I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell.
—DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.
It was Sunday afternoon. Mr. Tristram leaned on the stone balustrade that bounded the long terrace at Wilderleigh. He was watching two distant figures, followed by a black dot, stroll away across the park. One of them seemed to drag himself unwillingly. Mr. Tristram congratulated himself on the acumen which had led him to keep himself concealed until Doll and Hugh had started for Beaumere.
Sybell had announced at luncheon, in the tone of one who observes a religious rite, that she should rest till four o'clock, and would be ready to sit for the portrait of her upper lip at that hour.
It was only half-past two now. Mr. Tristram had planted himself exactly in front of Rachel's windows, with his back to the house. "She will keep me waiting, but she will come out in time," he said to himself, nervous and self-confident by turns, resting his head rather gracefully on his hand. His knowledge of womankind supported him like a life-belt, but it has been said that life-belts occasionally support their wearers upsidedown. Theories have been known to exhibit the same spiteful tendency towards those who place their trust in them.
"Of course, she has got to show me that she is offended with me," he reflected, gazing steadily at the Welsh hills. "She would not have come out if I had asked her, but she will certainly come as I did not. I will give her half an hour."
Rachel, meanwhile, was looking fixedly at Mr. Tristram from her bedroom window with that dispassionate scrutiny to avoid which the vainest would do well to take refuge in noisome caves.
"I wonder," she said to herself, "whether Hester always saw him as I see him now. I believe she did."
Rachel put on her hat and took up her gloves. "If this is really I, and that is really he, I had better go down and get it over," she said to herself.
Mr. Tristram had given her half an hour. She appeared in the low stone doorway before the first five minutes of the allotted time had elapsed, and he gave a genuine start of surprise as he heard her step on the gravel. His respect for her fell somewhat at this alacrity.
"I have been waiting in the hope of seeing you," he said, after a moment's hesitation. "I am anxious to have a serious conversation with you."
"Certainly," she said.
They walked along the terrace, and presently found themselves in the little coppice adjoining it. They sat down together on a wooden seat round an old cedar, in the heart of the golden afternoon.
It was an afternoon the secret of which Autumn and Spring will never tell to Winter and Summer, when the wildest dreams of love might come true, when even the dead might come down and put warm lips to ours, and we should feel no surprise.
A kingfisher flashed across the open on his way back to the brook near at hand, fleeing from the still splendor of the sun-fired woods, where he was but a courtier, to the little winding world of gray stones and water, where he was a jewelled king.
When the kingfisher had left them tête-à-tête, Mr. Tristram found himself extremely awkwardly placed on the green bench. He felt that he had not sufficiently considered beforehand the peculiar difficulties which, in the language of the law, "had been imported into his case."
Rachel sat beside him in silence. If it could be chronicled that sympathetic sorrow for her companion's predicament was the principal feeling in her mind, she would have been an angel.
Mr. Tristram halted long between two opinions. At last he said, brokenly:
"Can you forgive me?"
What woman, even with her white hair, even after a lifetime spent out of ear-shot, ever forgets the tone her lover's voice takes when he is in trouble? Rachel softened instantly.
"I forgave you long ago," she said, gently.
Something indefinable in the clear, full gaze that met his daunted him. He stared apprehensively at her. It seemed to him as if he were standing in cold and darkness looking in through the windows of her untroubled eyes at the warm, sunlit home which had once been his, when it had been exceeding well with him, but of which he had lost the key.
A single yellow leaf, crisped and hollowed to a fairy boat, came sailing on an imperceptible current of air to rest on Rachel's knee.
"I was angry at first," she said, her voice falling across the silence like another leaf. "And then, after a time, I forgave you. And later still, much later, I found out that you had never injured me—that I had nothing to forgive."
