CHAPTER VII.
IN BERRIE DOWN LANE.
It was all over! Skill could do nothing more for her. Love itself was impotent now.
They brought flowers, and strewed them on her; but their bright colours, their sweet perfume, could delight the child no longer. They passed into the room where she lay a score times a day; but Lally never said, “Who’s ’at?” or weakly put out her hand to welcome one of them.
Bessie might steal in at night to look once again, and still once more, at the child she had loved so much; but Lally needed no one to sing her to sleep now—she had ceased wearying for her old playmate, and tears for her loss could trickle down her little white face no more.
Even Arthur, who stealthily and like a criminal watched his opportunity of visiting the chamber at times when no one should witness his grief—even he, with all his sorrow and contrition, could not win a word from Lally, whom he had so persistently, until the very end, indeed, declared to be in no danger.
Not from any evil intention, but merely because his vanity and his weakness were great, he had suffered himself to be led away by the still beautiful woman who had been the love of his youth. He had neglected Heather in days which he now understood must have been very dark to her; he had seen little of his child, who lay before him with her formerly eager face cold and fixed, with her limbs still, with her hands at rest, with the bright flowers already fading on her breast, very quiet—oh! so perfectly still.
What was Heather’s grief to his—her passionate woman’s sorrow to his? She had sat with the child, nursed her, heard every word the lips now so mute had uttered, supplied every want the body, which now needed nothing, had fretfully desired. Her grief might be very terrible, very hard to bear, but there was no remorse mingled with it. Her tears might flow unceasingly, but there was no bitterness in them. She could talk of her lost one, and receive sympathy from every person around; but Arthur—he had rarely seen Lally—he had been glad to forget her illness—he had listened to false words of comfort, and now, when his eyes were opened, it was only to look on—death.
An awful repentance had seized him when Alick, having at length succeeded in tracing his brother to one of the theatres, whither he was gone with Mr. and Mrs. Croft to see a new piece which at the time chanced to be creating a sensation, brought him out of the building with one sentence—
“If you want to see Lally alive, come home immediately!”
How he ever reached Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Arthur did not know. He had some faint remembrance of walking down steps, and entering a cab, and driving—it might have been for miles, or only for a hundred yards, so far as his recollection of the matter enlightened him.
The blow Tifford dealt him at the door blotted every antecedent event out of his memory.
“Too late, sir,” said that individual, in a low tone to Alick. “It is all over!”
“What is over?” Tifford subsequently informed his friends, Mr. Dudley demanded, adding, “And then, poor gentleman, I told him she was gone.”
Arthur was precisely the man to feel a shock of this kind keenly; a stronger nature could never have suffered itself to be so deluded; and the servants about the house, the only people who noted his visit to the close shut room, suspected that Mrs. Dudley’s grief was less bitter than his; that her open lamentations, her fast-flowing tears were preferable to this silent sorrow—to this tardy repentance which kept him haunting the death-chamber—dragging him continually away both from business and from rest to look on the face of the child he had only grown to love much when she needed no more love from any human being.
It has before been stated, that Arthur Dudley always rated more highly the blessings he lacked than the blessings he enjoyed, and this very peculiarity of his temperament increased the grief which his affection, and his repentance alike were sure to produce when once affection and repentance were useless.
Never before in his life had Arthur Dudley felt so lonely and so miserable as during the week which succeeded Lally’s death. For some time previously he had been gradually estranging himself from every member of his family, and now there was a restraint evident in their manner towards him—a restraint and an awkwardness which neither he nor they, knew exactly how to overcome.
In those days even Heather grew hard, and would not of her own free will speak to him as she did to others about their child, whom he had, as she fancied, neglected.
“She was mine,” the poor mother repeated, when Bessie would fain have had her talk to Arthur of Lally, “she was mine, and mine only; he never cared for her. Even strangers—even Mr. Croft and Mr. Stewart, and Mr. Henry—were kinder to my darling than her own father. No, Bessie, I am not unfeeling—it is the truth. He was never with me nor with her; always with that wicked, cruel woman—always—always.”
It is a curious anomaly to notice how harsh the very excess of a woman’s sensibility frequently renders her.
She feels one side of a question so deeply, that there is no room left in her nature for considering even the possibility of there being another side at all. And, in that hour of mortal sorrow, Heather had no leisure to bestow a thought on any one except her dead child. Even her love for Arthur seemed blotted out in indignation at his neglect of their first-born.
