Motherswere like that,—calculating, merchandising creatures, not worthy to unloose the shoes of the fair and innocent angels who, by some strange chance, were in their hands,—sordid beings whom it was just, and even virtuous, to balk and deceive. If this were not the case, then most books were false, and most sketches of contemporary life founded on a mistake. Ben Renton was not more given to novels than most men, but if there is one fact to be learned from the best studies of the best humorists, is it not this? And there was much comfort in the thought. It stopped him short in the course of disenchantment, which otherwise would have wrung his heart cruelly, and perhaps convinced him. She was not to blame. She had opened her heart to him, poor darling!—she could not help it. And now she was separated from him by an agony of embarrassment and shame, his money standing like a ghost between him,—who had thought of nothing but of serving her on his knees, like a slave,—and her delicacy, her pride, the revulsion of all her fine and tender instincts against the burden of such a vulgar obligation! This was how he managed to free himself from all doubts of Millicent. Her mother, it was clear, was a mercenary, poverty-stricken, scheming, sordid ‘campaigner,’—but then most mothers are so;—and she herself was as spotless as she was lovely,—the soul of tender honour, the ideal and purest type of woman. God bless her! he said in his heart. Even the cloud he had seen on her face endeared her more to him. And if it should be his to deliver this noble creature from her mean surroundings, to take her from the society of the poor mercenary mother, to enrich her with everything that was fair and honest, and of good report! Ben’s foot spurned the ground as this anticipation came upon him. He felt himself able to conquer everything, thrilling with the strength of a hundred men. Who said it was hard? If it were not hard it would be too sweet, too delicious, the day’s work of Paradise amid the yielding roses and golden apples, not bitter sweat of the brow and mortal toil.
Two or three days passed, however, before the interview he had determined upon, and to which Millicent assented as a matter of course, could come to pass. Mrs. Tracy staved it off with an alarm which was partly selfish and partly affectionate. Her own conversation with Ben had been of a character quite unprecedented in her experience, and hadtaken, as she admitted, a great deal out of her; and she was reluctant to expose her daughter to a similar experience. And then Millicent was still young, and there had been curious signs about her for some time back,—signs of something unknown, which her mother was afraid of. Such things had been heard of as that a girl, even in circumstances as important as Millicent’s, with everything, so to speak, hanging upon her decision, and a good marriage the one thing indispensable in the world, should cheat all her friends and ruin her own hopes by falling in love with an objectionable suitor. Mrs. Tracy almost blushed at the thought; but still, as an experienced woman, she could not shut her eyes to the possibility. And Millicent certainly was not quite like herself. Sometimes she could not bear to hear Ben Renton’s name; but again, if he were spoken slightly of, would flash up. And she was cross and uneasy and restless, exacting about the grenadine and the little things she wanted,—not easy to manage in any way. It might be dangerous to leave them alone together. For these very different reasons Mrs. Tracy exercised all her diplomatic skill to delay, and, if possible, put off altogether, this unlucky interview. And in the meantime all the boxes were packed, and such of the tradespeople as she could not help paying were paid. A hundred pounds is not a very large sum of money after all. She took care to point out to the landlady that she was only going for the baths, and might beexpected back again, so that people were not so very sharp about their accounts as perhaps they might have been. And she went so far as to leave her superfluous luggage in Guildford Street,—an unmistakable sign of probity. If the end of all their schemes were attained in Homburg, why then there would,—no doubt,—be money for everything; and, if not, why it was no use burning their ships until they saw how things would go. It was on the last evening that Ben found his way to the drawing-room with a smouldering fire of excitement in his heart. Not all Mrs. Tracy’s skill could balk him of that last gratification; but she had succeeded in postponing it to the last night.
Millicent was seated where she had been the first time he saw her,—where she had been on that memorable day when she told him their need,—on a low, straight-backed chair in the corner, against the wall, with the light coming in on her from under the half-lowered blind. She was innocent of any consciousness of that perfection of effect. The blind was down only because Mrs. Tracy felt that it looked well from the outside, neither of them being sufficiently skilled to know how cleverly this device concentrated the light upon the beautiful head. She had some work in her hands, as usual, by way of relief and refuge in what was likely to be an agitating interview. And yet Millicent did not look much as if she should herself be agitated. Her lips were drawnin the least in the world; her forehead had the ghost of a line on it; her foot patted in soft impatience upon the carpet. She was anxious, very anxious to have it over. What was the use of talk? She was ready to see him, ready to please him so far as she could, and yet she could not but be irritated with the man who had disappointed her,—could not but feel that his hundred pounds was a very paltry substitute for what she had expected of him. Millicent was not beginning her new campaign with any very brilliant hopes. She was ready, even now, to cry with vexation and disappointment. She never had brought a man to the point and felt that she could put up with him, and might have a comfortable life before her, but he went and got himself disinherited! It was all very well for the others, who had no particular trouble in the matter; and nobody sympathised sufficiently with Millicent to see that the very sight of him was tantalising to her, now that he was no good! At the same time, she was used to commanding herself, and did not betray these emotions. Ben went into the room with the noiseless rapidity of passion. She did not know he was coming until he was there, leaning against the window, gazing down upon her. Mrs. Tracy was out of the room, though she had not meant to be so. He had seized upon the moment, determined, at least for this once, to have everything his own way.
‘Oh, Mr. Renton, how you startled me!’ said Millicent. ‘I never heard you come up-stairs.’
‘I did not mean you should,’ said Ben. He had come up very wild in his passion, with a hundred violent, tender words on his lips to say; but when he came before her, and gazed down on her passionless face, somehow the fire went out of him. A kind of wonder stole over his mind,—a wonder not unusual to men before such a woman. Was it anything to her at all,—anything out of the ordinary way? The meeting, the parting,—which shook his very being,—was it merely an every-day incident with her, saying, ‘Good-bye to poor Mr. Renton?’ He stood and gazed, with his heart in his eyes, at the calm creature. The very marble warms a little on its surface, at least, under the shining of the sun. When she raised her lovely eyes to him,—undimmed, unbrightened, no haze of feeling nor sparkle of excitement in them,—shining calmly, as they always did, a sense of half adoration, half scorn, awoke in Ben’s mind. Was she chillier than the marble, then? Or was not this passionless sweetness of the woman, before the fiery love which blazed about her, a something half divine? ‘You do not care much,’ he said. ‘I was a fool to think you would care; and yet I have been counting the moments till this moment should come.’
‘It is very kind of you to think so much of me,’ said Millicent; ‘and I did want to see you, Mr.Renton. I wanted to tell you that I never for one moment thought,—never imagined you would do anything, like what you have done. I should not have told you, had I thought so; I should have died sooner.’
‘Oh, Millicent! is this all you have to say to me?’ cried her lover. ‘I wish it was at the bottom of the sea;—I wish—— Never mind. Think for one moment, if you can, that I have never done anything—except—love you. That does not sound much,’ the young man went on, stooping down, almost kneeling before her, that his eyes might help his words. A smile of half disdain at himself broke over his face as he caught her eye. ‘It does not sound much,’ he cried. ‘You will say to yourself, small thanks to him,—everybody does that; but it is everything in the world to me. Have you nothing to say to me for that, Millicent?—not one word?’
