CHAPTER V.RECONCILED.
It was the height of the season at Hastings; the yearly heaven of lodging-house keepers had arrived; they could be firm about rent, linen, the use of plate, boot-cleaning, and kitchen fires; the millennium of temporal prosperity had, after months of weary waiting, come at last, and the reign of the saints by the sea-side had begun. As for the sinners, they had a terrible time of it. At what hour they should eat; the Spartan nature of the cookery they might expect; the rooms wherewithal they must needs content themselves; these things were announced to them by the powers in the ascendant with a severe composure.
Any man who had all his life entertained an idea that he was entitled for his money to money’s worth, needed but to set foot in Hastings to be undeceived.
It was the harvest time; and all the native population of Hastings—under the Castle of Hastings, on a level with the Castle, of St. Leonards-on-Sea, and the various regions lying back from the shore, but still studded with villas and terraces—put in the sickle.
The Egyptians had come down to the sea-side, and the householders forthwith set about considering how they should best spoil them. Rents were doubled—extras were put on—items were run up—bells were not answered—servants were harassed to death—every dwelling was crammed, from basement to garret—cooks were arrogant—housemaids breathless—and still the cry went on, “They come!”—and still the place got fuller and fuller; and it was, as I have said, the height of the season in Hastings the romantic.
Was there ever a prettier bathing-place?—wasthere ever a more charming dwelling for a short time? Was there ever a town round and about which there were to be found lovelier walks and drives—sweeter bits of rural scenery—more enchanting views over the great sea?
Most people seemed to have thought Hastings perfection that year, for they came flocking to it as cattle go down into a pond to drink.
They came—the autocrats of the fashionable and the would-be fashionable world—to St. Leonards, to the great houses fronting the sea, to Warrior Square, to the little houses up back streets, and to the terraces, hung up so high that ordinary limbs ached before the temporary home was reached.
Then there were old-fashioned folks who affected Hastings—who thought the old town seemed more home-like and pleasant than the new—who brought their money to spend within easy walk of the East Cliff—who loved the roads leading away to Fairlight—and the old churches in the High Street—and who declared thebathing was better at Hastings than at St. Leonards.
Anyhow, Hastings and St. Leonards were full—too full for comfort; but not too full for amusement to anyone who knew London and its people well.
To the country squire, to the grand folks who, by reason of their great wealth and greater gentility, are far removed from all the pleasures of watching their commoner fellows and trying to understand their ways, these sea-side places must seem, as a rule, stale, flat, and unprofitable. It is the naturalist who loves to note the habits and instincts and modes of existence of the commonest animal; the bees going and coming—the ants busy at work—the mole heaps in the garden: the eccentricities of toad life have no charm to anyone who does not understand something of the nature of bee, or ant, or mole, or toad: and in like manner, the person who does not comprehend the modes of life and habits of thought of the men and the women he sees around him,cannot reasonably be expected to take much interest in observing their peculiarities.
There are those, however, who ask no better enjoyment than watching Jones, Brown, and Robinson out for a holiday; who delight in tracing Jones to his clique, and Brown to his, and Robinson to his; who luxuriate among snobs; who, watching them staring out of the windows at St. Leonards, or airing themselves in the balconies at Robertson Terrace, or lounging up and down the Parade, or adventuring their necks on the backs of much-enduring horses, can classify the swell, the millionaire, the fortune-hunter, the pretender, the distant relation of some great house, the newly rich, the poor man of family, to a nicety.
And behold! there are all the men, women, and children he has become so familiar with in the course of his walks and residences round London.
There is Paterfamilias, drearily promenading with Materfamilias, and making believe to enjoya holiday, which is a continual anxiety, and, as the poor man feels, an unwarrantable expense.
In the whole of his married life he has never before seen so much of his children, and he never—heaven forgive him!—wants to see so much of them again. He is tired of the objectless days passed in the unexciting society of the wife of his bosom and of his numerous progeny. On the whole, he wishes the holiday were over, and he back at business once again; while Materfamilias wages war with the landlady, and is pathetic concerning the price of meat.