And yet the iron had entered very deep into the man’s soul—so deep, that the day when he followed Lally to her last resting-place was perhaps the bitterest of his life.
They buried her at Fifield. Not so very far from the old home—under the shadow of the grey church-tower—they laid Heather’s darling down to sleep.
“Lilian, aged six years and four months”—that was the legend her little coffin bore. “Lilian!” No fear of offending the unities now, she was gone where names do not convey much meaning.
“Six years and four months!” She was gone, also, where age and time are not of much account either.
Poor Lally—nay, happy Lally—to have had a life at once so bright and so short, so brimful of everything which can be packed by possibility into the longest span of human existence.
Sunshine and mirth, and love and friendship, and care and devotion.
What—though “finis” was written to the earthly story after a few short chapters—say, friends, was the story less round and perfect in its symmetry for that?
Was the ending in Fifield churchyard all sorrow? Nay, rather there came a time when Heather was able to think, almost with thankfulness, of that child face which should never grow old, nor changed, nor wrinkled, nor careworn, nor other than innocent and pure, waiting for her in that far-off land, where the “ransomed of the Lord shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”
All who had been so kind to her in her first illness, came to see the last they could of “poor little Lally Dudley,” together with those who had grown fond of the child towards the end.
Alick was glad there were so many round the grave, for he felt that the presence of strangers would exercise a beneficial influence on his brother, who had been in such grief all the way down—in such sore distress for the loss of the little one he should never in this world see again.
Returning on such an errand to the old place—which he had left with high hopes of success, with almost the certainty, as he thought, of conquering fortune—would have been inexpressibly bitter to Arthur, even without the reflection that his child had died far from him—farther away than though oceans and continents, mountains and rivers, had divided them; and it needed all his strength to carry him through the ordeal bravely, and with good courage.
Mr. Croft was present; but from him, Alick Dudley kept aloof. Even amongst the moss-grown headstones in Fifield graveyard, he could not forget what he had seen amidst the tombs at North Kemms.
He would not break faith with Bessie; but he could not be cordial to the man, although he had been kind to Heather and fond of Lally.
Alick was able, perhaps, now to guess the reason of his fancy for the child; but that did not soften him much towards the offender.
Rather the reverse, possibly; young people are, like most women, apt to be a trifle intolerant. They are very ignorant, and they are very virtuous; their standard of right is happily high, their idea of sin is, fortunately, that it is black as night. There are two colours only for them in this world; of the delicate shades of grey into which, as the years go by, every human feeling seems ultimately to resolve itself, they have no understanding. It is entire innocence, or entire vice—it is either devil or angel. What is the good of a man being a man, if he cannot resist temptation? where is the boasted purity of a woman, if she have ever even looked on sin?
Very nice sentiments, doubtless, and appropriate to the season and state of life in which they are generally expressed and believed. Too much toleration in the young would prove as dangerous as too many open windows in the spring; to the fleshly mansions, doubtful winds of doctrine would thus be permitted ingress. It is better for young people to continue, as their charming fashion is, delightfully bigoted, than to learn charity from practical knowledge of those temptations which make older persons question whether it be not possible for virtue to drag her spotless robes through the mire, and for vice to go through such an explanatory purification as might almost make a blackamoor clean.
And it was perfectly natural, considering his age, his character, his education, and the circumstances of the case so far as he knew them, that Alick Dudley should take the worst view possible of Mr. Croft’s conduct.
Had he not deliberately, and of malice aforethought, come like a wolf in the night, and stolen Bessie away—he with a wife living, too?
Well might Bessie not write to Heather (Alick was not aware that Bessie had returned to the one friend, of whose love and faithfulness she felt confident); well might the guilty creature hold herself aloof from all communication with relative or acquaintance. That Bessie had been deceived, Alick never imagined; that Mr. Croft had not jumped into sin at a single leap, was an idea he would have scouted. How easy, how gradual, how pleasant are the slopes leading down into the valley where Vice holds her court, this young Joshua had no conception. He thought that every offender, every one who went so far wrong as he felt confident Mr. Croft had strayed, ought to be stoned like Achan, so that he might trouble the peace of Israel no more.
Comfortable thoughts these, to fill the mind when standing beside an open grave; but they were Alick Dudley’s thoughts, nevertheless, and they made him hold himself aloof as far as possible from the man who had, he believed, first stolen Bessie away, and then striven to be kind to Lally, as a sort of offset against the shame he had brought amongst them.