He did not understand, and as he did not understand he explained volubly—for here he felt he was on sure ground—that, on the contrary, she had much to forgive, that he had acted like an infernal blackguard, that men were coarse brutes, not fit to kiss a good woman's shoe-latchet, etc., etc. He identified his conduct with that of the whole sex, without alluding to it as that of the individual Tristram. He made it clear that he did not claim to have behaved better than most men.
Rachel listened attentively. "And I actually loved him," she said to herself.
"But the divine quality of woman is her power of forgiving. Her love raises a man, transfigures him, ennobles his whole life," etc., etc.
"My love did not appear to have quite that effect upon you at the time," said Rachel, regretting the words the moment they were spoken.
Mr. Tristram felt relieved. Here at last; was the reproach he had been expecting.
He assured her she did well to be angry. He accused himself once more. He denounced the accursed morals of the day, above which he ought to have risen, the morals, if she did but know it, of all unmarried men.
"That is a hit at Mr. Scarlett," she said, scornfully, to herself, and then her cheek blanched as she remembered that Hugh was not exempt, after all. She became suddenly tired, impatient; but she waited quietly for the inevitable proposal.
Mr. Tristram, who had the gift of emphatic and facile utterance, which the conventional consider to be the sign-manual of genius, had become so entangled in the morals of the age that it took him some time to extricate himself from the subject before he could pass on to plead, in an impassioned manner, the cause of the man, unworthy though he might be, who had long loved her, loved her now, and would always love her, in this world and the next.
It was the longest proposal Rachel had ever had, and she had had many. But if the proposal was long, the refusal was longer. Rachel, who had a good memory, led up to it by opining that the artistic life made great demands, that the true artist must live entirely for his art, that domestic life might prove a hinderance. She had read somewhere that high hopes fainted on warm hearthstones. Mr. Tristram demolished these objections as ruthlessly as ducks peck their own ducklings if they have not seen them for a day or two.
Even when she was forced to become more explicit, it was at first impossible to Mr. Tristram to believe she would finally reject him. But the knowledge, deep-rooted as a forest oak, that she had loved him devotedly could not at last prevail against the odious conviction that she was determined not to marry him.
"Then, in that case, you never loved me?"
"I do not love you now."
"You are determined not to marry?"
"On the contrary, I hope to do so."
Rachel's words took her by surprise. She had no idea till that moment that she hoped anything of the kind.
"You prefer some one else. That is the real truth."
"I prefer several others."
Mr. Tristram looked suspiciously at her. Her answers did not tally with his previous knowledge of her. Perhaps he forgot that he had set his docile pupil rather a long holiday task to learn in his absence, and she had learned it.
"You think you would be happier with some fortune-hunter of an aristocrat than with a plain man of your own class, who, whatever his faults may be, loves you for yourself."
Why is it that the word aristocrat as applied to a gentleman is as offensive as that of flunkey applied to a footman?
Rachel drew herself up imperceptibly.
"That depends upon the fortune-hunter," she said, with that touch of hauteur which, when the vulgar have at last drawn it upon themselves by the insolence which is the under side of their courtesy, always has the same effect on them as a red rag on a bull.
In their own language they invariably "stand up to it." Mr. Tristram stood up physically and mentally. He also raised his voice, causing two rabbits to hurry back into their holes.
Women, he said, were incalculable. He would never believe in one again. His disbelief in woman rose even to the rookery in the high elms close at hand. That she, Rachel, whom he had always regarded as the first among women, should be dazzled by the empty glamour of rank, now that her fortune put such marriages within her reach, was incredible. He should have repudiated such an idea with scorn, if he had not heard it from her own lips. Well, he would leave her to the life she had chosen. It only remained for him to thank her for stripping his last illusions from him and to bid her good-bye.
"We shall never meet again," he said, holding her hand, and looking very much the same without his illusions as he did when he had them on. He had read somewhere a little poem about "A Woman's No," which at the last moment meant "Yes." And then there was another which chronicled how, after several stanzas of upbraiding, "we rushed into each other's arms." Both recurred to him now. He had often thought how true they were.
