WhenLaurie Renton arrived in town, he went with the story of his family’s fortune and his own, as was natural, to the padrona, who had now a double interest in the tale. She had already heard of it in a letter from Alice; but such a narrative is naturally more full and satisfactory by word of mouth.
It was in the same house, up the same stairs, in the same studio, that Laurie sought his friend. Everything was seven years older, and the hair growing thin on the top of Laurie’s head, and Alice the mother of children; but neither Mrs. Severn nor her studio was much changed. She had attained, when we saw her first, to that table-land which lies in the centre of an innocent and healthful life, and on which Time, if he does not stand still, moves with such equal and steady steps, that it is difficult to trace his progress; and as many more years were probably before her ere there would appear in the padrona any such marked signs of the passage of years as those which had already left their stamp on Laurie in his youth.There might be a few white threads among her hair, at least she said there were; but for all that any one could have told, she might have been wrapped in some enchanted sleep for all those years, instead of working, and thinking, and sorrowing, and taking such simple pleasures as came to her. The pleasures had been less and the sorrows greater since Alice left her; but now Edie had grown, as everybody said, a great girl, and the mother’s heart was stirring into life in her development, to prepare for herself another crisis and sacrifice. It was years now since Laurie had returned from his first self-banishment to Italy. He had come back and he had been away again from time to time, but he had always returned here,—‘home’ as he liked to call it,—and for a long period there had been nothing in the character of his feelings which made it painful to him to come. How this was he could not tell. When he went away on that forlorn journey to Rome he had felt as if he never could look again upon the woman whom he loved with all his heart, but who, as nature herself indicated, could never be more to him than a friend. She could not be his,—never,—though everything in heaven and earth were to plead for him,—and the only thing for him to do was to rush away from her, and bury himself and his unhappy love out of sight for ever. These had been his feelings when he went away;—but, somehow, they did not last. Slowly, by degrees, he and his heart came back to her without any anguish or despair in them. When he returned, and went half-tremblingly to see if he could bear the sight of her, Laurie found, somewhat to his astonishment, that the sight, instead of driving him wild with disappointed affection, soothed and consoled and softened him as nothing else could do. Perhaps, had it been possible that she should become any other man’s wife the sensation would have been different; but there had long ago ceased to be any strong wish on the matter in Laurie’s mind. The old custom of hanging about her house came back upon him. He would come and talk to her of all his own concerns, and of a great many of hers, by the hour together; and not of realities only, but of fancies,—everything that came into his head. There was the strangest transposition of ordinary rules in their intercourse. While he lounged about, and talked and poured out all his mind, she would be working on steadily, pausing to note her effects,—now and then calling him into counsel on some knotty point, responding to his thoughts, understanding him even when he but half-uttered his meaning, giving him a certain proof of perfect sympathy and friendship, more soft and tender than ordinary friendship,—and yet never stopping in her work. Had they been of the same age, such a thing of course could not have been possible; but on the vantage-ground of a dozen additional years the woman stood calm and steadfast, and the man too, his boyish fit of passion over, was calm. No doubtthere was a whisper at one time in the artists’ quarter that Mrs. Severn was going to make a fool of herself and marry a man young enough to be her son. But as time disproved that matter, the world, which after all is not such a stupid world, but acknowledges, after due probation, the privileges that can be safely accorded to the blameless, held its tongue,—or only jeered innocently by times at the friendship. ‘Such things are impracticable generally, and dangerous, you know, and all that. It is all very well to talk of friendship; but one knows it always falls into love on one side or the other. I really do believe an exception ought to be made for the padrona and Laurie Renton,’ was what was said in Fitzroy Square. And as the two took matters with perfect composure, and never looked as if they supposed either the world or the Square to have anything to do with it, the unusual bond between them soon came to be considered a matter of course. It was not such a bond that the man was always at the woman’s apron-strings. He went away, sometimes for months together, and travelled about in that half-professional, half-dilettante way that suited Laurie; and then he wrote to her, and next after Alice’s, Laurie’s letters were looked for in Mrs. Severn’s house. And I will not say that there was not now and then just a word in them which the padrona passed over when she read these epistles to the boys, and which made her half smile, half sigh with a curious mingled sense of regret,and amusement, and pleasure. He would say, when he was describing something to her, ‘If you were but here, padrona mia, I should want no more.’ Foolish fellow! as if she ever could be with him, as if it would not be the height of folly and weakness, and overturn of the whole rational world and all the modesties of nature. But yet, so long as it evaporated in a harmless sigh like this, it hurt no one,—not Laurie, who perhaps loved his wanderings all the better for that soft want in them; and not her, as she doubled down the page at that point with a half-laugh. And when he came home the first place he went to was the Square. To be sure, such a friendship put all thoughts of marrying out of Laurie’s head, as Mrs. Suffolk, who thought everybody should marry, sometimes deplored. ‘Unless you send him away, padrona, he will always be just as he is. He will never think of any other kind of life,’ she would say to her friend. ‘My dear, he has no money to marry on,’ the padrona would say,—and so Laurie’s heart had always found a home and every kind of support and consolation and sympathy in Fitzroy Square.