‘It is very kind of you. You are very good,—you always were very good to me,’ said Millicent, hurriedly under her breath, with a glance at the door. Undoubtedly, Mrs. Tracy’s presence would have been a relief now.
‘Kind!’ he cried, with a sort of groan,—‘good to you! Then that is all I am to have by way of farewell?’
‘Mr. Renton,’ said Millicent, rousing herself up, ‘I don’t know what you think I can say. You know what you told me last time we spoke of this. Yousaid you were disinherited. You said you had nothing to offer me. Well, then, what can I answer? It is very good of you to—care for me. I shall always feel you have done me an honour. But there is nothing to give an answer to that I know of; and, indeed, I can’t tell what else to say.’
‘Ah, if it is only that there is nothing to answer!’ cried Ben. ‘Millicent, tell me I am to work for you,—tell me that when I have changed all this,—when I have made my way in the world,—when I have something to offer,—that I am to come back to you. Tell me so,—only that I am to come!’
With a little laugh, half of natural embarrassment, half of art, Millicent glanced at, and turned away from her lover, who was now fairly on his knees before her, looking up with eager, pleading, impassioned eyes into her face. ‘That would be very like making you an offer,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘You cannot expect me to do that.’
‘But I may come?’ said Ben. He took her calm, soft hands into his, which burned and trembled. He kissed them with his quivering, passionate lips. Oh, what a fool he was! That was the uppermost thought in the mind of the beautiful creature at whose feet he thus threw himself. A man of the world, too, who ought to have seen through her,—who ought to have known that she was not the sort of woman to wait years and years on such a vague, nay, hopeless prospect. Yes, he might come if heliked. What did it matter? If he was to make his own way in the world, no doubt it would be years and years first, and by that time his feelings would have changed, of course. It was easier to pretend to yield to him, and satisfy him for the moment, than to set the truth plainly before him and make a scene. Thus Millicent reasoned, not without compassion, not without kindness, for the foolish fellow who held her hands in such a tremulous, passionate embrace. There lay the special hardness of her fate. She could have liked him had everything been as it ought to be. She was sorry for him even now; but, after all, what did it matter? It must be years and years before he could have anything to offer, and of course his feelings would have changed a dozen times before that. It was best to smooth over matters, and make him happy now. Thus Ben came off victorious from both mother and daughter,—victorious,—conqueror of all real obstacles that could stand between him and his love. So he thought.
When he went down stairs again he found the vulgarest little envelope on his table,—dirty, crumpled, with his name scrawled on it in a style he was quite familiar with,—his weekly bill,—and he had not anything to pay it with,—not a shilling in the world!
Thereare different ways of being penniless, as we have said. The man who does his work from day to day may have nothing, and yet be easy enough; and the man who has wealth or expectations behind him may treat a momentary impecuniosity as a good joke. And most people, too, find it easy enough to be largely in debt. A big balance against him in some big tradesman’s books seldom, unless he comes to the point of desperation, is very deeply afflictive to a young man; but your little, greasy, weekly bill,—handed in by your poor, greasy, termagant landlady, with hungry, or wistful, or furious eyes,—and not a penny in your pocket to pay it,—this is, indeed, to look poverty in the face.
And this is what happened to Ben Renton the day he took leave of Millicent. If it had been a snake in his path he could not have looked at the poor little crumpled envelope on his table with greater horror. He had been nearly penniless, it is true, for the six months which he had spent inGuildford Street, as has been related, but he had never been troubled about his weekly bill; and he had nothing, nor any prospect of anything, for three months. And he could not dig, and to beg was ashamed. All the horrors of his position flashed upon him as he stood and gazed at it. His occupation was gone,—his enchantress was leaving him,—everything was over and ended. And he had no money, and nothing to do now that the delirium was over. With his pulses all tingling from the last meeting, and the strange intoxication of mingled content and despair in his brain, to plunge into this cold sea of reality, was something terrible. He caught his breath and shivered like a man near drowning. Then he sat down and took out his purse, and counted over the money in it. There were a few shillings left, and one sovereign,—the last of its race; and that was all he should have for three months,—he, Benedict Renton, the representative of an old wealthy house,—he who imagined himself Millicent Tracy’s betrothed. He was going to make wealth and a fortune for her, and this was the foundation he had to start upon. And how to dig he knew not, nor to what to apply himself.
Then Ben seized his hat and went out, leaving the thunderbolt which had thus shaken him,—Mrs. Barton’s little bill,—lying on the table. He had no need to look at it. Its crooked column of shillings was quite as appalling to him as if it had beenhundreds of pounds, for he had not a penny, so to speak. He had some five-and-twenty shillings in the world; and when a man has come to that, the mere amount of what he owes does not much matter to him. Small or great, it involved the same impossibility,—he had nothing wherewith to pay it. The evening had come on,—a May evening,—with a little fresh wind blowing, and a scent of growing grass and fresh foliage even in the dingiest of squares. London had revolved upon its axis since he had gone to Guildford Street. Even in that sombre neighbourhood the thrill of the new season was in everybody’s veins; the tall dark houses round the corner, which had slumbered all winter, had now lights gleaming all over them. The old fly with the white horse, and the driver in white cotton gloves, which Ben had caught a vision of through the window the first time he entered that house and met his fate, drove past him now as he went out, with a semblance of dash and spirit, conveying ladies in full dress to some dinner-party. Six months,—and had he been slumbering, too, and had dreams?—or taking the most important step of his life, laying a sweet foundation for after happiness?—or throwing away so much time, and his peace into the bargain? Heaven knows! He went out and made his way through the twilight streets into the Park, where the dew was falling and the stars shining. Even yet he had not come to ask himself seriously thequestion, What was he to do? His mind was in a haze of excitement, and uncertainty, and passion. It was like the evening landscape amidst which he went abroad,—lights gleaming about all its edges,—vague noises,—a haze about that blurred the distant outlines,—calm with the compulsory quiet which comes with an ending, whatever that ending may be,—yet agitated with fears and hopes and uncertain resolutions. There was the faint fragrance of the spring, and the soft sadness of the night, and the mystery of that indistinct hum and roar of the great city, so near yet so unseen! All this was round about Ben as he walked, and it was but a shadow of the commotion, the silence, the despair and excitement, that were in his heart.
He walked up and down so long, having the whole soft world of space and darkness to himself, as it seemed, that positive fatigue stole over him at last; and then he turned instinctively, almost without knowing; it, to the familiar ways from which he had long been a comparative exile. When he found himself in the lighted street, pursuing the way to his club, Ben had become languid and listless, and was scarcely conscious of any stronger feeling than weariness. It was past eight o’clock, and in his exhaustion he remembered that he had not dined. For some time past, since the stream of life had begun to pour back to town, he had avoided the club, not wishing to meet former friends; but he wasweary and stupefied, and did not seem to care for anything that night. He went in and ordered himself a spare dinner, and sat down under cover of a newspaper, entrenching himself behind the vast sheet of the ‘Times’ to wait for it. Ben Renton, once amongst the most distinguished, the wealthiest, hope-fullest, best-known of all the community,—and that only six months ago,—now with five-and-twenty shillings in his pocket, his life as uncertain as that of any adventurer, poorer than any day-labourer who knew where to get work for the morrow, waiting for his cutlet, concealed behind a newspaper! Could any imagination conceive so vast a change?
