The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols Part 14

Then these four diverged into various varieties of the game, in all of which Madge was Frank King's champion and instructress; and he was very grateful to her, and tried to do his best, though he was chiefly engaged in thinking that her clear blue-gray eyes were so singularly like Nan's eyes. Indeed, Madge had now to put forth all her skill, for he and she were playing partners against the other two, and it was but little help she got from him.

'I am very sorry,' he said to her, after making a fearfully bad shot.

'I ought to apologise.'

'At all events, don't always leave the red ball over a pocket,' she said, sharply; but that may have been less temper than an evidence that she was really in earnest about the game.

Moreover, they came out victors after all, and she was greatly pleased; and she modestly disclaimed what he said about her having done all the scoring, and said she thought he played very well considering how few opportunities he must have had of practising. As she said so--looking frankly towards him--he thought that was just the way Nan would have spoken. The pleasant and refined expression of the mouth was just the same, and there was the same careless grace of the fair hair that escaped from its bonds in fascinating tangles. He thought her face was a little less freckled than Nan's--perhaps she did not brave the sunlight and the sea air so much.

The evening pa.s.sed with a wonderful rapidity; when Mr. Tom came back again into the room, followed by a servant bringing seltzer-water and things, they found it was nearly eleven.

'I must bid your mamma good-night and be off,' said Frank King to Madge.

'Oh,' she said, 'it is unnecessary; mamma goes to her room early. She will make her excuses to you to-morrow.'

In an instant the pale, pretty face had flushed up.

'I mean when you call again, if you are not going back to London at once,' she stammered.

'Oh no,' he said quite eagerly, 'I am not going back to London at once; I may stay here some little time. And, of course, I shall call and see your mamma again if I may--perhaps to-morrow.'

'Then we may see you again,' she said pleasantly, as she offered him her hand. 'Good-night; Edith and I will leave you to your billiards and cigars. And I hope your prophecies are not going to interfere with our morning walk to-morrow. When there is a heavy sea coming in you see it very well from the New Pier. Good-night.'

Miss Madge went upstairs to her room, but instead of composing her mind to sleep, she took out writing materials and wrote this letter:

'Dear old Mother Nan--You won't guess who is below at this moment--11 p.m.--playing billiards with Tom and Mr. Roberts. Captain King. If I were he I would call myself Holford King, for that sounds better.

Edith says he is greatly improved, and she always said he was nice-looking. I think he is improved. He was not in uniform, of course, which was a pity, for I remember him before; but at all events he wore neat, plain gold studs, and not a great big diamond or opal. I can't bear men wearing jewels like that; why don't they wear a string of pearls round their neck? I have been in such a fright. H. sent me a letter--not in his own handwriting. Isn't it silly? I don't want my name in the papers. Tom says they will put him in prison "like winking" if he is not careful. It is stupid; and of course I shall not answer it, or have anything to do with him. Mr. Roberts dined here this evening. I think he has too much to say for himself. I like quiet and gentlemanly men. Captain King and his party got 135 pheasants last Thursday, to say nothing of hares and rabbits; so I suppose they have good shooting. I wish they would ask Tom. _C. J._ has disappeared from Brighton, so far as I can make out; and I beleive (_sic_) he is haunting the neighbourhood of Lewes, looking out for a certain old Mother Hubbard. Happily he has got nothing to fear from the Chancery people: I suppose they daren't interfere with the Church.

My sealskin coat has come back; it is beautiful now, and I have got a hat and feather exactly the same colour as my Indian red skirt, so I think they will go very well together. The sealskin looks blacker than it was. The sea is rough to-night, but I hope to get down the Pier to-morrow morning. Brighton is fearfully crowded just now, and you should come away from that sleepy old Lewes, and have a look at your friends. Good-night, dear Nan. MADGE.'

CHAPTER XIII.

ORMUZD AND AHRIMAN.

The woman is not born who can quite forget the man who has once asked her to become his wife, even though at the moment she may have rejected the offer without a thought of hesitation. Life with her, as with all of us, is so much a matter of experiment, and so rarely turns out to be what one antic.i.p.ated, that even when she is married, and surrounded with children, husband, and friends, she cannot but at times bethink herself of that proposal, and wonder what would have happened if she had accepted it. Would her own life have been fuller, happier, less occupied with trivial and sordid cares? Would he have become as great and famous if she had married him, and hampered him with early ties?