And, to tell the truth, the money had been rather a difficult point with him now and then. To live upon two hundred a-year when you have been brought up a Renton of Renton, is a matter which requires a great deal of consideration. But Laurie, fortunately for himself, had no expensive tastes, andhe painted some pictures, and, what was more remarkable, sold some; and even found himself on the line at the Academy, thus carrying out his highest dreams. But it did not give him the gratification, nor cause the stir he had once anticipated. It was a small picture, a little bit of Italian air and sunshine, and Slasher gave it a little paragraph all to itself in the ‘Sword;’ but the people whom he had once pictured to himself finding out his name in the catalogue, and calling heaven and earth to witness that Laurie Renton had done something at last, had by this time forgotten all about Laurie Renton, or he had forgotten them, which came to the same thing. And candidly in his soul, Laurie allowed, that had not old Welby been on the hanging committee, probably it never would have reached ‘the line;’ and had not Slasher been a friend of his, would never have been noticed in the ‘Sword.’ But it sold for a hundred pounds, which was always an advantage. The picture was called ‘Feliciello, on Tiberio,’ and was the picture of a dark-faced Capriote guide, on one of the highest points of his island, pointing out to a fair English girl the points in the wonderful landscape round. It was Edie Severn, who had never been there, with her golden hair streaming round her, who was the English girl. But handsome Feliciello had been studied on the spot. And Mr. Rich of Richmont,—always a great patron of the fine arts,—gave Laurie a hundred pounds for it, and thought it one of his greatest bargains. ‘This picture has a story,’ he would say to his guests; ‘it was painted by a gentleman, the son of one of my neighbours in the country, a man who had never been brought up to make his living by art. It is quite a romance; but I hear matters are settled, and that he has come into his share of the money, and will paint no more, and I think I was very lucky to secure this. My daughter, Lady Horsman, will tell you all about it.’ ‘About the picture painted by a gentleman?’ Nelly would say, on being questioned. ‘Most painters that I know are gentlemen. Papa means to infer that he is not much of a painter, I suppose.’ For Lady Horsman was not fond of the Rentons, and had never cared to cultivate their society. ‘If you get my lady on painters she’ll talk till midnight,’ Sir George said out of his moustache. He did not know the difference between a sign-post and a Titian, and thought the one quite as pretty as the other; but he was the head of one of the oldest families in Christendom, and Master of the Hounds in his county, and a great many other grandeurs; and, so far as I know, Nelly had the full value for her fifty thousand pounds.
This, however, is a digression a long way out of Fitzroy Square. Laurie went to the padrona with his story, and found her still in a state of excitement over Alice’s letter,—the second since the event,—with something in it about Dovecote, which was the last new possibility. She had just been taken to seeit, and her letter was full of an enthusiastic description of its beauties. ‘Think, mamma, of a lovely little house close to Renton, with a lawn sloping to the river, and a cow, and a pony-carriage, and I don’t know what,’ the young wife wrote in her delight. ‘And Frank thinks he may afford himself a hunter, and there is the sweetest honeysuckle room for Edie and you!’ The padrona, being mother to the being upon whom this glorious prospect was opening, was more interested at first in the Dovecote than in anything Laurie had to say.
‘To think one has only to take the train and be with her in an hour,—after being so far away for,—a lifetime!’ the padrona said, with tears in her eyes.
‘Only six years,’ said Laurie; ‘but never mind; after Alice has had her turn perhaps you will think of me.’
‘When you know I always think of you!’ said Mrs. Severn, ‘it becomes you to beexigeant, Laurie! and you are not going to have a cow, and a pony-carriage, and everything that is most delightful on the face of the earth. Think of Alice having a cow! You are so terriblyblasé, it does not seem to strike you. And Edie is out, the child, so that there is no one to be glad but me.’
‘It does not strike me at all,’ said Laurie. ‘If she had a dozen cows, I think I could bear it. But some day I must take you to see Dovecote, padrona, since you like it so much.’
‘I wish they had had Feliciello,’ said Mrs. Severn, ‘if one had known you were all to be so well off,—it would have pleased Frank.’
‘Frank will like some of those vile chromos just as well,’ said Laurie. ‘I’ll buy him a few, I think. And I mean to bring Ben to see you to-night; then you will know us all. Not that there will be any intense gratification in that; but you’ll like Ben. He is made of different stuff from the rest of us. There is more in him. He is not so cheeky as Frank; and he is another sort of fellow, to be sure, from a good-for-nothing like me.’
‘Laurie, there is something the matter,’ said the padrona, turning upon him with her palette in her hand. She knew all his tones like the notes in music, and heard the far-off quiver of one of his fits of despondency already vibrating in the quiet. ‘Is not this as good for you as for the rest?’
‘Oh, yes, quite as good,’ he said abruptly, with his eyes on her work. ‘You are putting too much yellow in that light.’
‘Am I? but that is not the question. Laurie, never mind the light, but tell me what is wrong.’
‘I must mind the light,’ he said. ‘If I can’t put you right when you get into a mess, what is the good of me? It’s all wrong and it’s all right, padrona mia, and I don’t know that it matters much one way or another; but I don’t quite like your shadows. With that tone of light they should have more blue inthem,’ he went on, gazing at the picture and shading his eyes with his hand.
‘But it will make a great difference in your life,’ said Mrs. Severn, putting down her tools and drawing a chair near to where he sat.
‘That is just it,’ he said; ‘it will make no difference to speak of. It is a great thing for Ben; and for Frank, too, it will be everything. You can see that clearly. But what difference will it make to me? More money to spend, perhaps, and better rooms to live in; but no sort of expansion or widening-out of life. That’s not possible, you know. It was put a stop to once, and no change that I know of can effect it now.’
‘You cannot mean to reproach me, Laurie?’ said the padrona.
‘No,’ he said, still fixedly gazing at the picture; ‘I don’t reproach you. Being you, perhaps you could have done nothing else. I am not complaining of anybody; but this is how it is,—you see it for yourself.’
‘Laurie, listen to me,’ she said, with eagerness, laying her hand on his arm. ‘I have wanted to speak to you for long, and never liked to begin the subject. You must make an effort to break this spell. I did not say a word as long as you were poor,—for what could you do?—and I thought I was always some consolation to you; but now that you have money enough, and can make a new beginning,—Laurie, doyou know, I think it would be better for you to go away from me.’
‘What, go away again?’ he said, with a half-smile, ‘as I did when I went to Rome? No, there is no such occasion now.’
‘Of course there is no such occasion now,—that dream has passed away, as all dreams do,—but, Laurie, for that very reason I speak. Even what you were so foolish as to wish then you don’t wish now.’