He was contemptible altogether, the lad decided, too mean for him even to despise, and yet Alick would have liked to fight this despicable individual—to put some terrible affront on him—to do him a serious bodily injury—to tell him, that although Bessie was not worth fretting after, still the man who had lured her away was worth punishing.
Nothing Mr. Croft could say or do, Alick kept declaring to himself, should ever induce him to grasp his hand in friendship; and when all was over, when the body of the child who had never known of her own experience the meaning of the word “loneliness,” was left to lie solitary under the shadow of that grey church-tower till the day of judgment, Alick acted upon this decision, and drawing back from the little group which clustered around Arthur, found himself walking side by side with Lord Kemms.
Heaven knows what put such a thought into the young man’s mind at the moment; but, after they had passed through the gates, Alick suddenly asked his companion:
“How is Nellie?”
“Stone blind, as you said she would be,” was the reply.
“And I have not yet made the fortune out of which I was to repay you,” remarked Alick.
“I am sorry to hear it, though not for the reason you mention,” Lord Kemms answered. “It would have been better, however, perhaps, for all of you had I never bought her. The money she fetched was the first your brother advanced into the Protector.”
“Poor Arthur!” murmured the Squire’s brother; “but it was not the Protector that brought us back to Fifield to-day.”
“True,” rejoined his companion; “but, perhaps, your brother’s child might have lived a little longer had she never left Berrie Down.”
“You are wrong there, my Lord,” Alick replied; “nothing could have saved her; she was dying when she left here, and it was owing entirely to the care and skill of the London doctors she stayed with us so long. It is bad enough as it is, but we could scarcely have borne the loss had it been as you supposed.”
Which view of the case happened to be perfectly true, although Lord Kemms imagined the speaker was mistaken.
Having had a hand in damaging the Protector, his Lordship felt, naturally, anxious to prove that Company the origin of all evil.
Since, in the course of a mysterious Providence, Lally was to die, he would have felt happy to demonstrate that the Protector had, directly or indirectly, been instrumental in killing her.
Now, however, Alick Dudley cut the ground from under his feet. If Lally’s short existence had been prolonged, even for an hour, by the skill and kindness of the London doctors, it was impossible for Lord Kemms ever again to insinuate that residing in town had hastened her death.
On that score, at all events, Arthur had no reason to reproach himself, which was fortunate, since when he returned to Berrie Down after the funeral, he felt his burden was quite as heavy as he could bear.
He was pressed for money; his dreams of wealth were vanishing away like mist wreaths; his shares he feared would never return him even a quarter of the sum he had expected to make by them; the half-yearly dividend had been unsatisfactory; his directors were irritable, the shareholders discontented.
He knew he must shortly let the Hollow, in order to rid himself of farming expenses, and to provide certain funds for paying the interest of the money for which Berrie Down was already mortgaged. He had not merely lost money senselessly, but squandered it foolishly; and to a man who had for so many years of his life looked honestly after sixpences, there was something very terrible in the reflection that he had got himself into debt through unthinkingly spending sovereigns.
In addition to all these causes for regret, Arthur added that peculiarity of his own temperament, which valued whatever was lost or in jeopardy far above any secure or present possession; and the feeling that the Hollow would soon to a great extent cease to be his own property, caused him to view every tree and shrub about it, every stick and thorn, with an appreciative affection as novel as it was painful.
His love for wife, children, property, kindred lay latent until some chance circumstance accidentally revealed its existence to himself; and most probably the first time he ever really placed a proper value on Berrie Down was when he saw it in the dead of winter, its evergreens bright and glossy as ever; its lawn sloping away towards the west, the grand old trees tossing their branches in the keen north blast, all passing away from him and his; passing away from the descendants of those who had held the place for centuries.
He meant to remain at the Hollow for the night; he had much to talk over with Ned, many arrangements to make, fifty things to see to; and so he and Cuthbert, and Mr. Croft, who had declined the hospitality of Kemms’ Park, were all to stay in the now deserted-looking rooms until the following morning, while Alick returned to town by the latest night-train from Palinsbridge.
It was necessary for him, if he wished to catch this train, to start away from Berrie Down before nine o’clock; and while the young man was out in the yard impressing this fact on Ned’s comprehension, Mr. Croft came and stood beside him.
It was a moonlight night, stormy but still fine. The wind blew great masses of clouds over the moon’s face, and then swept it clean and bright again.
“You will have rather a rough drive over,” Mr. Croft remarked; and Alick, backing the pony into the shafts, sulkily answered, “Yes, it looks like it.”
“Can Ned not harness the pony for you?” was the next question.