As he rose to go to his meal, however, Ben discovered that he had not been hid. Friends came up to greet him whom it was not easy to shake off; and when at last he got to the door of the room in which he had been sitting, a danger which he had not apprehended befell him. His name was called out with a positive shout that roused everybody’s attention, and, before he could get out of the way, he was caught, and all but hugged, by his mother’s brother,—a hobbling, gouty old sea-captain, who was the last man in the world he wished to see. ‘What, Ben Renton! God bless us, come to the surface at last!’ Captain Ormerod cried loudly, as he posted down to meet his nephew, making such a clatter with his stick and his lame foot as roused everybody. Such an encounter at such a moment was terrible toBen; but he had to swallow his impatience, and to brave it as he best could.
‘Going to get some dinner? I’ll go with ye, my boy,’ said his uncle. ‘Why, I’ve been to the Manor, and seen them all except yourself, Ben; and there is as much lamentation over ye as if ye had gone down at sea. Why don’t ye go and see your mother, boy? My poor fellow!’ the sailor continued, as they sat down together at the table where poor Ben’s dinner was served to him, ‘I don’t much wonder. If the old boy had played me such a trick when I was your age——’
‘Remember it is my father you are speaking of,’ said Ben, hastily, his pride and his affection all in arms. Home and its associations had been as things before the deluge to him ten minutes ago. How they rushed back upon him now at the very sound of this old man’s voice! His father,—ah, yes, his father, had been very hard upon him; but, still, was not to be breathed against by any living man save himself.
‘Well said, Ben,’ said his uncle; ‘well said, my boy! I like that. To be sure he was your father, and my poor sister’s husband. But I may say I wish he had made a will like other people. Why, you might have been enjoying your own, a fine young Squire, among the best of them, if some one had not put such devilish nonsense in his head.’
As the sailor spoke, the phantasmagoria of those six months rolled away, as it were, from Ben’s eyes.A vision of what he might have been rose before him. A man, important to so many people, with power and influence in his hands, with a voice perhaps in the ruling of his country, with all kinds of private interests at least to take charge of, dependants to protect, friends to support and assist; and instead he had spent his time in the little parlour at Guildford Street, madly possessed with one woman’s image, dead and useless to every creature in the world. Was this his father’s fault?
‘I’d rather not think on the subject,’ he said. ‘My father, no doubt, meant well by us. He meant to teach us to depend on ourselves, to rouse our energies——’
‘Well, my dear fellow, well,’ said Captain Ormerod, with an impatient sigh, ‘I hope he has done so, that’s all. I should have said you looked more as if you had been asleep and dreaming than anything else. And it was not your poor mother’s fault, you may be sure, whoever was to blame. You might have written home.’
‘I should,’ said Ben, with compunction. ‘I will write at once. I am very sorry. How is my mother?’ his voice faltered in spite of himself as he named her. He had not so much as remembered he had a mother in the absorption of his passion. He almost thought he could see her now on her sofa smiling at him. Poor weakly woman! Not of sufficient mark in the world to be rememberedeven by her son; but yet giving the lie very distinctly, now he came to think of it, to his bitter identification of Mrs. Tracy as the type of mothers. It seemed strange to him to be able to recollect so clearly, all in a moment, that he had a mother of his own.
‘That’s right, my boy,’ said the Captain; ‘and now tell me what you have been doing with yourself all this time.’
‘Nothing!’ said Ben. He had been hungry, and weary, and faint, and wanted his dinner, poor fellow! but the question took away his appetite. He pushed his plate away from him as he answered it. Nothing, and yet how much! But he could not betray what his occupation had been to this old man, who had outlived such folly, and, at the best, would have laughed at the young fellow’s idiocy. He felt his colour rise, however, in spite of himself, and in his heart called himself a fool.
‘Nothing! Well, I am not surprised,’ said his uncle. ‘They all feel, my dear fellow, that it has been most hard upon you. Laurie has been working, they tell me, in his way; and Frank is taking to his profession with all his heart. Frank, you know, is my boy, Ben. But, my dear fellow, notwithstanding your respect for your father, and all that, which is very creditable to you, I’d rather question the will, and get it set aside, if possible, than let myself fall into this sort of way, you know.’
‘What sort of way?’ said Ben; and then an odd, painful curiosity came over him. He seemed to have fallen out of acquaintance with himself in his old character, and was not quite sure what kind of a being he was now. ‘You don’t think that I have improved after six months’ sulking?’ he said, with a forced smile.
‘If you ask me honestly I must say, no,’ said the Captain. ‘I don’t think you have. I don’t make you out, Ben. You haven’t taken to—— drink, or anything of that kind? That’s poor consolation. My dear fellow, I beg your pardon. One does not know what to suppose.’
‘No; I have not taken to drink,’ said Ben, trying to laugh; but his lip quivered in spite of himself. When he tried a second time he succeeded, but the laugh was harsh. ‘I have been living on my income,’ he said.
Captain Ormerod shook his head. ‘I am very sorry for you, my boy,’ he said; ‘but I hoped you would have taken it better than this. Your mother was very much upset about your silence; but I persuaded her you were not the fellow to sulk, as you say; and Laurie and Frank have really borne it so well.’
‘Don’t speak to me of Laurie and Frank!’ cried Ben, stung beyond bearing. ‘What difference does it make to them? Frank is a boy, and a soldier, with his profession to fall back on; and Laurie is afellow that would always have mooned his life away; whereas I——’
‘Well, if you talk of mooning,’ said the Captain, sadly; and then he paused. ‘Couldn’t we do something among us, Ben? We ought to have some influence at least. If you had only been a seaman now, one might have managed somehow; but of course there’s heaps of things. Why, there’s all those public offices,’ said the sailor, getting up from his chair, with a little excitement, and waving his hand in the direction of Whitehall and Downing Street; ‘and very good berths, I believe, in some of them. ‘Why can’t we get you something there?’
‘It’s too late, uncle,’ said Ben, gradually waking into rationality as the old life came back and grew familiar to him. He was able even to give a softened momentary laugh at the futility of the proposition. ‘Don’t you know there’s nothing but merit and examinations now-a-days for every office under the sun?’
‘Well,’ said Captain Ormerod, pleased to feel that he had brought the wanderer back to a more natural tone, ‘I don’t see why that should frighten you. I have always heard you had a fine education, Ben.’
Ben laughed again, more softened still, and with moisture creeping into the corners of his eyes. ‘I am too old to go to school again,’ he said. ‘A man has to be shut up and crammed like a turkey beforehe can go in for that sort of thing. One has to be brought up to it. I am afraid that would not do.’
‘Then why don’t you go to India?’ cried his uncle;—‘or somewhere. You don’t mean to tell me there are no fortunes to be made in the world, when a young fellow has the spirit to try?’
Ben made no answer. What could he say? A sudden sickness of heart came over him. She was going away to-morrow morning. Mrs. Barton’s bill was lying on his table. He had five-and-twenty shillings in his pocket, and despair in his heart. And to be called upon to answer all in a moment, as if it was a thing that could be settled out of hand, how he would choose to go and make his fortune! In his impatience he leaned his head on his two hands, almost hiding his face between them, and turned half away.