"I do not think we shall meet again," said Rachel, who apparently had an unpoetic nature; "but I am glad for my own sake that we have met this once, and have had this conversation. I think we owed it to each other and to our—former attachment."
"Well, good-bye." He still held her hand. If she was not careful she would lose him.
"Good-bye."
"You understand it is for always?"
"I do."
He became suddenly livid. He loved her more than ever. Would she really let him go?
"I am not the kind of man to be whistled back," he said, fiercely. It was an appeal and a defiance, for he was just the kind of man, and they both knew it.
"Of course not."
"That is your last word?"
"My last word."
He dropped her hand and half turned to go.
She made no sign.
Then he strode violently out of the wood without looking behind him. At the little gate he stopped a moment, listening intently. No recalling voice reached him. Poets did not know what they were talking about. With a trembling hand he slammed the gate and departed.
Rachel remained a long time sitting on the wooden bench, so long that the stooping sun found out the solemn, outstretched arms of the cedar, and touched them till they gleamed green as a beetle's wing. Each little twig and twiglet was made manifest, raw gold against the twilight that lurked beneath the heavy boughs.
She sat so still that a squirrel came tiptoeing across the moss, and struck tail momentarily to observe her. He looked critically at her, first with one round eye, and then, turning his sleek head, with the other, and decided that she was harmless.
Presently a robin dropped down close to her, flashing up his gray under wing as he alighted, and then flew up into the cedar, and from its sun-stirred depths said his say.
The robin never forgets. In the autumn afternoons, when the shadows are lengthening, he sings sadness into your heart. If you are joyful shut your ears against him, for you may keep peace, but never joy, while he is singing. He knows all about it, "love's labor lost," the gray face of young Love dead, the hard-wrought grave in the live rock where he is buried. And he tells of it again and again and again, as if Love's sharp sword had indeed reddened his little breast, until the heart aches to hear him. But he tells also that consolation is folded not in forgetfulness, but in remembrance. That is why he sings in the silence of the autumn dawn, before Memory closes her eyes, and again near sunset, when Memory wakes.
Still Rachel sat motionless.
She had labored with dumb unreasoning passion to forget, as a man works his hand to the bone night after night, week after week, month after month, to file through the bars of his prison. She found at last that forgetfulness came not of prayer and fasting; that it was not in her to forget. The past had seemed to stretch its cruel, desecrating hand over all the future, cutting her off from the possibility of love and marriage, and from the children whom in dreams she held in her arms. As she had said to Hester, she thought she "had nothing left to give."
But now the dead past had risen from its grave in her meeting with her former lover, and in a moment, in two short days and wakeful nights, the past relinquished its false claim upon her life. She saw that it was false, that she had been frightened where no fear was, that her deliverance lay in remembrance itself, not in the handcuffs with which until now she had bound her deliverer.
Mr. Tristram had come back into her life, and with his own hands had destroyed the overthrown image of himself, which lay like a barrier across her heart. He had replaced it by an accurate presentment of himself as he really was.
"Only that which is replaced is destroyed," and it is often our real self in its native rags, and not, as we jealously imagine, another king in richer purple who has replaced us in the throne-room of the heart that loved us. To the end of life Rachel never forgot Mr. Tristram, any more than the amber forgets its fly. But she was vaguely conscious as he left her that he had set her free. She listened to his retreating step hardly daring to breathe. It was too good to be true. At last there was dead silence. No echo of a footfall. Quite gone. He had departed not only out of her presence, but out of her life.
She breathed again. A tremor, like that which shakes the first green leaf against the March sky, stole across her crushed heart, empty at last, empty at last. She raised her hand timidly in the sunshine. She was free. She looked round dazzled, bewildered. The little world of sunshine and the turquoises of sky strewn among the golden net-work of the trees smiled at her, as one who brings good tidings.