“If he tried very hard, perhaps he might,” Alick replied.
“Perhaps he will be good enough to try hard, then,” said Mr. Croft; “and perhaps you would have the kindness to walk a few yards with me down the Lane. I want to speak to you.”
“To me?” repeated Alick, in surprise.
“Yes; to you, particularly,” was the reply.
“I will bid Arthur ‘good-night,’ and be with you directly,” the other agreed; and accordingly in a few minutes Mr. Croft and he were walking along Berrie Down Lane, past the pond, and under the elms and beeches that sheltered the road beyond.
“There is bad blood between us,” began the elder man, after they had paced on for a short distance side by side in silence. “There is bad blood between us, and I am sorry for it; but it is natural that you should both dislike and distrust me.”
“Was that what you brought me here to say?” Alick inquired.
“No; consider it as my opening sentence,—the stamp with which I have broken the conversational ice; now I can go on. You remember, of course, where you first saw me?”
“It is not likely I should soon forget such a pleasure,” was the reply.
“You are satirical, but I am shot proof,” Mr. Croft remarked; “you recollect, then, that Sunday afternoon in North Kemms’ church, and the girl who kept her eyes fixed so demurely on her prayer-book, which I had afterwards the happiness of restoring to her?”
“And in which you placed a letter,” added Alick.
“And in which I placed one of a series of letters,” amended Mr. Croft; “good—you remember her?”
“As well as I remember you,” was the reply.
“Where is she now?”
The moon sailed out from behind a cloud, as suddenly and sharply Mr. Croft put this question, looking full in Alick’s face while he did so.
“Where is she now?” the younger man repeated, “why, do you not know?”
“If I did, I should not come to you for information. Listen to me,” he rapidly proceeded, “I would give my right hand to know where she is. I would give a man anything almost he liked to ask, if he only proved to me she were alive and well. You were fond of her, were you not, boy? it vexes you to hear that there is no one belonging to her, no one on whom she has a claim—not even myself who can say where she is, whether living or dead; but what is your trouble to mine? When I looked in your face a moment since, my last hope vanished. I thought perhaps she might have gone to Heather—to Mrs. Dudley, I mean.”
“Would you have me understand that she never went off with you?” Alick interrupted. He stood still in the very middle of Berrie Down Lane as he spoke, and the shifting light gave a wild, curious expression to his face. “Do you think I am so simple as to believe——”
“My dear fellow, I do not think you simple, and it is immaterial to me what you believe; but I want to know where your cousin is to be found. I desire, at least, assurance of her safety, comfort, and—should such a miracle be possible—happiness.”
“And by what right do you dare to ask anything about her,” demanded Alick; “you a married man, you who never ought to have written her a line, or met her, or—or——”
“I did not beg you to walk on here with me to-night in order to answer your questions,” Mr. Croft interrupted; “my object was merely to put one or two of my own. To my first, your face has already replied. I see you know nothing of your cousin’s whereabouts. If you should do so, will you at all events let me know that you have heard from or seen her, and that she is well?”
“No,” Alick Dudley replied, “I will not.”
“That settles my second question,” observed Mr. Croft. “Now, the last point on which I desire information is this: does Mrs. Dudley know we have met before, and where?”
“She knows I have seen you,” was the answer; “but I have not told her when, or where, or what I suspect.”
“That is to say, Mrs. Dudley does not in any way connect me with your cousin’s disappearance?” Mr. Croft remarked inquiringly; and when Alick answered in the affirmative, he proceeded:
“Will you still respect my secret, so far as you know it?”
“I shall make no promise,” Alick answered.
“At least, will you let me tell my story for myself?”
“There is nothing to prevent your doing that,” the other replied, “any more than there is to prevent my telling mine.”
“You are sternly uncompromising,” said Mr. Croft.
“I should be sorry to compromise with a seducer and a villain,” was the reply.
“You are talking at random, boy, on a matter concerning which you know literally nothing,” the person so politely addressed observed, sadly. “Had I spoken to an older man, as I have spoken to you to-night, I should not have been so repulsed.”
“Possibly not by an older man like yourself,” retorted Alick, with a sneer.
“Good-night,” said Mr. Croft, “we will not spoil our naturally sweet tempers by further argument. Here comes Ned. Shall we shake hands over it? No; good-bye then, and pleasant thoughts as you travel to town. Some day you will think you have not been all in the right in your judgment of me; but I do not quarrel with you for that judgment. It is human to err, and your humanity has erred, perhaps, on the safest side. On a safer side than mine, certainly,” he muttered, as Alick, jumping up beside Ned, took the reins, and, with a cold farewell to Mr. Croft, drove off at a rattling trot along Berrie Down Lane, and thence through Fifield to Palinsbridge.