‘Or else dispute the will,’ said the trenchant old sailor. ‘Obeying your parents is one thing, and sacrificing yourself to a piece of nonsense is another. Your poor father’s mind must have been touched—it must have been——’
‘My father had a right to dispose of what was his own,’ said Ben, haughtily; and then he broke down a little. ‘Forgive me, uncle. I am dreadfully tired to-night, and down on my luck. We could not touch my father’s will if even I would consent to try. I’ll talk it all over with you another day.’
The old captain gave the young man a compassionate look as he sat thus huddled up, hiding his face in his hands, and made that curious little sound with his tongue against the roof of his mouth which is one of the primitive signs of distress and perplexity. Then he hobbled off into a corner and pulled out a pocket-book from his pocket and examined its contents. ‘A little money can’t do him any harm,’ he said to himself. And as it happened, by a lucky chance for Ben, there were two notes, a ten-pound and a five, among the papers in that receptacle. The Captain made a bundle of them, folding them up with his gouty, lumpy fingers, which trembled a little, and came back and thrust it into his nephew’s hand. ‘You’re not too old yet for a tip, though you’re wiser than your elders,’ he said. ‘God bless you, my dear boy! Come and see me as soon as you can.’
And thus deliverance, utterly unlocked for, came to Ben Renton in his downfall. Such a tiny, little deliverance out of such a paltry ruin as Mrs. Barton’s bill might have brought him to! But if the bill had been thousands, and this treasure a million, it could not have been more emphatically a deliverance. He would have avoided the club altogether could he have supposed his uncle to be there; indeed, nothing but sheer weariness could have carried him into it at such a moment. And yet the chance had saved him. Saved him! Only a ten and a five-pound note; but at this moment to Ben it was salvation, neither lessnor more. How curiously words differ in their meaning from one day to another in a man’s life!
He sat there a long time after in one of those lulls which follow great excitement, sipping his sherry, which, though he had eaten no dinner, gave a certain soothing to his outward man, and looking as if he were in very deep thought. But naturally, poor fellow! he was not thinking, nor capable of thinking. Heaps of things were flitting before him in a kind of fantastic procession. The home, which seemed so far away; the mother whom he had almost forgotten; the life,—had it ever been, or had he but dreamed it?—which he had lived a year ago. Was it he, Ben Renton, whom Captain Ormerod’s fifteen pounds had just saved from bankruptcy, who lived in the Albany once, and was the heir of Renton Manor, and one of the most popular men in society? or was it but a tale he had read somewhere in a book? His weariness lent another shade of confusion to the picture. And now and then these dim thoughts were traversed by one so sharp, so clear, so acute, that it chased all the mists away. She was going to-morrow. He had said his farewell to her. Her hand had been in those hands of his, on which he looked down with a sudden thrill. Her lips had consented, or at least assented, with that passive softness of the unimpassioned woman, which drove him wild, yet held him fast, to wait for him. Was it to wait for him? or was it only to let him come when his fortune wasmade to try his chance again? What did it matter which? One form of folly or the other would have been much the same to Millicent, in her strange, compassionate, worldly-minded conviction that he would never make his fortune, or, if he did, would change his mind;—and in the confidence of his love and passion would have been the same to Ben.
Thus when the witch had routed once more all the softening charm of old association, he sat till there was nobody but himself in the dining-room. He had so much the air of a man who had no mind to be interrupted, that several of his old friends had felt themselves suppressed by a nod, and had gone without speaking to him. And even that unpleasant suggestion which had occurred to the Captain about the habits of the impoverished man came into the heads of two or three who saw him sitting with that absorbed look over his sherry. Could he have taken in his downfall to the meanest of all consolations? The thought troubled some friendly souls; but perhaps it helped to keep him quite undisturbed in the solitude he wished. It was getting quite late when some one rushed in with his hands full of papers, disturbing the quiet of the place—some one who demanded coffee—and threw himself down in a chair at the other end of the room; and then got up and began to walk about, filling the languid air with a certain commotion, a sound of rustling papers, and vibration of busy thought. This intruder caughtsight of Ben after he had been about ten minutes in the room, and catching up his documents, whatever they were, made a rush at his table. ‘The very man I wanted!’ he cried. ‘Ben Renton! I thought you were dead, or mad, or at the other end of the world.’
‘And I am neither, as you perceive,’ said Ben, not well pleased with the encounter. There was no man in the world he less cared to see at this particular time.
‘I have not seen you for ages,’ said Hillyard. ‘Mind, I don’t want to intrude myself if I’m a bore. You have only to say so. But unless you’ve had more luck than most men, I have something that may be of use to you here.’ And he put down his rustling burden on the table, and swallowed his coffee with a kind of impatient eagerness. ‘I’d rather have had something more cheering,’ he said, with a laugh; ‘but a man must have his wits clear when he has business in hand. You don’t answer my question, Ben.’
‘If I am in luck!’ said Ben. Already he had suppressed the inclination to impatience with which he had been disposed to answer his old acquaintance. Surely this was not a moment to repel any offer of aid. ‘I am just as you saw me six months ago, which does not come to much.’
‘Doing nothing?’ said Hillyard, eagerly.
‘Doing nothing,’ said Ben.
‘Then, by Jove, I’ll make your fortune, my boy!’ cried the adventurer, striking the table with his hand in his excitement. ‘I’m going out to America next week to make a railway. Didn’t you know I was an engineer? That before everything;—in a secondary way, traveller, sheep-farmer, colonial agent, litterateur,—anything you please, but engineer first of all. And I’ve got a railway in America to make, and I want a man to help me. Ben, don’t say another word. If you like you shall be the man.’
Then there was a pause, and Hillyard plunged into the midst of his papers, from which he drew an unintelligible drawing, diversified with dabs of colour and dotted lines. Ben said not a word while the search was going on. A strange sensation, half fear, half hope, seemed to go through his veins. It was the first offer of work that had ever been made to him,—from Hillyard, of all men, who had taken him to Guildford Street and actually made Millicent known to him,—whom he had kept clear of since as a vulgar adventurer, not able to estimate such a heavenly creature but in his own coarse way. And now it was he who offered him the first round, perhaps, of the ladder by which he should reach her! With this there mingled a doubt of the reality of Hillyard’s good fortune. An adventurer himself, what solid help could he have to offer to others? All these mingled thoughts rushed through Ben’s mind while his companion was finding the plan.When he had spread it out on the table, Ben gave an unsteady, nervous laugh, glancing at it without an idea what it could mean.
‘I know nothing of railways,’ he said, ‘except travelling on them. I don’t know even the meaning of the words on the margin there. How could I be of any use to you,—unless as a navvy?’ he added, holding out his arm; ‘and it would be easy to find a finer development of muscle than mine.’
‘Pshaw!’ said Hillyard, ‘it is no joke. I mean what I say. You may trust to me to find you what you can do. The only question is, Will you do it? Do you want work? or is it only a makebelief about Renton and all that? How can I tell? You bury yourself out of the world, and never throw yourself in the way of anything, so far as one can see. You may be contenting yourself with what you have. You may be above taking a share of one’s good fortune. I say again, how can I tell?’