A certain familiar hold on life and nature, so old that it was almost new, which she had forgotten, but which her former self used to feel, came back suddenly upon her, like a lost friend from over-seas. Scales seemed to fall from her eyes. The light was too much for her. She had forgotten how beautiful the world was. Everything was possible.
Some, in the night of their desolation, can take comfort when they see the morning-star shuddering white in the east, and can say, "Courage, the day is at hand."
But others never realize that their night is over till the sun is up. Rachel had sat in a long stupor. The message writ large for her comfort in the stars that the night was surely waning had not reached her, bowed, as she thought, beneath God's hand. And the sure return of the sun at last came upon her like a miracle.
CHAPTER XXVI
"'Tis not for every one to catch a salmon."
Every one who knows Middleshire knows that the little lake of Beaumere is bounded on the one side by the Westhope and on the other by the Wilderleigh property, the boundary being the ubiquitous Drone, which traverses the mere in a desultory fashion, and with the assistance of several springs makes Beaumere what it is, namely (to quote from the local guide-book), "the noblest expanse of water surrounded by some of the most picturesque scenery in Middleshire."
Thither Doll and Hugh took their way in the leisurely manner of men whose orthodoxy obliges them to regard Sunday as a day of rest.
Doll pointed out to Hugh the coppice which his predecessor, Mr. George Loftus, had planted. Hugh regarded it without excitement. Both agreed that it was coming on nicely. Hugh thought that he ought to do a little planting at his own place. Doll said, "You can't do everything at once." A large new farm was the next object of interest. "Uncle George rebuilt Greenfields from the ground," remarked Doll, as they crossed the high road and took to the harvesting fields, where "the ricks stood gray to the sun."
Hugh nodded. Doll thought he was a very decent chap, though rather low-spirited. Hugh thought that if Mr. George Loftus had been alive he might have consulted him. In an amicable silence, broken occasionally by whistling for Crack, who hurried blear-eyed and asthmatic out of rabbit-holes, the pair reached Beaumere; and, after following the path through the wood, came suddenly upon the little lake locked in the heart of the steeply climbing forest.
Doll stood still and pointed with his stick for fear Hugh might overlook it. "I come here every Sunday," he remarked.
A sense of unreality and foreboding seized on Hugh, as the still face of the water looked up at him. Where had he seen it before, this sea of glass reflecting the yellow woods that stooped to its very edge? What had it to do with him?
"I've been here before," he said, involuntarily.
"I dare say," said Doll. "Newhaven marches with me here. The boundary is by that clump of silver birch. The Drone comes in there, but you can't see it. The Newhavens are friends of yours, aren't they?"
"Acquaintances," said Hugh, absently, looking hard at the water. He had never been here before. Memory groped blindly for a lost link, as one who momentarily recognizes a face in a crowd, and tries to put a name to it and fails. As the face disappears, so the sudden impression passed from Hugh's mind.
"I expect you have been here with them," said Doll. "Good man, Newhaven."
"I used to see a good deal of them at one time," said Hugh; "but they seem to have forgotten me of late."
"Oh, that's her!" said Doll. "She is always off and on with people. Takes a fancy one day and a dislike the next. But he's not like that. You always know where to find him. Solid man, Newhaven. He doesn't say much, but what he says he sticks to."
"He gives one that impression," said Hugh.
"I rather think he is there now," said Doll, pointing to the farther shore. "I see a figure moving, and two little specks. I should not wonder if it were him and the boys. They often come here on Sunday afternoons."
"You have long sight," said Hugh. He had met Lord Newhaven several times since the drawing of lots, and they had always greeted each other with cold civility. But Hugh avoided him when he could without drawing attention to the fact that he did so.
"Are you going over to his side?" he asked.
"Rather not," said Doll. "I have never set a single trimmer or fired a shot beyond that clump of birch, or Uncle George before me."