She made a momentary pause, but he gave no answer. It was quite true. He was not in love with her any longer,—though she was the creature dearest to him in the world. Nor did he any longer want to appropriate or bind her closer to himself. He would not have admitted this change in words, but it was true.
‘I don’t think in the least that you have ceased to care for me,’ she continued; ‘but it is different,—it is not in that way. And you are getting not to care much what happens. We talk over it, and come to our conclusions; and after that, good and evil are much the same to you. That is why I think you should go away,—not to Italy, as you did before, but out of this neighbourhood, to some place like the one you used to live in, and go back into the world.’
‘Why, I wonder?’ said Laurie. ‘The world and I had never much to say to each other. And at least I have some comfort in my life here.’
‘Too much, a great deal,’ said the padrona, with a smile. ‘You know you can always come to me, whether it is a pin that pricks, or a storm that overtakes you. I am fond of you; and you can always reckon on my sympathy.’
‘Always!’ said Laurie, stooping to kiss the hand she had laid on his arm.
‘Yes; but that is not good for you,’ said Mrs. Severn, hastily withdrawing her hand. ‘Now is the moment to preach you Helen Suffolk’s little sermon. She says you will never marry so long as you are constantly here.’
‘Marry!’ said Laurie, looking at her, and then turning his head away with a half-contemptuous impatience.
‘Well, marry. Why should not I say so? If I have stood in your way, unwillingly, unfortunately, once, why should that shut up all your life? Laurie, if I were to ask you to reconsider all this, and make a difference,—for my sake?’
‘I could not marry even for your sake,’ he said, turning to her with a sudden laugh; ‘though there is no other inducement I would do so much for. Tell me something else to do to show my devotion, and let everything go on as it was before.’
‘Not as it was before,’ said Mrs. Severn. ‘This atmosphere might be good enough for you when you were poor. At least, it did you no harm; but now I want you to go back into the world.’
‘You want me to be wretched, I think,’ said Laurie. ‘I have got used to this atmosphere, as you call it; and it suits me. But I have forgotten all about the world. What have I done that I should be sent back among people who have forgotten me, to mix myself up with things in which I take no interest? Padrona, in this you do not show your usual wisdom. Let us return to the question of the light.’
‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘It is because I am anxious about you that I speak. This is such a point in your life; a new beginning,—anything you please to make it,—and you feel yourself how hard it is to think that it will make no difference. Laurie, what I want you to do is to break this thread of association, and turn your back upon the past.’
He turned and looked at her as she spoke, and their eyes met;—hers earnest and steady; his with a smile, which was full of tenderness, and a kind of playful melancholy dawning in them. ‘But that is not what I want you to do,’ he said, the smile growing as he met her gaze. She turned away with a little impatient exclamation. It was not the kind of reply she had looked for.
‘You are provoking, Laurie,’ she said. ‘You have regained the ground you stood on seven years ago, and why should you refuse to recall the circumstances too?’
‘And make the seven years as if they had never been?’
‘I think you might, in a great measure,’ said the padrona, with a little flush on her cheek, ‘though you laugh. Nothing has happened in those seven years. Yes, I grant you, you have felt some things as you never did before, and learned a great many things. But nothing has happened, Laurie. Nothing has occurred either to tie up your freedom in any way, or to leave rankling recollections in your mind. There has been no fact which could fetter you. Indeed,—for all that has come and gone,—your life might be safer to begin anew than that of any man I know.’
‘Well, that is hard!’ said Laurie, with more energy than he had yet shown; ‘the present is not much, the future I take no particular interest in, and you ask me to agree that there is nothing in the past! What has been the good of me altogether, then? Nobody will say that it has been worth a man’s while to live in order to produce ‘Feliciello.’ Padrona, this is very poor consolation,—the poorest I ever knew you to give.’
‘I did not mean it so, Laurie.’
‘No, you did not mean it,’ he said; ‘you did not think that the past,—such as it is,—is all I have. Of course I might now go back to Kensington Gore, as you tell me, or somewhere else; and go to a few parties next season, perhaps. Fine fate! Didn’t Itell you how I used to anticipate people finding my name in the Academy catalogue, and standing and staring at Laurie Renton’s picture? and now I can’t, for the life of me, remember who the people were I so thought of! That’s encouraging for a return to old ways. Let’s say no more about it,’ said Laurie, getting up and following his friend to her easel. ‘After all, the boys and Edie shall have some pleasure out of the money, and then it will not be quite lost.’
‘The boys and Edie must not get into the way of looking to you for pleasure,’ said the padrona, quickly; ‘neither for you nor them would that be good.’
‘There it is now!’ cried Laurie, ‘proof upon proof how little I am the better for what has happened. You cannot work for ever, padrona; but if I had all the gold-mines that ever were dreamt of you would not take anything from me; and what is the good of my having it, I should like to know?’
‘No, I would not take anything from you,’ she said, with a momentary smile; but it was a suggestion that made her tremble in her fortitude whenever it was made. ‘Laurie,’ she said, with a little gasp, turning to him for sympathy, ‘when I cannot work I hope I shall die.’
‘But one cannot die when one pleases, that is the worst of it,’ said Laurie. ‘I hope you will,padrona mia,—and I too,—and then, perhaps, one might have a better chance for a new life.’