‘I am ready to work at anything. It is the height of my wishes,’ said Ben, with a huskiness in his voice. Further explanation he could make none; but his heart smote him all the same. What right had he to a share of any one’s good fortune,—and of this man’s above all, for whom he had never done anything? He had not even the gratification of thinking that he had been kind to him in his wealthier days.
‘Then look here,’ said Hillyard, plunging into his work.
The two sat with their heads together over the inarticulate drawing till long past midnight. By degrees it became intelligible to the novice. Shortly it opened up before him into a possibility,—a thing practicable, a new hope. When he went back to Guildford Street in the early morning,—the morning which was still night,—his head was full of the new idea. He was no longer an aimless, half-desperate man, detached from everything but the one absorbing madness which had taken possession of his empty life; he had linked himself on again to fact and nature, recovered his identity, his independence, himself. The change that lay before him,—palpable, visible, unmistakable change from one hemisphere to another, from doing nothing to hard, open-air, undisguisable work,—had dispersed already the mists which made a mystery and vision of all former changes. He stretched out his hands to the past, even as he lifted them to the future. It was but this unwholesome, unreal interval which had made life itself look as a dream and a thing untrue.
WhileBen was thus, unconsciously to himself, being drawn back across the threshold of wholesome life, the morning was passing in a very different way at No. 10, Guildford Street. The packing was not yet finished, which of itself was a troublesome matter, and, to tell the truth, Mrs. Tracy’s feeling was that she would be glad to get Millicent safely away, and that she did not know what had come over the girl. Notwithstanding her displeasure with her, and fears as to her state of mind, Mrs. Tracy took care to provide a nice little supper for Millicent, on that last night,—such as her soul loved. The two ladies were rather fond of nice little suppers. They dined very hurriedly and quietly in the middle of the day, eschewing hot and dainty dishes and everything that had a good odour, lest anybody should call; and accordingly, in the evening, when they were free, and could indulge themselves without any scruples about gentility, they made up for their self-denial by having something they liked, which was generally of asavoury kind. They supped comfortably after the labour of packing, and refreshed themselves ere they went to bed. It was at a late hour, and they had the prospect of but a short night’s rest, for they were to start very early in the morning; and naturally this, their last night upon English soil, had a certain pensiveness about it, notwithstanding the savoury fragrance and comfort of their favourite meal.
‘It seems strange to think that it is the last night,’ said Mrs. Tracy, with not inappropriate reflectiveness. ‘How many things have happened to us within these walls, Millicent! And perhaps we may never enter them again.’
‘I hope not, I am sure,’ said her daughter; ‘a more dreary set of rooms I never was in. If we cannot make out something better than this, I should never wish to come back at all.’
‘Of course we must both wish never to come back at all,’ said Mrs. Tracy. ‘I trust your next home, my dear, may be of a totally different kind. If I could but live to see my child settled, and enjoy the change a little,’ the mother added, putting her hands softly together, ‘I should have all I want in this world.’
‘I don’t see that, mamma,’ said Millicent. ‘You are old, it is true; but I think you want quite as much as I do in the world. You are very fond of being comfortable;—most people are, I suppose. And then you can get the good of things without thetrouble;—I should have more pleasure, perhaps,—if I ever come to anything,—but then I shall have all the trouble as well.’
‘The trouble of looking nice and making yourself agreeable! I don’t think there is much in that,’ said Mrs. Tracy, with a little contempt. ‘The serious business,—managing matters, and getting introductions, and all that,—always falls to my share.’
‘I am sure I wish we were done with it all;—I hate it. I wish I had been brought up to be a governess,’ said Millicent, ‘or a dressmaker, or something. I should not have liked the work; but then one would not have had to be thinking always what would please some man.’
‘You don’t find it so difficult to please them,’ said Mrs. Tracy, with a little gentle maternal flattery, such as was necessary now and then to keep the sullen shade,—which spoiled it,—off Millicent’s beautiful face.
‘I wonder I don’t hate them,’ cried the young woman, ‘after all I have gone through! I am sure it would not be half so hard to go in for examinations and things like poor Fitzgerald. I don’t see how a girl can be good if she were to try,—always brought up to think she may get to be rich in a moment, like a gambler! I declare, mamma, I will go to the gaming-place in Homburg and try.’
‘I hope, Millicent, you will not be such a fool!’ cried her mother, ‘after all the pains I have taken tokeep respectable,—paying bills many a time when it was like taking my heart’s blood; and you know, among the English, it’s only disreputable people who play.’
‘It comes to just the same thing,’ said Millicent; ‘and I tell you, mamma, a girl has no chance to be good, brought up like that to play for a man for his money. I hate the men! Let us go and play for the money; it will be far better; and then nobody like Ben Renton can come and look in one’s face, and make one feel like,—like——’
‘Like what?’ cried Mrs. Tracy. ‘Millicent, I have told you again and again that you are falling in love with that boy.’
‘Not such a fool as that,’ said Millicent, with a faint colour on her averted face. ‘Like a swindler; that is what I meant. Why should he care for me? It was not him I was thinking of;—and then to think it should all come to nothing, after one felt so sure!’
‘My dear, I know it was a great disappointment,’ said the mother, with soft sympathy. ‘I don’t wonder you felt it; but there are better than him in the world, after all. I would not vex myself about what’s past. You will enjoy the change, and your spirits will come back, and you’ll find something better before long.’ Millicent did not answer; she made a little impatient movement with her head when her mother spoke of change, and that sullen cloud, which awoke an incipient line in her forehead andfrightened Mrs. Tracy, came over her brow. ‘You don’t know what work is,’ resumed the mother. ‘Fancy what it would be to sit still at your needle for hours at a time! But to be sure it is all nonsense, and you don’t mean it. I don’t say it is not of more importance to us than to most people: but of course it’s every young woman’s aim to be married. It’s all nonsense what people talk of women’s work. You may depend upon it, Millicent, it’s only ugly women and old women that talk that stuff. No man can bear to hear it. They like you a great deal best as you are.’
‘As if I cared!’ cried Millicent, with scorn. ‘They are such fools! Just think of Ben Renton,—doing nothing, and losing his time, and never seeing through us all these months, and going on with his nonsense to me, as if I was one to understand it! And all because I’m rather pretty!’ she said with disgust. ‘It is enough to make one sick. I wonder I don’t hate them or despise them,—they are such fools!’
‘Millicent, you are out of temper,’ said Mrs. Tracy. ‘I wish you would not talk in that way. If anybody were to hear you——’
‘I wish they could all hear me!’ said Millicent, growing fiercer. ‘Let’s go and gamble at Homburg, mamma. I think I should like it I think I should be lucky. Do I care for a stupid man to come and mumble over my hands? Bah!’ cried Millicent,looking at her own white, rose-tipped fingers, which Ben Renton, in his passion, had kissed. She looked at them with a certain disgust; but it was not Ben who disgusted her. Perhaps in that sudden fit of sullenness and temper she was nearer the purer world than ever she had been before in her life. Other men would kiss those hands,—other voices would tell that same tale in her ear,—while she sat and smiled and considered whether the suitor was rich enough; and, oh, heaven! why was it all? Because she was rather pretty, and had no heart nor womanly soul in her,—and because they were such fools!