Might not she--supposing things to have gone the other way--have saved him from utter ruin, and have given him courage and hope? After all, there is nothing more important in the world than human happiness; and as the simple 'Yes' or 'No' of maidenhood may decide the happiness of not one but two lives, that is why it is a matter of universal interest in song and story; and that is why quite elderly people, removed by half a century from such frivolities themselves, but nevertheless possessed of memory and a little imagination, and still conscious that life has been throughout a puzzle and a game of chance, and that even in their case it might have turned out very differently, find themselves awaiting with a strange curiosity and anxiety the decision of some child of seventeen, knowing no more of the world than a baby dormouse.

On the other hand, the woman who does not marry is still less likely to forget such an offer. Here, plainly enough, was a turning-point in her life; what has happened since she owes to her decision then. And as an unmarried life is naturally and necessarily an unfulfilled life, where no great duty or purpose steps in to stop the gap, it is but little wonder if in moments of disquietude or unrest the mind should travel away in strange speculations, and if the memory of a particular person should be kept very green indeed. Nan Beresford, at the age of twenty, would have been greatly shocked if you had told her that during the past three years she had been almost continually thinking about the young sailor whom she had rejected at Bellagio. Had she not been most explicit--even eagerly explicit? Had she not experienced an extraordinary sense of relief when he was well away from the place, and when she could prove to herself in close self-examination that she was in no way to blame for what had occurred? She was a little sorry for him, it is true; but she could not believe that it was a very serious matter. He would soon forget that idle dream in the brisk realities of his profession, and he would show that he was not like those other young men who came fluttering round her sisters with their simmering sentimentalities and vain flirtations. Above all, she had been explicit. That episode was over and closed. It was attached to Bellagio; leaving Bellagio, they would leave it also behind. And she was glad to get away from Bellagio.

Yes; Nan would have been greatly shocked if you had told her that during these three years she had been frequently thinking of Frank King--except, of course, in the way any one may think of an officer in Her Majesty's Navy, whose name sometimes appears in the Admiralty appointments in the newspapers. Her mind was set on far other and higher things. It was the churches and pictures of Italy that began it--the frescoes in the cloisters, the patient sculpture, telling of the devotion of lives, even the patient needlework on the altars. She seemed to breathe the atmosphere of an Age of Faith. And when, after a long period of delightful reverie abroad, and mystical enjoyment of music and architecture and painting, all combining to place their n.o.blest gifts at the service of religion, she returned to her familiar home in Brighton, some vague desire still remained her heart that she might be able to make something beautiful of her life, something less selfish and worldly than the lives of most she saw around her. And it so happened that among her friends those who seemed to her most earnest in their faith and most ready to help the poor and the suffering--those who had the highest ideals of existence and strove faithfully to reach these--were mainly among the High Church folk. Insensibly she drew nearer and nearer to them. She took no interest at all in any of the controversies then raging about the position of the Ritualists in the Church of England; it was persons, not principles, that claimed her regard; and when she saw that So-and-so and So-and-so in her own small circle of friends were living, or striving to live, pure and n.o.ble and self-sacrificing lives, she threw in her lot with them, and she was warmly welcomed. For Nan was popular in a way. All that acerbity of her younger years had now ripened into a sort of sweet and tolerant good-humour. Tom Beresford called her a Papist, and angrily told her to give up 'that incense-dodge;' but he was very fond of her all the same, and honoured her alone with his confidence, and would have no one say any ill of her. Nay, for her sake he consented to be civil to the Rev. Mr. Jacomb.

Of Charles Jacomb it needs only be said at present that he had recently been transferred to an extremely High Church at Brighton from an equally High Church in a large, populous, and poor parish in the south-east of London, where the semi-Catholic services had succeeded in attracting a considerable number of people, who otherwise would probably have gone to no church at all. It was his description of his work in this neighbourhood that had won for him the respect and warm esteem of Nan Beresford. The work was hard. The services were almost continuous; there was a great deal of visitation to be got through; in these labours he naturally ran against cases of distress that no human being could withstand; and he had 60 pounds a year. Moreover, there were no delicate compensations such as attend the labours of curates in some more favoured places. There was not--Mr. Jacomb emphatically remarked--there was not a gentleman in the parish. When he went to Brighton he had considerably less work, and a great deal more of dinners and society, and pleasant attentions. And Mr. Jacomb, while he was a devoted, earnest, and hard-working priest, was also an Englishman, and liked his dinner, and that was how he became acquainted with the Beresfords, and gradually grew to be an intimate friend of the family. His attentions to Nan were marked, and she knew it. She knew, although he had said nothing to her about it, that he wished her to be his wife; and though she would rather have been enabled to devote her life to some good end in some other way, was not this the only way open to her? By herself, she was so helpless to do anything. So many of her friends seemed to cultivate religion as a higher species of emotion--a sort of luxurious satisfaction that ended with themselves.