There are the young ladies from No. 7, who will go out in the yacht twice a day, together with a friend, who has invariably to be relanded, if the sea proves rough, amidst the pity of the passengers and the secret maledictions of the crew. There is young Tomkins, the corn-factor, taking great airs upon himself, walking in sandboots along the Parade, and staring in the face of every woman he meets; there is his future father-in-law, driving out his better-half in oneof those pony-carriages that are a cross between a clothes and a plate basket, and charioteering the safest and most docile of ponies, who could not run away if he would—as Alexander might have been supposed to manage Bucephalus, had that animal ever been harnessed to a modern dog-cart. In all Hastings there is nothing more amusing than to watch these amateur whips, who hold the reins wide apart, and with great skill manage to keep a firm grasp on the whip at the same time.
No young blood tooling his four-in-hand along the high road ever felt grander than a regular cockney at Hastings seated behind a slowly-trotting ponyen routeto Crowhurst.
I have often wondered what the ponies say to each other about their hirers when they get back to their chaff and their oats at night. Do they take any part of the hauling and mauling out in sneers and sarcasms?—do they curse the day when basket-carriages were invented?—do they make lamentation over their weary legs and roughly-handled mouths?—do they tell abouthow they are cantered up hill and rattled down?—do they scoff at the hundred weights of flesh they have had to pull about?—do they recount their experiences, and do they, as a rule, consider mankind a mistake?
And as for the riding-horses—for the galled backs, for the broken winds—for the way they are mauled about, and pulled from side to side and harassed with curbs—and men who do not know what to do with either bridle or whip—and women who will hang on their crutches—and equestrians generally, who seem to think horses machines, incapable of weariness or aching bones—what shall we say of all this?—what of the great people who drive about in their own carriages, languidly surveying the commonalty through eye-glasses?—what of the little people who walk up and down for hours and go to the beach to pick up shells, and sit on the benches and listen to the music?—what of the lonely men and the solitary women?—what of the excursionists who come down from London to stay forone day, and are taken back at a single fare, and who eat more apples, pears, and plums, and drink more beer in that time than an inexperienced person might deem possible?—what of the nobs who come down here, for any purpose, as it would seem, judging from their faces, save pleasure?—what of the snobs, who ape the airs of the nobs, and enjoy themselves little accordingly?—what of the lawyer you have known so well in London, who mounts to the very top of the East Cliff, and lies down on the grass there, far away from men and the noise thereof—lies down, not to think, or to look, or to dream, but to rest!—what of the invalid, who gazes out from shaded window at the changing groups upon the shore?—what of the children and the nursemaids, of the lovers and the newly married, of the childless and the widowed? What? Dear reader, go to Hastings, and look upon them all for yourself; go, as Mrs. Stondon did, and yourself a dispassionate observer, look over the throng.
It was in the height of the season that Phemiefound herself in Hastings once again, and the waves broke against the Parade, and the sea kept up its perpetual murmur, and the wind went sobbing away out upon the waters just as she could remember it doing in the days that were gone.
She did not come to Hastings as a visitor. She took no furnished apartments. She had to listen to no dissertations on the subject of plate, linen, and boot-cleaning. She was in Hastings for a purpose, not for any pleasure. She had come quickly, and she meant to return without delay; for which reasons she and Mr. Aggland took up their quarters at the hotel which stands at the east end of Robertson Terrace.
Seated by the window, straining her eyes out over the sea, Phemie went back over the years that had elapsed since she first beheld the Castle, the Parade, the East and West Cliffs.
She had come to Hastings to see an old friend who was mixed up with every sad memory of her life. Of all places Hastings was, perhaps, the one she would most have shrunk from revisiting;but necessity is a hard taskmaster, and necessity had brought Mrs. Stondon back to the sea, to the visitors, to the music, to the moonlight once again.
She wanted to see Miss Derno. On her arrival at Roundwood, immediately after her hurried departure from Marshlands, her first act was to inquire at what time the post went out; her next to write a letter.
Writing letters being an employment to which, at this present age of the world, men and women are much addicted, the fact of Phemie inditing an epistle before she rested or refreshed herself would scarcely be worth mentioning, had it not chanced that the missive in question was one over which she wept many tears and breathed many sighs.
It was a confession that she had been wrong, that she had been guilty of grievous injustice; it contained expressions of deep regret; it concluded with an earnest prayer for forgiveness.
In the main Phemie was of a just and agenerous nature. She never spared herself, and she could not let the sun set, after her discovery of Basil’s marriage, till she acknowledged that Miss Derno’s suspicions of Georgina had been correct, that her own suspicions of Miss Derno had been wrong.