Something like this Millicent thought as she sat with her elbows on the table, leaning her head in her hands. It was not that any impulse in favour of her ‘sex’ moved her altogether unintellectual, unspeculative being. She did not care a straw for the sex. Women were not perhaps ‘such fools’ as men in this particular way. Beyond that she had never thought on the subject. ‘How nice it would be to have money of one’s own!’ she said; ‘how nice it would be to win it over a table with no trouble,—and have all the excitement in the bargain! And if one lost, one could always begin again; whereas with men,—I don’t believe I shall ever marry well,’ she said, suddenly. ‘If I marry at all it will be some adventurer who will take us in. Now, mamma, you’ll remember what I say; I feel sure of it in my heart.’
‘I never saw you in such a dreadful temper,’ said her mother. ‘Is it my fault that you go on at me? But I know what is the reason. You are in love with this fellow that has not a penny. I knew how it would be.’
‘In love with him!’ said Millicent. ‘I wonder if I am in love with him! If I were I could not think him such a fool. Poor fellow! he’s gone and robbed himself to send you to the baths, and you don’t want the baths any more than he does. He ought to marry Mary Westbury and settle down, and get back his money. Most likely he would get back his money if he married Mary. And yet I think I should hate her too; but that would be for the sake of the Manor, and not for Ben. I had set my heart on the Manor, and that lovely house in Berkeley Square. Oh, don’t speak to me! It’s too bad! I can’t bear it!’ cried Millicent, suddenly hiding her face in her hands.
Thus confused, not knowing what was in her own mind, Millicent Tracy ran on, driving her mother wild. She did not know what she meant any more than Mrs. Tracy did. Acute disappointment, a kind of reverence and admiration of Ben, mixed strangely with a worldling’s unfeigned astonishment and contempt at his simplicity, were in her mind. And there were other things besides. Regrets, not only for the house in Berkeley Square, but for the lost opportunity of perhaps catching at a different kind of life,—longings quite undefined and inarticulate for something better,—self-disgust, self-pity,—all of which took form somehow in this bitter outburst of ‘temper,’ and supreme, unspeakable discontent. Was she, after all, ‘in love’ with Ben? But how could Millicent answer that question, not knowing what love was? Sometimes she was seized with a sort of passionate kindness for him, gratitude for his devotion, always mingled with half contempt, half pity. In short, she did not know what was in her, vaguely struggling for the mastery. Principles which, perhaps, if good influence had been possible,—if!—poor hypothesis, that hangs about the road to ruin! And yet who knows what tears the angels may weep over those blind strugglings of the human soul towards something better, or of what account they may be in the eyes of One kinder than all angels? Who knows what such agitation means, what hopes rise with it, and in what blank sickening of soul and darkening of the world it comes to an end?
Mrs. Tracy frankly had no idea what her daughter could mean. She concluded she was tired, and had got worried over her packing, and perhaps was sorry to lose her lover,—for her mother was less stoical than the daughter, and prized a loverquand même. So the natural thing to do was to get the poor child to bed, and give her some more wine and water, and finish the work herself. ‘I will do that box for you,’ she said; ‘and remember, Millicent, you must be upearly. You want more sleep than I do.’ She was up half the night herself, but did not mind it. It was a new campaign, and great thoughts were in the mother’s mind. Thus the two prepared themselves to set out to spend poor Ben Renton’s hundred pounds. He, too, slept little that night. When they got to the railway in the morning he was there, pale and feverish from want of sleep, and from excess of love and misery and hope. ‘I am going to work for you,’ he whispered, as he put Millicent into the carriage, with that look of anguish and passion and appropriation which made her somehow despise herself. His Millicent he called her once more, kissing her hand in open day, in sight of all the world. Oh, how could he be such a fool! And yet——
Thus Millicent Tracy passed away for the moment out of Ben’s life; and he turned and walked from London Bridge all through the City in the cordial air of the May morning,—walked all the way to be alone and think of her in that crowd of London, before he should begin to work and win her,—with a hundred sweet pangs and stings of hope and suffering in his foolish heart.
Everybodywho has ever passed by that passage of life’s poignant yet ordinary way, knows what a reaction there is when the one is gone who has thus occupied the first place in the thoughts of a man,—or woman either, for that matter. The moment she,—or he,—is gone, what a sudden quickening of energy, what a rush of all the faculties at the suspended work,—suspended for the sake of that engrossing presence. It had been natural to delay and muse the day before, recalling what sweet moments there might be in the past, imagining what might be in the future; but now, when all is over, with what an impulse the man works at his occupation, to fill the void, to hasten, if he could, the very movement of the earth, till the time of meeting again. Ben had a double motive at this crisis of his history. For the first time in his life he had actual work in hand, and the positive prick of necessity to drive him to it; and at the same time the hope of making,—of winning,—what?—his fortune,—Millicent,—a position in theworld,—all out of the chance that had fallen into his hands, of becoming assistant to an engineer on some little bit of American railway,—a profession of which he knew nothing. Knowledge, or skill, did not seem to him at this moment to count for much. It was a beginning a man wanted. Given that beginning, and what had he to do but follow it to the ultimate success which must come? It was in itself a foolish idea, common to the novice in every department; but perhaps in Ben’s case it was less foolish than in that of most men, for it was his nature to hold by anything he took up desperately, until success of one kind or another rewarded him. He was intense in everything, taking what happened to him not lightly, but very seriously,—and such men are not apt to fail.
It was still early, when fresh from his long walk, and with his faculties all cleared up and awakened by the withdrawal of the presence which had absorbed him, he went to Hillyard’s rooms to breakfast, as his friend had invited him to do. It was in one of those dingy parlours in Jermyn Street, which to so many young men are radiant with that freedom from domestic restraints, and privilege of having things their own way, which makes the long, unlovely street into a succession of palaces. Hillyard was sitting in his dressing-gown, over the same papers which he had carried to the club the night before. He was not less eager, not less excited than Ben,—or, indeed, it would be safe to say he was more excited. It was the endonly Ben was looking at; but the means, with which he was so much better acquainted than his assistant was,—the work itself, with its difficulties and obstacles,—had inflamed the mind of the adventurer. Of course there would be a great many difficulties,—there would be schemes to lead the line, one way or another, through this man’s grounds or that man’s, by this village or away from that; and Hillyard felt, with a little thrill of delight, that he was the man who could solve all these difficulties. It was not a work of the first importance, and yet he had never had such an opening before. He was to be chief engineer, and have everything in his hands. It was to an American, who had travelled home part of the way with him from Australia, that he owed this preferment; and the new chance was as precious to Hillyard as to Ben, though not perhaps of so much supposed importance in his life.
‘I will run down and see my mother before I go,’ he said; ‘and I suppose, so will you: but we must meet at Liverpool on the 1st, and go out in theAfrica. If I do not keep the ball in my hands now I have got the thread, never trust me! Ben, you will think it strange when I say it, but it is this I have been trying for all my life.’