Nan wanted to do something. If Mr. Jacomb had still been in the south-east of London, working on his 60 pounds a year, Nan would have had no doubt as to what she ought to do.

But Nan had very serious doubt; more than that, she sometimes broke down, and delivered herself over to the devil. At such times a strange yearning would take possession of her; the atmosphere of exalted religious emotion in which she lived would begin to feel stifling; at all costs, she would have to get out of this hot-house, and gain a breath of brisk sea air. And then she would steal away like a guilty thing on one of her long land cruises along the coast; and she would patiently talk to the old shepherds on the downs, and wait for their laconic answers; and she would make observations to the coastguardsmen about the weather; and always her eyes, which were very clear and long-sighted, were on the outlook for Singing Sal. Then if by some rare and happy chance she did run across that free-and-easy vagrant, they always had a long chat together--Sal very respectful, the young lady very matter-of-fact; and generally the talk came round to be about sailors. Nan Beresford had got to know the rig of every vessel that sailed the sea. Further than that, she herself was unaware that every morning as she opened the newspaper she inadvertently turned first of all to the 'Naval and Military Intelligence,' until

she had acquired an extraordinary knowledge of the goings and comings and foreign stations of Her Majesty's ships. And if she sometimes reflected that most officers were transferred to home stations for a time, or took their leave in the ordinary way, and also that she had never heard of Captain King--for she saw he had been made Commander on account of some special service--being in England, was it not natural that she might have a secret consciousness that she was perhaps responsible for his long banishment?

But these solitary prowls along the coast, and these conferences with Singing Sal, were wrong; and she knew they were wrong; and she went back to the calmer atmosphere of those beautiful services in which the commonplace, vulgar world outside was forgotten. She grew, indeed, to have a mysterious feeling that to her the Rev. Charles Jacomb personified religion, and that Singing Sal, in like manner, was a sort of high priestess of Nature; and that they were in deadly antagonism.

They were Ormuzd and Ahriman. She was a strangely fanciful young woman, and she dwelt much on this thing, until, half fearing certain untoward doubts and promptings of her heart, she began to think that if now and at once Mr. Jacomb would only ask her to be his wife, she would avoid all perils and confusions by directly accepting him, and so decide her future for ever.

But that morning that brought her Madge's letter saying that Captain Frank King was in Brighton, Nan was singularly disturbed. She was staying with the Rev. Mr. Clark and his wife--an old couple who liked to have their house brightened occasionally by the presence of some one of younger years. They were good people--very, very good; and a little tedious. Nan, however, was allowed considerable liberty, and was sometimes away the whole day from breakfast-time till dinner.

Madge had written her letter in a hurry; but did not post it, in her inconsequential fashion, until the afternoon of the next day, so that Nan got it on the morning of the following day. She read and re-read it; and then, somehow, she wanted to think about it in the open--under the wide skies, near the wide sea. She wanted to go out--and think.

And she was a little bit terrified to find that her heart was beating fast.

She made some excuse or other after breakfast, and departed. It was a clear, beautiful December morning, the sun shining brilliantly on the evergreens and on the red houses of the bright, clean, picturesque, English-looking old town. She went down to the station, and waited for the first train going to Newhaven. When it came in, she took her place, and away the train went, at no breakneck speed, down the wide valley of the Ouse, which, even on this cold December morning, looked pleasant and cheerful enough. For here and there the river caught a steely-blue light from the sky overhead; and the sunshine shone along the round chalk hills; and there were little patches of villages far away among the dusk of the leafless trees, where the church spire rising into the blue seemed to attract the wheeling of pigeons. To Nan it was all a familiar scene; she frequently spent the day in this fashion.

Nan was now three years older than when we last saw her at Bellagio.

Perhaps she had not grown much prettier--and she never had great pretensions that way; but along with the angularity, so to speak, of her ways of thinking, she had also lost the boniness of her figure.

She was now more fully formed, though her figure was still slender and graceful; and she had acquired a grave and sweet expression, that spoke of a very kindly, humorous, tolerant nature within. Children came to her readily; and she let them pull her hair. She was incapable of a harsh judgment. The world seemed beautiful to her; and she enjoyed living--especially when she was on the high downs overlooking the sea.