As they passed Fifield church, the moonlight fell clear and cold on the mound of freshly-turned mould, which was heaped over the spot where Heather’s darling lay all alone, and the tears came welling up into Alick’s eyes when he thought of the dead child.
Any one might have imagined that such tears must soften the heart, and render it for the time, at least, pitiful and tender even to a sinner; but no such change was wrought on Alick Dudley’s mood.
All the way up to town, sitting in a corner of the compartment, he pondered over his interview with Mr. Croft—pondered and wondered; but it never once occurred to him that perhaps he had judged the man harshly, that he had repulsed his semi-confidence very rudely.
He was a sinner—he was all Alick had said; over and over again the youth kept repeating these statements to himself; over and over he found it necessary to refresh his spirit with them, for his conscience did not feel quite satisfied concerning the interview.
Still he had done right, and though the right might be unpleasant and ungracious, it was nevertheless necessary to be performed. Young though he might be, Alick Dudley knew enough of human nature to be aware Mr. Croft was for some reason or other in very grievous trouble: to be confident, he never would have spoken to him had the subject not been one, as he implied, of vital importance to his peace; but what of that? If he were in trouble, so much the better; if he were anxious and grieved, it was nothing but what he deserved.
He had been kind to Lally, it is true; but, again, what of that? In the eyes of Alick Dudley, Douglas Aymescourt Croft seemed the incarnation of evil, of hypocrisy, of treachery, and of sin.
With all his heart and with all his soul, Alick hated the man—hated him all the more, perhaps, because he felt quite confident, if Mr. Croft once told his tale to Heather, he would deceive her also somehow, perhaps even move her to pity.
And Alick held in those days the pleasant creed, that no human being who went wrong should ever be pitied. Not even the look of Mr. Croft’s face, as he stood eager and anxious, waiting for Alick’s answer, had been able to soften the youth. Rather, in his stern rectitude, he now blamed himself for having been over-lenient, for having been unduly tender to this wretch who had deceived Bessie, and wrought for her perhaps such misery as he himself was unable to contemplate calmly.
Out and away with him; on a gallows as high as Haman’s, Alick would willingly have hung him; and, after all, to come to me! thought this modern Joshua—to come to me!
Ay, there was Mr. Croft’s mistake; perhaps he never had been very young himself, or perhaps the feelings of his youth lay so far back in the book of years, that he forgot how stern and hard young people, who can be trusted, usually are in their judgments. Be this as it may, the result of the interview had proved different to what he expected, and he returned to the Hollow, smiling a little bitterly as he thought time would teach Alick Dudley a different lesson; that possibly out of his own experience he might after a while acquire a little toleration in judging of others. And in this idea, who may say Douglas Croft was wrong?
True, it is only God who, knowing all about our sins and our temptations, is ever entirely merciful; but still, the more men learn of their own natures, the more fully they come to comprehend how easy it is to do wrong, and how difficult to do right; the closer they form an acquaintance with that lore which nothing except sorrow, and trial, and trouble, and experience can teach, the greater is the toleration with which they regard error; the greater is the diffidence which they feel about affirming of any human being, “In the sight of the Almighty, you are a very grievous sinner.”
In precise proportion, as a man towards the close of his life is harsh and bitter, as he views with loathing not the crime but the criminal, as he ventures to pass severe judgments on his fellow-creatures, so we may be certain his earthly education has been wasted.
It is natural for the young to air their indignation; natural and right, for they cannot conceive the power and might of those temptations which are strong enough to lead wiser people than themselves astray; which meet poor humanity like an armed man; which lurk like lions in the path, yea, are “like lions roaring on their prey.”
In the young, it may reasonably be hoped that intolerance is an outward and visible sign of inexperience and innocence, but in the old and the middle-aged it can be regarded but as a token of folly, as a sign of a Pharasaic rather than a humble spirit; of a mental constitution swift to forget personal sins and to notice defects in others; of a bigoted proneness to measure the corn of all men’s lives out of one bushel; of a pompous giving thanks to God for having made some people so much better than that poor, low, wretched, tabooed publican; of a disposition ready to find a mote in a brother’s eye, forgetful of the beam which was so utterly displeasing in the sight of Him who has with his own lips assured us, that “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”