The two men picked their way down the hill-side among the tall, thin tree-trunks. There was no one except the dogs at the keeper's cottage, in a clearing half-way down. Doll took the key of the boat-house from a little hole under the eaves.
"I think Withers must be out," he remarked at last, after knocking and calling at the locked door and peering through the closed window. Hugh had been of that opinion for some time. "Gone out with his wife, I expect. Never mind, we can do without him."
They went slipping over the dry beech-mast to the boat-house. Doll unlocked the door and climbed into one of the boats; Hugh and Crack followed. They got a perch-rod off a long shelf, and half a dozen trimmers. Then they pulled out a little way and stopped near an archipelago of water-lily leaves.
Doll got out the perch-rod and float and made a cast.
"It's not fishing," he said, apologetically, half to his guest and half to his Maker. "But we are bound to get some baits."
Hugh nodded, and gazed down at the thin forest below. He could see the perch moving in little companies in the still water beyond the water-trees. Presently a perch, a very small one, out alone for the first time, came up, all stiff head and shoulders and wagging tail, to the carelessly covered hook.
"Don't, don't, you young idiot!" said Hugh, below his breath. But the perch knew that the time had come when a perch must judge for himself.
The float curtesied and went under, and in another second the little independent was in the boat.
"There are other fools in the world besides me, it seems," said Hugh to himself.
"He'll do; but I wish he was a dace," said Doll, slipping the victim into a tin with holes in the top. "Half a dozen will be enough."
They got half a dozen, baited and set the trimmers white side up, and were turning to row back, when Doll's eyes became suddenly fixed.
"By Jove! there's something at it," he said, pointing to a trimmer at some distance.
Both men looked intently at it. Crack felt that something was happening, and left off smelling the empty fish-can.
The trimmer began to nod, to tilt, and then turned suddenly upsidedown, and remained motionless.
"He's running the line off it," said Doll.
As he spoke the trimmer gave one jerk and went under. Then it reappeared, awkwardly bustling out into the open.
"Oh, hang it all! it's Sunday," said Doll, with a groan. "We can't be catching pike on a Sunday." And he caught up the oars and rowed swiftly towards the trimmer.
As soon as they were within a boat's length it disappeared again, came up again, and went pecking along the top of the water. Doll pursued warily, and got hold of it.
"Gently, now," he said, as he shipped the oars. "He'll go under the boat and break us if we don't look out. I'll play him, and you shove the net under him. Damn!—God forgive me!—we've come out without a landing-net. Good Lord, Scarlett, you can't gaff him with a champagne-opener. There, you pull him in, and I'll grab him somehow. I've done it before. Crack, lie down, you infernal fool! Scarlett, if you pull him like that you'll lose him to a certainty. By George, he's a big one!" Doll tore off his coat and turned up his shirt-sleeves. "He's going under the boat. If you let him go under the boat, I tell you, he'll break us. I'm quite ready." Doll was rubbing his waistcoat-buttons against the gunwale. "Bring him in gradually. For goodness' sake, keep your feet off the line, or, if he makes a dash, he'll break you! Give him line. Keep your elbows out. Keep your hands free. Don't let him jerk you. If you don't give him more line when he runs, you'll lose him. He's not half done yet. Confound you, Scarlett! hold on for all you're worth. All right, old chap, all right. Don't mind me. You're doing it first-class. Right as rain. Now, now. By George! did you see him that time? He's a nailer! Steady on him! Bring him in gently. Keep an even pull on him. Keep steady!"
Doll craned over the gunwale, his arms in the water. There was a swirl, a momentary glimpse of a stolid fish, face and heavy shoulders, and the boat righted itself.
"Missed him, as I live!" gasped Doll. "Bring him in again."
Hugh let out the slippery line, and drew it in again slowly, hand over hand. Doll's round head was over the side, his long legs spread adhesively in the bottom of the boat. Crack, beyond himself with excitement, got on the seat and barked without ceasing.