‘I don’t think it the least strange,’ said Ben; ‘though, if I were to say it was the same thing with myself——’
‘Oh, you!’ said Hillyard, ‘you have not been somany weeks on the world as I have been years; and, besides, you don’t know what awaits you at the end of your probation. The money must come to some one,—and, even if it were divided among the three of you, your share would be more than enough to make a man happy;—whereas, for me this is the only chance in life.’
‘I wonder what made you think of me,’ said Ben, simply. ‘It was very good of you. I was at the end of my resources and my hopes when I came out last night.’ Hillyard looked at him keenly, and in spite of himself a little colour rose to Ben’s face. ‘It was kind of you to think of me,’ he added hastily. ‘I do not know,—had it been me——’
‘That you would have been so forgiving?’ said his friend; ‘but I had done you no injury, Ben,—unless in taking you there. I suppose I must not ask what you have been doing with yourself all this time, nor what they are to you now, these—ladies?’
‘The railway is a safer subject,’ said Ben, clearing up his countenance with an effort; and then he added, after a little pause, ‘Mrs. Tracy and her daughter have just gone off to one of the German baths.’
Hillyard eyed his companion with a curious look, restraining with difficulty the whistle of wonder which rose to his lips. He, much-experienced man, had seen through the mother and daughter at a glance; though, to be sure, he had been pre-instructed by his acquaintance with Fitzgerald Tracy. He could not understand how it was that they had allowed Ben to slip through their finders. ‘If he had but a third of the property he would still be a prize,’ he said to himself, casting a rapid engineering glance, as it were, along the line of his friend’s life, and jumping over the intervening seven years. ‘It was strange they should have let him go.’ But the news of their departure explained how it was that he found Ben so disengaged, so ready to enter into his plans; and curious as he was, he could go no farther. A certain preoccupation that came into the young man’s eyes, a wavering breath of colour on his face, and, at the same time, a strain of the lines about his mouth, his lips shutting, as it were, upon his secret, warned Hillyard off the unprofitable inquiry. He went back to the paper on the table, and began to describe the new life they would lead,—the voyage,—all the novel circumstances before them. He was himself so much of an adventurer that the sudden change of scene from St. James’s to Ohio excited him, and gave a zest to his good fortune. But, curiously enough, this did not tell on Ben. His interest was in the work, and nothing else,—the work as a means to his end. The small excitement of the journey, or the new world which he was about to enter, Ben at this moment of exaltation contemplated almost with contempt. After all, crossing the Atlantic, except in the mere point of duration, was little more than crossing the Channel; and that naturally he would do without even thinking of it.And what was America to him? There was not even the difficulty of a new language to contend with. He was not moved by that; at least, not now. What did excite him was the new profession he was going to enter; the necessity of knowing it and mastering the tool which was to carve out his fortune;—a necessity which Hillyard, to tell the truth, had not realised.
‘I know all that is necessary for both of us,’ he said, with a laugh. ‘As for you, of course I consider it only a momentary occupation that will fill up your time while you are waiting. I should never have thought of offering it as more than that.’
‘I am not waiting,’ said Ben,—‘I am beginning. Do you think I am going to build my expectations now upon my father’s will, whatever it may be? How can I tell what it may be? Perhaps I am going about the very best way to disinherit myself completely. That is not my concern. I mean to work my own way. And if you can teach me enough to make me of real use——’
‘I’ll see to that,’ said Hillyard, with a cordial grasp of his hand. But, nevertheless, the chief engineer was not quite so sure that he liked it as well on this ground. What he wanted had been a gentleman-assistant, whom to guide as he pleased, and of whom to boast a little, ‘A fellow with I don’t know how many thousands a-year to fall back upon.’ He had rather intended to dazzle his American acquaintances with Ben; but a man who meant to learn his trade,and practise it, might turn out rather a stumbling-block, and come in his master’s way.
However, all was settled ere they parted, and Ben supplied with lists of books and instruments, and various unthought-of necessities which must be provided for somehow. His face lengthened perceptibly, as Hillyard perceived, when he heard of them, and he was for some minutes lost in thought. ‘Considering how to raise the money,’ his friend thought, but did not offer any help, wisely considering that Ben had friends much more able to help him than he—Hillyard—was. Perhaps he was rather pleased, on the whole, that the new-born professional zeal of his companion should receive a check in the bud. Ben went away very thoughtful with those lists in his pocket, and not very much more than his uncle’s fifteen pounds to rely upon, but very resolute not to be damped in his ardour. It gave him plenty to think of for the rest of that day,—a day which was of feverish, interminable length, begun, as it was, hours too early. And Guildford Street had a gloom upon it as of the very grave when in the evening he went back to it.
They were to sail in theAfricaon the 1st of June, so that he had but ten days for all his preparations. So close an approach to ruin had quickened Ben’s powers, and his return to the realities of practical life, and to reasonable hopes and prospects, made the business of providing for his new wants less appallingthan had been that first tragical symptom of destitution, Mrs. Barton’s little bill. There was no despair in the business now, but hope, and all the possibilities of active life. He had never been addicted to ornament, but yet had a little store of bijouterie which was of some value; and being no longer ashamed of his needs, he had the heart to go back to Messrs. Christie’s, to inquire after his buhl and china, and drive a final bargain. The result of all these proceedings was, that Ben found enough in his pocket to stock himself with instruments and books for the profession he had taken up so hastily, substituting them for the pretty toys which had been the luxuries of his youth. To be sure, his Sèvres and his cabinets went for half, or less than half, their value; but of what value were such dainty articles to him at this point of his career? And as the natural spring of feeling came back, no doubt his new theodolite awakened a little pleasure in Ben’s mind, which was still young, and could not but respond to the pleasant thrill of novelty in the long run. The very possession of the implements of a trade brought him nearer to practical work. He began to think such work was worth doing, after all, for its own sake; primitive work—making roads, building bridges—the first necessities of man. Had it not been the hackneyed iron way—the railroad, on which we have all heard so many big words wasted that its wonders have become a vulgar brag—Ben might actually have been seized with a young man’s passion for his work, and thought it superior to every other occupation under the sun. As it was, it loosed his lips, and restored him to the common intercourse of men. ‘I am going to make a railway in America,’ he said to the friends whom he no longer avoided at his club, and it was regarded as a very good joke among them. Some of them delivered a decided opinion—by Jove, that it was a capital idea. And the announcement of Ben Renton thus taking to work, after having been under a cloud, was like a brisk breeze blowing through the languid, gossiping community for one evening at least. He was able himself to see the humour of it, and discuss the subject freely in the course of a few days. He had touched the earth, like the giant in the story, and got new vigour. He was even able to go home—to that house which, in his first disgust, he had felt as if he never could enter again. He had found an independent standing apart from the past, in which he belonged to his family, and was now no more the embittered, disappointed, ruined heir of Renton, but a man erect in the world by himself, and with a work and life of his own.