This was not cheerful talk for a new beginning; but the amusing thing about Laurie, and, indeed, about the pair thus strangely united, was, that after all this had been uttered and done with they both became quite cheerful; and, a quarter of an hour afterwards, were planning an expedition to Dovecote, taking Renton by the way, with all that enjoyment of the idea of a country excursion which is so strong in the laborious dweller in towns. The vision of gliding rivers and autumnal trees swept over Mrs. Severn’s mind like a refreshing wind, carrying away all the vapours. For a time, she thought no more either of that twilight life which Laurie had chosen for himself, and of which she felt herself partly the cause, nor of her own anxieties, but went on painting, reducing the yellow tone in her light, and modifying her shadows, and full of cheerful discussion of the day and the way of going. To the moment its work or its thought; and to the next, why, another thought, another piece of work; and so forth, as pleases God. This blessing of temperament,—special gift of heaven to its beloved,—belonged more or less to both. The artist-woman had it in its perfection, which was the reason why she had got through so much hard labour and so many struggles with eye undimmed and spirit unbroken; and Laurie had it in a degree which had done much to lead tothe unsatisfactoriness and imperfection of his life, which is a strange enough paradox, and yet true. For in the padrona, this power of dismissing care and living in the hour was accompanied, as it often is, by the strongest vitality and energy of constitution, by a natural delight and pleasure in exertion, and by the perpetual, never absent spur of necessity. Whereas in Laurie’s case it was associated with the meditative, contemplative soul; the mind that is more prone to thinking than to doing; a slower amount of life in the veins, and an existence disengaged from necessities and responsibilities. Temperament had more to do with the matter than had that early blunder in his life for which the padrona never forgave herself. ‘If I had not stood in his way he would have made a life for himself, like other men,’ she would say to herself, with an ache in her heart, yet with that touch of tender gratitude to the man who had it in him to pour himself out like a libation on her path, which a woman cannot but feel, however undesired the sacrifice may be. I am afraid to acknowledge it, but the truth is that such a libation is very grateful to a woman. There is in it the most exquisite, tragical, heart-rending pleasure. Not that one would not regret it with all one’s heart and soul, and do everything that one could, like Lancelot, to turn aside the rising passion. But even to Lancelot was not that self-offering of the lily-maid, though he would have given his life toprevent it, an exquisite sweetness and sorrowfulness, a combination of the deepest pain and gratification of which the soul is capable? Such an act raises the doer of it,—be it man or woman,—out of the level of ordinary humanity, and envelopes the receiver of the offering in the same maze of tenderest, most melancholy glory. Something of this feeling the padrona had for her Laurie, who had given her his life like a flower, without price or hope of price in this world. And yet, I think, temperament was at the bottom of it, and the sacrifice, and the sweetness of it, and all the subdued tones of his existence which had followed, were more to him than the brighter daylight colours of ordinary existence, even though he might feel the absence of those fuller tones now and then, once in a way.
But to some extent Laurie acted upon Mrs. Severn’s advice. As luck would have it, his old rooms at Kensington Gore, having passed through many hands in the interval, proved to be vacant about this time. And Laurie secured them, and fitted up all his old fittings, his carved brackets and velvet hangings, and all the contrivances that had been so pleasant to him; and had his bow-window once more full of flowers, and looked out once more upon the gay park and the stream of carriages as from an opera-box. But the ladies who looked up at his window once had passed away and given place to others, who knew not Laurie, or had forgotten him, and asked each other who was the man who stared so from that window? And from Kensington Gore to Fitzroy Square is a very long walk to be taken every day. And though, to be sure, there are plenty of studios about Kensington, into which an amateur may drop, yet these are grand studios, flanked by drawing-rooms, with ladies to be called upon, and the flavour of society about. It is true that Suffolk lives in that refined neighbourhood now, having made very rapid progress since the days when Mr. Rich bought ‘The Angles,’ and Laurie put the studio in order for the reception of the patron, and got cobwebs on his coat. ‘They were very nice, those old days, after all!’ Mrs. Suffolk says, when they talk it over; but they have now a spruce man-servant,—more spruce, though not so well instructed as old Forrester, Mr. Welby’s man,—to move a picture that has to be moved, and open the door to the patrons and patronesses. And Laurie for one, to whom a man-servant is not the badge of grandeur and success which it is to Mr. Suffolk, rather preferred, I fear, the state of things in the old days, when they all clustered about Fitzroy Square.
But the padrona has not removed from No. 375, though she has been tempted and plagued to do so on all sides. Frank, who would prefer to have a mother-in-law (since such a thing he must have) in a habitable part of the town, is very energetic asto the advantage it will be to Edie when she grows up. And Alice recommends it with wistful eyes, as so much nicer for the air, not liking to say a word against the home of her youth. Mrs. Severn thinks it would be unkind to Mr. Welby to withdraw from him; and it would cost a great deal of money; and then there would be new carpets wanted for new rooms, and quantities of things; and, last of all, would not it be a still greater clog upon Laurie and hindrance to him, in the possibility of his heart disengaging itself from all the pleasant bonds of the past? I think, however, that the thing which will finally resolve the point will be Frank’s success in the competition for a Foreign Office clerkship, for which he is going in. None of his people have any doubt of his success; and, in that case, the boy may be trusted to make his mother’s life a burden to her so long as she remains in Fitzroy Square. But what is to be done with Mr. Welby, and Forrester, to whom it would now be impossible to live out of sight of Edie and the boys, and withdraw themselves from the gradually increasing authority of the padrona, I don’t know.
Laurie’s sketch of the ‘Three Fairy Princes’ turned up out of a packing-box when he took back his belongings to Kensington Gore; and he hung it in the placer of honour over his mantelpiece. There anybody may see young Frank pushing forth towards the Indian towers and minarets, with a coronethanging in a haze over the distant prospect; and Laurie himself, with his goods and chattels hung about him, and his lay-figure gazing blank over his shoulders, trudging towards the pepper-boxes of the National Gallery; and Ben scaling the rocks, like Mr. Longfellow’s Alpine hero, with the nymph on the summit beckoning him,—not to eternal snows and supernatural excellence, but to Renton and the House of Commons. Frank has not got the coronet; nor Laurie, except in the very mildest accidental way, the glories of the Academy. But who is to tell what is waiting for Ben? At least, there is only another chapter to do it in, and the story is all but told.