"He's coming up again," said Doll, gutturally, sliding forward his left hand. "I must get him by the eyes, and then I doubt if I can lift him. He's a big brute. He's dragging the whole boat and everything. He's about done now. Steady! Now!"
The great side of the pike lay heaving on the surface for a second, and Doll's left forefinger and thumb were groping for its eyes. But the agonized pike made a last effort. Doll had him with his left hand, but could not raise him. "Pull him in now for all you're worth," he roared to Hugh, as he made a grab with his right hand. His legs began to lose their grip under the violent contortions of the pike. The boat tilted madly. Hugh reached forward to help him. There was a frantic effort, and it capsized.
"Bad luck," said Doll, coming up spluttering, shaking his head like a spaniel. "But we shall get him yet. He's bleeding like a pig. He'll come up directly. Good Lord! the water's like ice. We must be over one of the springs. I suppose you are all right, Scarlett."
Hugh had come up, but in very different fashion.
"Yes," he said, faintly, clutching the upturned boat.
"I'm not sure," said Doll, keeping going with one hand, "that we had not better get ashore and fetch the other boat. The water's enough to freeze one."
"I can't swim," said Hugh, his teeth chattering.
He was a delicate man at the best of times, and the cold was laying hold of him.
Doll looked at his blue lips and shaking hands, and his face became grave. He measured the distance to the shore with his eye. It had receded in a treacherous manner.
"I'm not much of a performer myself," he said, "since I broke my arm last winter, but I can get to the shore. The question is, can you hold on while I go back and bring the other boat, or shall we have a try at getting back together?"
"I can hold on all right," said Hugh, instantly aware that Doll did not think he could tow him to land, but was politely ready to risk his existence in the attempt.
"Back directly," said Doll, and without a second's delay he was gone. Hugh put out his whole strength in the endeavor to raise himself somewhat out of the ice-cold water. But the upturned boat sidled away from him like a skittish horse, and after grappling with it he only slipped back again exhausted, and had to clutch it as best he could.
As he clung to the gunwale he heard a faint coughing and gasping close to his ear. Some one was drowning. Hugh realized that it must be Crack, under the boat. He called to him; he chirruped, as if all were well. He stretched one hand as far as he could under the boat feeling for him. But he could not reach him. Presently the faint, difficult sound ceased, began again, stopped, and was heard no more.
A great silence seemed to rush in on the extinction of that small sound. It stooped down and enveloped Hugh in it. Everything was very calm, very still. The boat kept turning slowly round and round, the only thing that moved. The sunlight quivered on the wet, upturned keel. Already it was drying in patches. Hugh watched it. The cold was sapping his powers as if he were bleeding.
"I could have built a boat in the time Loftus takes to fetch one," he said to himself, and he looked round him. No sign of Doll. He was alone in the world. The cold was gaining on him slowly, surely. Why had he on such heavy gloves, which made him fumble so clumsily. He looked at his bare cut hands, and realized that their grip was leaving them. He felt that he was in measurable distance of losing his hold.
Suddenly a remembrance flashed across him of the sinister face of the water as it had first looked up at him through the trees. Now he understood. This was the appointed place for him to die. Hugh tightened his hold with his right hand, for his left was paralyzed.
"I will not," he said. "Nothing shall induce me. I will live and marry Rachel."
The cold advanced suddenly on him, as at the point of the bayonet.
"Why not die?" said another voice. "Will it be easier in three months' time than it is now? Will it ever be so easy again? See how near death is to life, a wheel within a wheel, two rings linked together. A touch, and you pass from one to the other."
Hugh looked wildly round him. The sun lay warm upon the tree-tops. It could not be that he was going to die here and now; here in the living sunshine, with the quiet, friendly faces of the hills all around him.
He strengthened his numb hold fiercely, all but lost it, regained it. Cramp, long held at bay, overcame him.