Itwas on a beautiful afternoon, in one of the last days of May, that Ben Renton went back to his father’s house. When he left it, he had not the slightest intention of separating himself so completely from his family; and yet, when he thought of it, he did not see what else he could have done. To go back now, when a definite beginning had been made in his career, and there was something decided upon—something to tell them of—was natural; but to have gone when his whole heart was full of Millicent Tracy, and no object beyond seeing her occupied his thoughts, would have been simply impossible. He felt that now, though he had not seen it at the time, and, feeling it, asked himself, with a flush of shame, how he could have ever hoped that she could love him—a man whose sole proof of his love was that he made himself useless for her sake! He was but on the threshold of Armida’s garden, and already he blushed to think that he could have lingered there so long. But it was Armida’s garden without the Armida. Itwas not by her will that he had lingered. The moment he had opened his heart to her, had she not urged him forth to the brighter daylight and more wholesome life? Yes, or at least Ben thought she had done so—he forgot exactly how. That it was to supply her wants that he had been roused out of his dream, and that afterwards downright destitution had threatened him, did not occur to him now. It was all so recent that it was obscure to him, except that he had woke up and found his feet standing on firm earth again, after he had told his story into her ear; for which poor Ben’s heart poured forth litanies of thanksgiving to his Lady of Succour. He was awakened, but he was not undeceived.
In a county so richly wooded as Berks, it is difficult to say which is more lovely, September or May. It was on a day of the St. Martin’s summer that he had left Renton, when the great rich, lavish trees were but beginning to carry here and there a faint fiery mark of Autumn’s ‘burning finger.’ Now they were all in their spring green, so new, so fresh, so silken in this year’s garments, that it seemed impossible any autumn could ever change the soft, glossy texture of the young leaves. It was the last day’s leisure he might have, except on the sea, for ever so long; and everything tempted him to enjoy it. He went as far as Cookesley by the railway, and then got a boat and went up the stream for the short remaining distance. The Renton woods were renowned—indeed,uncomfortably so—parties going from far and near to visit them, and litter the leafy corners with signs of picnics. ‘I can’t say as they’ll let you land, sir,’ said the man from whom Ben hired his boat. ‘The old lady’s there for ever, and shuts herself up and spoils our trade.’ Before he could take any notice of this speech, or do more than feel a natural amazement to find himself so soon a stranger in his own country, another boatman thrust aside the new-comer, who had not recognised the young master. ‘I ask your pardon, sir; it’s a new man I’ve got,’ said the owner of the boat. ‘He don’t know no better, sir; and it’s long since we seen any o’ you gentlemen on the river. It do look a change.’
‘What! not even my brother?’ said Ben; and somehow it was a kind of comfort to his mind that Laurie had not been there.
‘Mr. Frank do come by times,’ said the boatman; ‘but things is changed since last summer, when you gentlemen was allays about—you and your friends.’
‘Yes, Tom, things are changed,’ said Ben, as he pushed off from the bank. But somehow he did not feel so cast down about that change as he had been. Even the sight of the silvery, quiet river, which had not altered, and the trees drooping over it, every branch of which he seemed to know; and the bank that swelled into soft cliffs and wooded heights, as a sudden turn brought him within sight of Renton, did not bring up, as he had feared it would, any bittersense of injury and misfortune to his mind. Instead of being the heir and proprietor of all this, he was but Ben Renton, assistant to a railway man, going engineering without knowing how, away to the other end of the world. He said so to himself, and still, somehow, he did not feel bitter, which was curious. On the contrary, a soft sense of well-being stole over him. The river was as beautiful as ever, though he had no territorial rights over it—the woods rustled as softly in the sweet air of the spring; the sky was so bright above him, and hope, and energy, and resolution so strong in his breast! And Millicent! He had not known there was such a creature when he had last been there—reason enough to take away all the bitterness from his sensations now. Yet it was strange to see the house exactly as it used to be—the outer blinds dropped over Mrs. Renton’s windows, her flowers arranged in their old order, her very sofa placed beneath the trees, as if she had been there a moment before. The only change Ben could see was in his mother’s crape-covered dress and the dead white of the cap which surrounded her pretty, faded face. That was an improvement, though she did not think so; but it was the only visible sign of all the great events that had occurred at the Manor within this eventful year.
‘Oh, Ben, I thought I had lost you!’ cried his mother. ‘I thought you were gone, too, like your father;’ and she clasped her arms round her boy, andwept on his shoulder. That was all the reproach she made to him. And Ben, as was natural, fell immediately into self-accusation. But in his heart he felt that it would have been impossible. He could not have kept coming and going to this familiar place while his mind was full of Millicent Tracy, and of nothing else in the world. It could not have been. He would have been driven to some violent step—he knew not what—had he come home in the midst of that time of enchantment. The contrast would have killed him, or made him desperate. It would have dispersed the rosy mists, and brought him back to sober day. Now that the spell was broken, he recognised, so far, its nature. And yet it was the magic of this spell which brought him home with a clear brow and unembittered heart, and defended him against all the suggestions of discontent. There was nothing of the injured man in his look, no consciousness of misfortune or downfall. Perhaps Mrs. Renton would not have been quick enough to see this; but there were another pair of eyes looking on—fairly bright ones, though not like Millicent’s—which took it in at a glance, and wondered, and thought of Ben more highly than he deserved. Mary Westbury had been with her godmother all the winter through, giving many a thought to her cousins, to whom she had been as a sister, and saying many a prayer in her heart for poor Ben, the most hardly treated of all, whose wound was so deep that he had not the fortitude to comehome. Mary had been seized with a pang of fear when she saw her cousin, without any warning of his approach, come in, as of old times, by the window which opened on the garden. She expected to see him with a gloomy face, ‘feeling it’ so deeply as to make everybody else miserable. But, on the contrary, Ben’s countenance was unclouded, and his demeanour that of a man satisfied with his own position. Mary’s heart gave a little jump, and then settled into a pleasant glow of friendly warmth and soft agitation. After all, what a noble fellow he was! How fine it was of him to take to the change so kindly, and bear no malice! She left the mother and son by themselves at first, as soon as she could do it without ostentation, and went out, being excited, and walked about by herself in a very pleasant flutter of spirits. She was fond of Laurie, as everybody was, poor fellow; but Ben—Ben was different; and how noble of him to come home with that easy look, that unconstrained smile! Poor Mary made out a whole little romance as she came and went—an innocent, ingenuous creature, with summer in her face and in her heart—under the silken greenness of the lime-trees. No doubt he must have had a hard fight to subdue himself at first—not an easy, facile temper like Laurie—not a boy like Frank—but a man with settled plans of his own, and strong feelings, and an almost stern character. He had kept away until he had overcome himself. He had fought it out allalone, struggling with his dragon, until at last he had been able to set his foot upon him; and then the victor had come with a smile on his face to see his mother. Such was Mary’s fancy, knowing no better; and if she had vaguely admired, vaguely dreamed of her splendid cousin—the special hero of this drama—before, think with what a sudden thrill of enthusiasm, of dangerous approbation and applause, she regarded him now!
‘They must have had their first talk out, and perhaps he will want something,’ Mary said to herself after a while, and was turning to go in, when Ben met her,—coming to look for her, he said. It was Mrs. Renton’s time for her sleep, and he had settled her pillows for her, and Mary was to have a holiday for once.
‘We are to leave her alone for an hour or two,’ said Ben; ‘and, Mary, you must tell me all about her. You have been doing our duty while we have been,—pleasing ourselves. I have behaved like a brute to my poor mother.’