Theday of Hillyard’s visit was full of trial and excitement to Mary. To live in a household where everything is talked of freely, with the consciousness of having various matters of the deepest interest entirely to yourself, is not an agreeable position in any case; and to feel yourself thrilling through every vein with the concussion of a recent shock, while yet you are compelled to put on the most commonplace composure, is more trying still. Mary, however, had been used to it for some time back, if that was any alleviation. She only had known, or rather suspected, the ancient connexion between Ben Renton and the beautiful Millicent. She alone had had the excitement of watching their meeting after so long an interval. She only had understood the passage of arms between the two; and she had witnessed their parting, which to her was of ten-fold more interest than even the great interest which the family had in common. And now, her spectatorship in Ben’s romance being over, here had suddenlysprung up a romance of her own, so completely beyond all expectation that even now she could scarcely believe it had been real. Mary could not have betrayed Ben’s secret to any one; but had her mother been at hand, or even had her godmother been less pre-occupied, I doubt whether she could have kept poor Hillyard’s to herself. For it was her own, and in the excitement of the moment she might not have remembered that it was the man’s also, and a humiliation to him. But, as it was, poor Mary had not the opportunity of relieving her mind. Mrs. Westbury was away, and Alice took her share in nursing Mrs. Renton, entering into it with a certain enjoyment of the task. There were even moments when she thought Mary unsympathetic, and was sorry for ‘poor grandmamma,’ bringing with her a fresh interest in the ailments and the alleviations, such as was scarcely possible to the nurse who had been going through it all for seven years. Mary consequently at this extraordinary moment of her existence had lost all her habitual quiet, and all those possibilities of communication which had ever been open to her. She herself and her personal being was floated away, as it were, on the current of ‘the Frank Rentons.’ They had come into the house like an inundation, and left no room for anything but their own cheerful beginning of life,—their arrangements, their new house, their children, what they were going to do. The twowomen who had lived there so long in the silence were carried away by the vigorous young tide; and Mary, hiding her individual concerns in her own mind, lived for the rest of that evening a strange, abstracted, feverish sort of existence, like a creature in a dream, hearing the cheerful voices round her, and the lights shining, and figures flitting about, but only awaking to take any part in it when she was called upon energetically to come out of her abstraction. The position altogether was so strange that she kept asking herself which scene was real and which was a dream;—either this was the reality,—this evening picture, with Frank talking to his mother on the sofa, and Alice working in the golden circle of the lamplight, and the urn bubbling, and gleams of reflexion shining from the tea-table in the corner; or else the other scene, with Hillyard standing sunburnt, and bearded, and impassioned, telling her he had loved before he even saw her,—saying, if some time, any time she should want a man’s love and support—— One thing was certain, they could not both be real; she had been dreaming them,—or else she was dreaming now.
Nor yet was Mary’s excitement over for the night. When the evening post came in, a letter was brought to her, which at the first glance she saw was in Ben’s handwriting. Well! there was nothing surprising in that. Of course Ben would write, though she had not expected it so soon. Butthe contents of the note were such as to raise to a climax her sense of being in some feverish dream. This is what Ben said:—
‘Dear Mary,—I want to speak half-a-dozen words to you before I go. I have heard something to-day which has taken me very much by surprise, and I cannot leave England without seeing you. But I don’t want to disturb my mother with a hurried visit and another parting. If you will be at the beech-tree on the river-walk to-morrow morning at eight, I will come down by the first train and meet you there. Don’t refuse me. It is of great importance. In haste,‘Yours, B. R.’
‘Dear Mary,—I want to speak half-a-dozen words to you before I go. I have heard something to-day which has taken me very much by surprise, and I cannot leave England without seeing you. But I don’t want to disturb my mother with a hurried visit and another parting. If you will be at the beech-tree on the river-walk to-morrow morning at eight, I will come down by the first train and meet you there. Don’t refuse me. It is of great importance. In haste,
‘Yours, B. R.’
Mary’s head went round and round as she sat,—hearing Frank’s voice talking all the while, and Alice pouring out the tea,—and read this note. The question changed now, and seemed to be,—they or Ben; which was the phantom? But the paper and the writing were very real,—so real that she could see it had been written in excitement, and was blurred, and betokened a scratching and uncomfortable pen, which is a thing that no imagination would be likely to invent. When she had put the extraordinary note away in her pocket,—fortunately she had not said out loud, ‘Here is a letter from Ben,’ as on any other day she would have done,—Mary’s mind went hopelessly into abstraction. She gave up the tea-making to Alice gratefully and without an effort, though in general she did not like her prerogatives invaded. She never uttered a word to help on the conversation. She had to be recalled as from a distance, when anybody spoke to her. Things had come to such a pitch that she seemed to lose her individual consciousness altogether. To have violent love made her one day by a man whom she scarcely knew, and to meet her cousin Ben clandestinely the next morning by the great beech, to talk over something of importance, which concerned only her and him, and nobody else in the family,—the earth seemed to be going off its pivot altogether to Mary. She felt that now nothing would surprise her. If Mrs. Renton had suddenly proposed to her to walk to town, or Frank that she should swim across the river, it would have seemed to her perfectly natural. But to meet Ben by stealth at the great beech at eight o’clock! Could she have mistaken the words? For one moment a sort of gleam of eldritch fear came across her, and a reminiscence of the amazing manner in which the familiar forms of the nursery arranged themselves in the mind of little Alice in Wonderland in the story. Could it be that Ben was to start on his long journey to-morrow by the first train, and could the great beech be the name of the ship? Mary was so completely thrown off her balance, that this idea actuallyoccurred to her. And then she felt that they must all have remarked that she had got a letter, and had thrust it stealthily into her pocket. Altogether, the evening swam over her somehow, she could not tell how. And then there was the stir of Davison’s entrance, and Mrs. Renton’s going to bed. And then Frank disappeared to smoke his cigar, and Alice, finding her companion uncommunicative, sat down at the piano, and began to play softly to herself, as she had been wont in the old days at home; and silence, broken only by sounds which helped to increase all the mists, and made her feel a safety and comfort in the retirement of her thoughts, fell upon the quiet house.