She had let Basil Stondon come between her and everything she most esteemed and valued; between herself and her husband; between herself and her family and her friends; between herself and purity; between herself and God.
And fully aware of all this, in her deep self-abasement, in the first agony of her mortified pride and vanity, with the first smart of the dreadful wound spurring her on, with the past spread open before her like a book, Phemie wrote such a letter to her old friend as caused Miss Derno, when at length it reached her, to mourn with an exceeding sorrow for the misery of the woman whom she had first met so young, so guileless, so shy and unsophisticated.
She had always loved Phemie; loved her spiteof her faults, her whims, her injustice, her variableness; and she tried, when she answered the letter, to convey some assurance of this love to Mrs. Stondon.
The letter had been forwarded to her by Mrs. Hurlford. She said—“I would have answered it in person, but I am ill, dear, and I cannot go to you. I hear your health is far from good, or I would pray you to come and see me. If you are strong enough to travel here, I should like to see you, as it is scarcely probable I shall ever be able to leave Hastings again.”
That was the errand which brought Mrs. Stondon to Hastings, to see her old friend, to look in her face, and touch her hand once more. That! Phemie sat and thought about it, till at length, turning to her uncle, she said—
“I think she must be back by this time. Shall we go and see?”
He took his hat in silence, and they passed out of the hotel side by side. The radiant beauty of old was gone, and yet many a manturned to look after the fair widow as she swept along the Parade, turning her eyes neither to right nor to left, but looking straight forward, like one who sees something away in the indefinite distance.
They had inquired at the house in Robertson Terrace where Miss Derno lived, if she were come in, but the servant said she had not yet returned.
“Very likely, ma’am, she is on the Parade. She generally goes out about this time in a Bath-chair, to listen to the music and to watch the tide coming in.”
Along the Parade, therefore, Phemie walked, as I have said, with her black dress trailing behind her, with her eyes fixed on every advancing group, on every approaching figure.
There had been a time when on that same Parade she felt dreamily, dangerously happy; and as she walked along, the past was very present with her, and the woman’s heart bled, remembering the sweetness of the hours goneby, and contrasting that sweetness with the bitterness of the hours which were then passing.
Lonely and widowed, childless and deserted, with the man who had loved her so truly dead, with the man whom she had loved so passionately married to another woman, whose son would hereafter be master of Marshlands—no wonder that the people who looked admiringly at Phemie’s stately walk, and turned back for another glance at her queenly figure, felt instinctively that the widow’s dress, that the sweeping garments, covered a sorrowful story; that the new comer had wept bitter tears, kept weary vigils, passed through much sorrow, and seen bitter suffering.
She was an old actor now on the stage which she had once regarded from afar off as a mere spectator; she had gone through the tragedy, she had played out the most important scenes in her own life, and she listened to the moaning and murmuring of the sea with a comprehension clear and distinct of its meaning.
She felt that although she might still have toappear on the boards of existence, and act in other men’s pieces, appear in the comedies and tragedies of other people’s lives, still that her own was over.
At thirty her spring-time and her summer were gone. They had not been sunshiny or genial seasons to her; and the early blossoms which might have brought forth fruit in the autumn had died away and withered and rotted, and the rain had beaten down her roses, and withered the buds of promise, and cankered the root of every pleasant flower.
Her wounds were fresh, and Phemie felt them opening again with every step she took. There was not a foot of all that place but she knew and loved. There was not a spot of ground round which there did not hover some memory of the olden time. She could remember the airs and the waltzes they had listened to in the days before Basil went over the sea. She could recollect where they sat watching the waves come rushing up on the shore; the sight of the EastCliff standing out against the sky affected her like a sudden pain.
She had rejoiced here and she had lamented—she had been happy while he walked by her side—she had hearkened to the moaning of the sea—to the voices of the night when they came evening after evening and spoke to her—through the whole of the winter she passed at Hastings with her husband—about the depths wherein she then thought Basil was lying.
Was his death one half so bitter as his resurrection? Was it not easier for her to mourn him dead than behold him lost to her? Yet—no—no—the woman’s love was stronger than the woman’s pride. Life for him—life at any price—at any suffering to herself. He would be happy and she could bear; and she looked out seaward as she thought this, and the waves came murmuring gently up on the shore—gently and peacefully.
“Phemie, I think this is Miss Derno.”
