hester had, but she possessed the rare gift of reticence. She exemplified the text--"Whether it be to friend or foe, talk not of other men's lives."

And in Rachel's quiet soul a vast love and pity dwelt for these same fellow-creatures. She had lived and worked for years among those whose bodies were half starved, half clothed, degraded. When she found money at her command she had spent sums (as her lawyer told her) out of all proportion on that poor human body, stumbling between vice and starvation. But now, during the last year, when her great wealth had thrown her violently into society, she had met, until her strong heart flinched before it, the other side of life--the starved soul in the delicately nurtured, richly clad body, the atrophied spiritual life in hideous contrast with the physical ease and luxury which were choking it. The second experience was harder to bear than the first. And just as in the old days she had shared her bread and cheese with those hungrier than herself, and had taken but little thought for those who had bread and to spare, so now she felt but transient interest in those among her new a.s.sociates who were successfully struggling against the blackmail of luxury, the leprosy of worldliness, the selfishness that at last coffins the soul it clothes. Her heart yearned instead towards the spiritually starving, the tempted, the fallen in that great little world, whose names are written in the book, not of life, but of Burke--the little world which is called "Society."

She longed to comfort them, to raise them up, to wipe from their hands and garments the muddy gold stains of the gutter into which they had fallen, to smooth away the lines of mean care from their faces. But it had been far simpler in her previous life to share her hard-earned bread with those who needed it than it was now to share her equally hard-earned thoughts and slow gleanings of spiritual knowledge, to share the things which belonged to her peace.

Rachel had not yet wholly recovered from the overwhelming pa.s.sion of love which, admitted without fear a few years ago, had devastated the little city of her heart, as by fire and sword, involving its hospitable dwellings, its temples, and its palaces in one common ruin. Out of that desolation she was unconsciously rebuilding her city, but it was still rather gaunt and bare, the trees had not had time to grow in the streets, and there was an ugly fortification round it of defaced, fire-seared stones, which had once stood aloft in minaret and tower, and which now served only as a defence against all corners.

If d.i.c.k had been in trouble, or rather if she had known the troubles he had been through, and which had made his crooked mouth shut so firmly, Rachel might possibly have been able to give him something more valuable than the paper money of her friendship. But d.i.c.k was obviously independent. He could do without her, while Hugh had a claim upon her.

Rachel's thoughts turned to Hugh again and ever again. Did he see his conduct as she saw it? A haunting fear was upon her that he did not. And she longed with an intensity that outbalanced for the time every other feeling that he should confess his sin fully, entirely--see it in all its ugliness, and gather himself together into a deep repentance before he went down into silence, or before he made a fresh start in life. She would have given her right hand to achieve that.

And in a lesser degree she was drawn towards Lady Newhaven. Lady Newhaven was conscious of the tender compa.s.sion which Rachel felt for her, and used it to the uttermost; but unfortunately she mistook it for admiration of her character, mixed with sympathetic sorrow for her broken heart. If she had seen herself as Rachel saw her, she would have conceived, not for herself, but for Rachel, some of the aversion which was gradually distilling, bitter drop by drop, into her mind for her husband. She would not have killed him. She would have thought herself incapable of an action so criminal, so monstrous. But if part of the ruin in the garden were visibly trembling to its fall, she would not have warned him if he had been sitting beneath it, nor would her conscience have ever reproached her afterwards.

"I wish Miss Gresley would come and stay here instead of taking you away from me," she said, plaintively, to Rachel one morning, when she made the disagreeable discovery that Rachel and Hester were friends. "I don't care much about her myself, she is so profane and so dreadfully irreligious. But Edward likes to talk to her. He prefers artificial people. I wonder he did not marry her. That old cat, Lady Susan Gresley, was always throwing her at his head. I wish she was not always persuading you to leave me for hours together. I get so frightened when I am left alone with Edward. I live in perpetual dread that he will say something before the children or the servants. He is quite cruel enough."

"He will never say anything."

"You are always so decided, Rachel. You don't see possibilities, and you don't know him as I do. He is capable of anything. I will write a note now, and you can take it to Miss Gresley, if you _must_ go there to-day."

"I wish to go very much."

"And you will stay another week whether she comes or not?"

There was a momentary pause before Rachel said, cheerfully, "I will stay another week, with pleasure. But I am afraid Lord Newhaven will turn restive at taking me in to dinner."

"Oh! he likes you. He always prefers people who are not of his own family."