Next morning Mary was awake and up before any one was stirring. She did not herself think that she had slept all the night; but she was still young enough to consider an hour or two’s wakefulness a great matter. And she was as much afraid of Ben’s visit being found out, as if he had been the most illegitimate of visitors. She was out soon after six, while the grass was still quite wet with dew, and went wandering up and down the river-walk like a ghost, under the cloistered shade of those great trees which, as yet, let no sunshine through. There was something in the air at that early hour which told that summer was waning, and Mary was chilly with nervousness, which had all the effect of cold. She went all the way down to the river-side, andbasked in the sunshine which lay full on the open bit of green bank, by way of overcoming the shivering which had seized her. The world was so still, the birds so noisy,—which rather heightens than impairs the stillness,—the paths so utterly vacant and suggestive, that fancy continually caught glimpses of something disappearing behind the trees. Now it would seem a gliding dream-figure, now the last sweep of a robe just getting out of sight. The ghostliness of the early morning is different, but not less profound, than that of the night; and at six o’clock the Renton woods were as mysterious, as dim under the great shadows of the trees, as any enchanted wood. The sunshine went all round them, drying up the dew on the open bank, and chasing the mists and chills of night; but the river-walk was all brown and grey, and full of clear, mystical distances and windings, broken by upright shafts of trees. Any one might have appeared suddenly at such an hour in such a place. People out of books, people out of one’s own straining fancy, people from the other world. And though it was Ben, and no other, for whom Mary Westbury was waiting, yet her imagination, over-excited, was ready to see anything. And she was alarmed by every waving leaf or bough that swayed in the morning air. If anybody should discover this tryst! If it should be known that Ben had come in this sweet inconceivable sort of way to see her! Had he beena tabooed lover, whose discovery would have involved all sorts of perils, Mary could not have been more afraid.
It was half-past seven before he came,—as indeed she might have known,—since that was the earliest moment at which any one could come by the first train. She could see him coming for a long way, making his way among the trees. He had not come in by any gate, but through some illegitimate byway known to the Renton boys and the poachers, so lawless were all the accessories of this extraordinary stealthy meeting. He came along rapidly, making himself audible by, now and then, the sound of the gravel sent flying by his foot, or the crackle of a fallen branch on the path. And then he came in sight, walking very quickly, with a look of abstraction, wrapped in his own thoughts. He was close upon the bank before he caught sight of Mary, whose grey gown was easily lost sight of among the branches,—then he quickened his pace, and came forward eagerly.
‘You here,’ he said, ‘Mary? I thought I should be too early for you,’ and held out both his hands for her.
‘I was so much surprised,—so anxious to know what it was. I have been out for nearly an hour, I think,’ said Mary. ‘I could not sleep.’
‘Did I startle you?’ said Ben. ‘Not half so much, I am sure, as I was startled myself. But ifI have made you uneasy I will never forgive myself,’ he went on, looking closely into her face.
What could have made that difference in his look? He had always been kind,—certainly he had always been kind,—but he had never looked at her before in that wistful, anxious way. He had been protecting, superior, affectionate; but such was not his expression now.
‘Oh, it does not matter!’ said Mary; ‘but, of course, since it is something important enough to bring you from town like this,—and at this hour—— Tell me, please, and put me out of pain.’
What he did was to draw her arm closely through his own. ‘Come this way,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to be seen or interrupted. There is a corner down here where we shall be quite safe. It was very good of you, Mary, to come.’
‘Oh, Ben,’ she cried, ‘don’t talk so, you frighten me! You never were so gentle, so soft to me before. Tell me what it is. It must be something terrible to make you look like this. What is wrong?’
‘I don’t know if there is anything wrong,’ he said. ‘It depends upon your feelings altogether, Mary; only I never had thought of,—anything of the kind,—never! It came upon me like a thunder-clap. To be sure. I might have known. You could not but be as sweet and as pleasant in the eyes of others as you were in mine——’
‘Ben, don’t talk riddles, I entreat of you,’ saidMary. ‘I cannot make this out to-day. A shadow would frighten me to-day. I have had too much to bear,—too much,—‘
‘Sit down here,’ he said, tenderly; ‘you must not be frightened. There is nothing to hurt you. It is only me that it can hurt. Mary, Hillyard came to me yesterday, and said,—I suppose by this time you must know what he said?’
‘Yes,’ she answered, first with a violent blush, and then growing suddenly hot.
‘Of course, I ought to have known it,’ said Ben. ‘I used to read him your letters, like an ass, never thinking. I was furious yesterday; I thought it presumption and insolence. But, of course, that was nonsense. The man is as good as I am. The fact is, I suppose I thought that no other man but myself had any right to think of you.’
‘Ben!’ Mary cried, trembling with a sudden passion, ‘you never thought of me! How can you say so? or what is it you would have me understand? I feel as if you were mocking me,—and yet you would not come all this way, surely, to mock me!’
‘Then, I did not think at all,’ he went on, without any direct answer. ‘I felt that no man had any right,—and I was a fool for thinking so. Mary, the fact is, it ought to be you and I.’
‘What ought to be you and I?’ she faltered, lost in confusion and amazement.
He was standing before her, not lover-like, but absorbed, pressing his subject, and paying no special regard to her. ‘It ought to be you and I to build up the old house. No. I cannot think any man has a right to come in and interfere. But only just there is this one thing to be said. Whatever is for your happiness, Mary, I will carry out with all my might. If you should set your heart on one thing or another, it shall be done; but still that does not affect the question,—it ought to be you and me.’
‘For what?’ she asked again.
‘For what? Oh, for more than I can tell,’ said Ben; ‘to build up this old house, as I told you,—to get through life. I must always have felt it, though I did not know. And here is this fellow come in with his wild backwoods way, and thinks he can win you off-hand. I don’t say a word if it is for your happiness; but I know it should be you and me.’