It was Mr. Aggland who spoke, pointing to alady seated in an invalid-chair, which was turned so as to catch the rays of the setting sun, that were streaming over town and castle, over cliff and sea.
“Miss Derno—surely not!” exclaimed Phemie, “That skeleton Miss Derno!” And she went forward doubtingly, and looked in the sick woman’s face.
“Mrs. Stondon!”—“Miss Derno!”—they exclaimed at the same moment, and the two had met once more.
That was no place for loving greeting, for tender inquiry, for affectionate discourse; and it was not till Miss Derno had been wheeled back to her lodgings, and, assisted by a gentleman who was introduced to Mrs. Stondon as Major Morrice, had walked into the house, that the friends could speak to one another—heart to heart, and soul to soul.
“Forgive me, dear!”—that was the burden of Phemie’s entreaty.
“I have nothing to forgive,” was the reply;“and I am so glad—so glad to see you again—to have you near me before I go.”
“You are not dangerously ill though, darling, are you?”
“Mrs. Stondon”—Miss Derno raised the head which was resting in her lap, and bade Phemie look in her face—“do you think I am much like a woman who has long to live?” she asked, earnestly. “And I have so wished to live—so wished it, God forgive me.”
Then in the quiet twilight, while the sound of voices floated to them from the Parade—while the music rose and fell—while the visitors walked up and down—while the feet of many people hurried by—while the moon rose over the East Cliff—while the waves came washing up on the shore, and the sound of the waters fell on the ear like a subdued accompaniment to the noisy melody of human fears and hopes which was still being sung on the strand, just the same as formerly, Miss Derno told the story of her life to Phemie.
It was the old story of a mutual love which yet could not end in marriage—of a rich father desirous that his only son should marry well, and unwilling for him to choose beauty and goodness and youth when money formed no part of the lady’s dower.
It was the old story of the girl who would not endanger her lover’s worldly prosperity—who would not let him be pauperised for her sake.
It was the old story of rings exchanged, of vows breathed, of an engagement entered into, of eternal constancy promised—then they parted. He went to India, she remained with her aunt.
After that there was foul play; she was represented to her lover as faithless, as married, as happy.
“My letters never reached him, his letters never reached me,” she proceeded; “and though I knew, though I was confident there had been treachery somewhere, still I could not go on writing when I got no reply. A woman cannot force herself on a man,” said Miss Derno, with aslight return of the light, easy manner which Phemie had so much admired in former days. “Even if she believes he wants her, it is a difficult matter for her to press so valuable a possession on his acceptance—I could not, at all events. How was I to know the falsehoods he was told concerning me, and unknowing, I argued, ‘If he wants me he will come back for me; he will come back some day.’ And he has come back,” she finished, “to find me the wreck you see.”
“Was Major Morrice then——?” began Phemie.
“He was my first love and my last,” said the dying woman, and the tears came into her eyes and rolled down her cheeks as she spoke. “I could have married often,” she went on. “I say it in no spirit of idle vanity, but merely to show that I did not remain faithful, as many a woman does, simply because she has had no chance of being otherwise than faithful—I could have married often, I could have married well, as the worldtalks about such things, but the love of my youth was the love of my life, and I could take no second love into my heart for ever. He has never been in England since we were parted till now. He would not have come back yet, only that his father is dead, and there were many things requiring his presence. He returned at the same time as Basil Stondon; they were fellow-passengers in the steamer, and they landed together at Southampton. From Basil he heard I was not married, that I had always remained true, and he came to me here—came to pray me at last to be his wife. Think of it—think after the years of waiting, and to have to die and leave him.”
She covered her face with her hands, and sobbed aloud, while Phemie said, gently—
“And can nothing——”
“Nothing can save me,” added Miss Derno, completing her friend’s sentence, “and I am not going to fight against the unconquerable—I am not going to try to avert the inevitable. Nothing worse can come to me than the look I saw onGordon Morrice’s face when we first met. My fate was reflected there as in a glass. He has learned to disguise his thoughts since that—to speak hopefully of the future, but I know—I know——”
And she turned her head towards the window, and looked out at the groups standing on the Parade, at the young girls walking up and down, squired by attentive cavaliers. Her life had been full like theirs once—full of bliss and joy and happiness—full as the tide at its highest; but now the waves were ebbing, ebbing, leaving the sands of time, receding from the green shores of earth, rolling back—slowly, surely—into the depths of the mysterious sea.