This getting out into the open was on this occasion a great relief to her. She argued with herself. What did it matter to her whether Frank King were in Brighton, or even that he had been at the house in Brunswick Terrace, dining, and playing billiards? He had probably forgotten that ever he had been at Bellagio. She was glad the weather was fine. No doubt her sisters would soon be setting out for their morning stroll down the pier.

Nan had taken her ticket for Newhaven Wharf, with a vague intention of walking from thence by the short cut to Seaford, and from Seaford to Alfriston, and so back to Lewes. However, when the train stopped she thought she would have a look at the harbour, and very pretty and bright and busy it appeared on this clear morning; the bra.s.s and copper of the steamers all polished up, flags flying, the sun brilliant on the green water of the estuary and on the blue water of the ponds beyond that were ruffled with the wind. Then, just below her, came in the ferry-boat. She thought she would cross (though that was not the way to Seaford). When she got to the other side, the slopes leading up to the fort seemed temptingly high; she knew that from the summit of the downs this morning one would have a splendid view. And so, perhaps from mere habit, she took the old familiar road--past the coastguard station, past the pools of ruffled water, up the valley by the farmstead, and so on to the high and solitary downs overlooking the wide moving, shining sea.

Brighton ought to be fair and beautiful on such a morning as this; perhaps by-and-by she might come to have a glimpse of the pale yellow terraces of the distant town. No doubt by this time Edith and Madge were on the pier--Madge with her red skirt and black sealskin coat.

Madge always dressed smartly--perhaps even a trifle boldly. The band would be playing now. In the sheltered places it would be almost warm; there you could sit down and talk and watch the ships go by. She supposed that in course of time they would go back for luncheon. That was always a merry meal at home. They generally had visitors whom they had met casually--on the pier, or in the King's Road.

So Nan was thinking and dreaming as she walked idly along, when her attention was suddenly arrested by a sound as of music. She looked round; there was no human being in sight; and the telegraph wires, which sometimes deceived the ear, were far too far away. Then as she went on again, she discovered whence the sound proceeded--from a little wooden hut facing the sea, which had probably been erected there as a shelter for the coastguardsmen. As she drew nearer, she recognised the staccato tw.a.n.ging of a guitar; so she made sure this was Singing Sal.

She drew nearer still--her footsteps unheard on the smooth turf--and then she discovered that Sal was singing away to herself, not for amus.e.m.e.nt, as was her wont, but for practice. There were continual repet.i.tions. Nan got quite close to the hut, and listened.

Singing Sal was doing her very best. She was singing with very great effect; and she had a hard, clear voice that could make itself heard, if it was not of very fine quality. But what struck Nan was the clever fashion in which this woman was imitating the Newcastle burr. It was a pitman's song, with a refrain something like this--

_Ho thy way_,[1] my bonnie bairn, _Ho thy way_, upon my airm, _Ho thy way_, thou still may learn To say Dada sae bonnie.

It was very clear that Sal was proud of her performance; and she had a good right to be, for she had caught the guttural accent to perfection.

For the rest it was an instructive song to be sung as a lullaby to a child; for this was what Nan more or less made out amid the various experiments and repet.i.tions:--

Oh, Johnnie is a clever lad; Last neet he fuddled all he had; This morn he wasna very bad; He looked the best of ony!

When Johnnie's drunk he'll tak a knife, And threaten sair to hae my life: Wha wadna be a pitman's wife, To hae a lad like Johnnie!

Yonder's Johnnie coming noo; He looks the best of a' the crew!

They've all gone to the barley moo, To hae a gla.s.s wi' Johnny.

So let's go get the bacon fried, And let us mak a clean fireside, And when he comes he will thee ride Upon his knee sae cannie.

_Ho thy way_, my bonnie bairn, _Ho thy way_, upon my airm, _Ho thy way_, thou still may learn To say Dada sae bonnie!

But this was likely to go on for ever; so Nan quietly stepped round to the door of the hut, where she found Singing Sal sitting on the little cross bench, entirely occupied with her guitar and the new song. When she looked up, on finding the door darkened, she did not scream; her nerves were not excitable.

'Oh, dear me, is it you, Miss?' she said. 'No wonder I did not hear ye; for I was making enough noise myself. I hope you are very well, Miss; it is many a day since I have seen you on the downs.'

'I have been living in Lewes for some time,' said Nan. 'I have been listening to the song you were singing. That is not the kind of song that sailors like, is it?'

So they had begun about sailors again; and the good genius Ormuzd was clean forgotten.