And then there was a pause, and Ben walked up and down the little vacant space in front of the seat he had placed her in, with his eyes bent on the ground, and his face moody and full of trouble. As for Mary, she sat and gazed at him, half-conscious only, worn out by excitement and wonder, and the succession of shocks of one kind and another which she had been receiving, but with a soft sense of infinite ease and consolation stealing over her confused heart. It was that relief from pain which feels to the sufferer like positive blindness. She had not evenknown how deep the pain in her was until she felt it stealing in upon her,—this ineffable ease and freedom from it, which is more sweet than actual joy.
‘Ben,’ she said at last, when she could get breath. ‘It is very difficult for me to follow you, and you confuse me so that I don’t know. But, about Mr. Hillyard you are all wrong. I never saw him till Monday. I never thought about him at all. I was very sorry. But it is not as if I could blame myself. I was not to blame.’
‘To blame! How could you be to blame?’ said Ben, and he came and stood before her again, gazing at her with that strange look which Mary did not recognise in him, and could not meet.
‘I should never have mentioned it to any one,’ she said. ‘I would not now, though you question me so. But only it is best you should not have anything on your mind. Is,—that,—all?’
It was not coquetry which suggested the question; it was her reason that began utterly to fail her. She did not seem to know what it was he had said besides,—though he had said something.
‘Ah!’ he cried vehemently, and then paused and subdued himself, ‘all except my answer, Mary,’ he said, softly stooping over her.
‘Your answer? You have not asked me anything. Oh, Ben,’ she cried, suddenly getting up from her seat, with her cheeks burning and her eyes wet, ‘let there be no more of this. It was all the feelingof the moment. You thought something had happened which never, never could happen, and you felt a momentary grudge. Don’t tell me it was anything else. Do you think I forget what you told me once up at the beech about her?’ Mary cried, waving her hand towards The Willows. ‘You did not mean to tell me; but I knew. And the other day—— When you say this sort of thing to me it is unkind of you; it is disrespectful to me. I have my pride like other women. Let us speak no more of it, but say good-bye, and I shall go home.’
‘Then you do not even think me worthy of an answer?’ said Ben; and the two stood confronting each other in that supreme duel and conflict of the two existences about to become one, which never loses its interest; she flushed, excited, suspicious; he steadily keeping to his point, refusing to be led away from it. And why Mary should have resisted, standing thus wildly at bay,—and why, when she could stand no longer, she should have sunk down on the seat from which she had risen, in a passion of tears, is more than I can tell. But that finally Ben did get his answer, and that it was, as anybody must have foreseen, eminently satisfactory to him at last, is a matter about which there can be no doubt. I do not know even whether he offered any explanations, or justified himself in the matter of Millicent. I am inclined to think, indeed, that at that moment he took no notice of it whatever; but only insisted on that reply, which, when naturewas worn out and could stand against it no longer, came. But the victor did go into certain particulars, as with Mary’s arm drawn closely through his he led her again up that bank which, in so much excitement and uncertainty, half-an-hour before he had led her down.
‘I can’t tell you the fright I was in yesterday,’ he said. ‘It suddenly flashed upon me in a moment how mad I had been. To leave you here so long, open to any assault, and to be such an ass as to bring a man down who had eyes in his head, and was not an idiot?’
‘I wish you would not swear,’ said Mary. ‘The strange thing is that you should like me, and yet think me of so small account that any man,—a man I had only known for three days——’
‘Hush!’ he said, drawing her to him. ‘When a man’s eyes are opened first to the thought that another man has gone off express to rob him of his jewel, do you think he pauses to be reasonable?’ and then they looked at each other and were silent, there being more expression in that than in speech.
‘But the jewel was no jewel till yesterday,’ said Mary, making the kind of objection which women love to make, ‘and who knows but it may be paste to-morrow?’
‘My dear,’ said Ben, ‘my only woman in the world! might not a man have been beguiled to follow a Will-o’-the-wisp till he cursed and hated suchlights, and chose darkness instead,—and then all at once wake up to see that his moon had risen, and that the night was safe and sweet as day?’
I suppose it was the only bit of poetry which Ben Renton was ever guilty of in his life; and it was perfectly successful. And they went on and continued their walk to the beech-tree. Mary’s eyes were blind with sweet tears; but then, what did it matter? was not he there to be eyes to her, through the winding of the tender morning path? And as they reached the trees, the sunshine burst into the wood all at once with something like a shout of triumph. If it was not a shout, it came to precisely the same thing, and caught a branch here and a twig there, and made it into burnished gold, and lit up the far distance and cloistered shade into all the joyous animation and moving stir of life.
‘Must you go now?’ Mary said, clinging to him a little closer, ‘must it still be secret? is no one to see you now?’
‘I must still go away,’ he said, ‘no help for that, Mary; but in the meantime I am going home with you to tell them all about it. I shall still catch my ship if I go by the next train.’
He was received with subdued consternation by the household, which jumped instantly to the conclusion that something had happened; but there is an instinct in the domestic mind which is almost infallible in such matters; and before Mrs. Renton had evenbeen told of the unexpected arrival of her son, Davison had said to the housekeeper, ‘He’s come down at the last to settle it all with Miss Mary. Now didn’t I tell you?’ and Willis had recorded his opinion that, on the whole, there wasn’t nothing to say again it. ‘A little bit of money never comes amiss,’ he said; ‘but she was used bad in the will, never to have no compensation. And, on the whole, I agrees with Ben.’
Such was the decision of the house, conveyed in language, kind, if familiar, just five minutes after the entry by the window into the dining-room, where the breakfast-table was prepared for the family, of the betrothed pair. Mary’s gown was wet with the dew, and she ran up-stairs to change it, leaving Ben alone to receive the greetings of his brothers, who appeared at the same moment. ‘I thought you couldn’t resist coming down again, old fellow, before you left for good,’ Frank said in her hearing, as she rushed to the covert and sanctuary of her own room. He was not so discriminating as the intelligent community below stairs.
And then, in that strange golden forenoon, which seemed at the same time one hasty moment and a long day, full of events, Mrs. Renton, amazed, found her son again stooping over her, and received the astonishing news. It was some time before she could take it in. ‘What,’ she said, ‘Mary? I will never believe it is Mary. You are making fun of me, Ben.’
‘It is a great deal better than fun, mother,’ he said. ‘I could not go till it was settled; and now there is only ten minutes or so to kiss us and bless us, and thank me for giving you such a daughter. She has been a daughter to you already for so long.’
‘Of course she has,’ said the bewildered woman. ‘Mary! it’s like your sister. I can’t think it’s quite right, do you know, Ben. I should as soon have thought of you marrying Alice, or——’
‘Frank might object to that, my dear mother,’ said Ben.
‘But, Mary—you are sure you are not making one of your jokes? And after all, I can’t think what you see in her, Ben,’ Mrs. Renton said, with a little eagerness. ‘She was never very pretty,—not like that beautiful Mrs. Rich, you know, or those sort of women,—and not even very young. She must be seven-and-twenty, if she is a day. Let me see, Frank was born in July, and she in the December after. She will be seven-and-twenty on her next birthday. And nothing to make up for it—— ’
‘Except that there is nobody else in the world,’ said Ben, smiling at Mary, who had just come into the room.
‘Nobody else in the world! I don’t know what you mean. Not to say a word against Mary, but you might have done a great deal better, Ben.’
‘And so he might, godmamma,’ said Mary, with the gravity of happiness, though Ben had her hand in his.
‘Yes, my dear,’ said Mrs. Renton, in perfect good faith, ‘a great deal better. You always have the sense to see things. If I were you, I would reflect a little longer before I announced it, or did anything more in the matter, Ben.’
The answer Ben made to this proposal was to draw his betrothed close to his mother’s bedside within his own supporting arms. ‘Give her a kiss, mamma, and say God bless you,’ he said, bending down his own face close to Mary’s. And the mother, quite confused and bewildered, did as she was told, crying a little, and not knowing what to think. And before any one knew, Ben was gone again, off by express to join the steamer which sailed from Liverpool that night. He had just time; everything belonging to him having gone on before with poor Hillyard, who knew nothing about this morning’s expedition. And before noon the episode was all over, and the Frank Rentons once more in the foreground, and Mary reading the newspaper as if such a wild inroad of romance into the midst of reality had never been.
‘My dear, it is not that I am not as fond of you,—fonder of you than of anybody,’ Mrs. Renton said, when poor Mary, for one moment, owing to a paragraph about a shipwreck, fairly broke down; ‘but it does not seem somehow as if it were quite proper. And we can’t shut our eyes to it that he might have done better. It feels as if there wasnever to be any satisfaction in the boys’ marriages. I had a fortune of my own, and so had your grandmother; but everything now is going to sixes and sevens——’
‘Don’t say anything more about it, godmamma,’ said Mary, with an outburst of pent-up agitation, and the nervous panic that seizes a weakened mind. ‘Oh, how can we tell what may happen in the meantime? Let us say nothing more till he comes home.’
‘Well, to be sure, he might change his mind,’ said Mrs. Renton, as Davison came in with her arrowroot. And for half-an-hour or so that satisfactory conclusion, and the adding of another teaspoonful of port, on account of the excitement she had been going through, put a stop to the conversation, and gave Mary time to draw breath in peace.
But if the reader of this history hopes to be humoured by a shipwreck at this late period of the narrative, it is a vain expectation. The winds blew, and the sea rose, but Ben Renton got safely out to Canada, and came safely home. I am sorry to have to say that his last great piece of work did not pay nearly so well as he had expected it to do; and the business, which he made over to Hillyard, was, owing to the state of the colony at that moment, of less value than had been anticipated; but at the same time patience alone was wanted to realise all possible hopes. I have been obliged to ask thereader to take Ben’s success for granted all along, as it would have been simply impossible to introduce details of engineering enterprise into a work of this description; and, indeed, to tell the truth, I fear I should not have sufficiently understood them to set them forth with any distinctness. But whether Hillyard will have patience, and keep up the energy which Ben put into the business, is a very doubtful matter; and it is just as likely as not that he may turn up again at the old club, which is the only luxury he keeps up, as rough, asinsouciant, as careless what becomes of him, as on the first day Ben met him, after the weird of the Rentons had begun. Mary might have made another man of him perhaps; but who knows? Temperament is stronger than circumstance,—stronger than fortune,—stronger even than love.
Ben Renton came home, as I have said, as safely as most men come home from Canada. And everything occurred as it ought to have occurred. I would add that they lived happy ever after, if there had been time to make such a record. But the fact is, that it is too early yet to be historical on that point; and for anything anybody can tell, the Rentons may yet come to be very wretched, and give occasion for other chapters of history; though, in common with all their friends, I sincerely hope not. Benedict Renton of Renton stood for the county of Berks, in the late election, with politics perhapsslightly tinged by his life in the other world, but failed by a few votes, notwithstanding the interest attaching to him,—Berks, like many other counties, being of the opinion that a good, steady, reliable bumpkin, who will do whatever he is told, is a more satisfactory legislator than a man who has spent his youth in objectionable exercises, such as writing, and thinking, and moving about the world. Frank Renton, true soldier and constitutional Tory, is one of those who hold this opinion. But I do not despair of seeing Ben in Parliament yet.
And thus the story ends; being like all stories, no history of life, but only of a bit out of life,—the most amiable bit, the section of existence which the world has accepted as its conventional type of life, leaving all the profounder glooms and the higher lights apart. As in heaven there can be no story-telling of the present, for happiness has no story,—there, perhaps, for the first time, the mouth of the minstrel may be opened to say or sing what is untellable by the frankest voice on earth. But till then we must be content to break off after the fairy chapter of life’s beginning, the history of Youth.
THE END.
LONDON:Printed byStrangeways & Walden, Castle St. Leicester Sq.