And the boat kept turning in the twilight. He reached the end of his strength, and held on beyond it. He heard some one near at hand suffocating in long-drawn gasps. Not Crack this time, but himself.
The boat was always turning in the darkness.
The struggle was over. "It is better so," said the other voice, through the roaring of a cataract near at hand. "Your mother will bear it better so. And all the long difficulties are over, and pain is past, and life is past, and sleep is best."
"But Rachel?"
She was here in the warm, swaying darkness. She was with him. She was Death. Death was only her arms round him in a great peace. Death was better than life. He let go the silly boat that kept him from her and turned wholly to her, his closed eyes against her breast.
CHAPTER XXVII
The main difference between people seems to be that one man can come under obligations on which you can rely—is obligable—and another is not. As he has not a law within him, there's nothing to tie him to.—EMERSON.
"Father," said Teddy to Lord Newhaven, "do—do be a horse, and I will ride you in the water."
"Me, too," said Pauly.
"I am not anxious to be a horse, Teddy. I'm quite content as I am."
Lord Newhaven was stretched in an easy but undefensive attitude on the heathery bank, with his hands behind his head. His two sons rushed simultaneously at him and knelt on his chest.
"Promise!" they cried, punching him. "Two turns each." There was a free fight, and Lord Newhaven promised.
"Honor bright! Two turns each, and really deep!"
"Honor bright," said Lord Newhaven.
His two sons got off his chest, and Teddy climbed on his back in readiness, as his father sat up and began to unlace his boots.
"Higher!" said Teddy, over his shoulder, his arms tightly clasped round his father's neck, as Lord Newhaven rolled up his trousers.
"You young slave-driver, they won't go up any higher."
"You said 'honor bright.'"
"Well, Shylock, I am 'honor bright.'"
"You had them over your knees last time."
"I had knickerbockers on, then."
"Won't these do the same?"
"They won't come up another inch."
"Then one, two, three—off!" shrieked Teddy, digging his heels into the parental back.
The horse displayed surprising agility. It curveted, it kicked, it jumped a little drain, it careered into the water, making a tremendous splashing.
The two boys screamed with delight.
But at last the horse sat down on the bank gasping, wiped its forehead, and, in spite of frenzied entreaties, proceeded to put on its socks and boots.
Lord Newhaven was not to be moved a second time. He lit a cigarette and observed that the moment for sailing boats had arrived.
The boats were accordingly sailed. Lord Newhaven tilted his hat over his eyes and acted as umpire.
"It is not usual to sail boats upsidedown," he said, seeing Teddy deliberately upset his.
"They are doing it out there," said Teddy, who had a reason for most things. And he continued to sail his boat upsidedown.
Lord Newhaven got up, and swept the water with his eye. His face became keen. Then his glance fell anxiously on the children.
"Teddy and Pauly," he said, "promise me that you will both play on this one bit of sand, and not go in the water till I come back."
They promised, staring bewildered at their father.
In another moment Lord Newhaven was tearing through the brushwood that fringed the water's edge.
As he neared the boat-house he saw another figure trying to shove out the remaining boat.
It was Doll. Lord Newhaven pushed her off and jumped in.
Doll was almost speechless. His breath came in long gasps. The sweat hung on his forehead. He pointed to the black, upturned boat.
"This one leaks," said Lord Newhaven, sharply.
"It's got to go all the same, and sharp," said Doll, hoarsely.
Lord Newhaven seized up a fishing-tin and thrust it into Doll's hands.
"You bale while I row," he said, and he rowed as he had never rowed before.
"Who is it?" he said, as the boat shot out into the open.
Doll was baling like a madman.
"Scarlett," he said. "And he's over one of the springs. He'll get cramp."
Lord Newhaven strained at the oars.
Consciousness was coming back, was slowly climbing upwards, upwards through immense intervals of time and space, to where at last, with a wrench, pain met it half-way. Hugh stirred feebly in the dark of a great forlornness and loneliness.
"Rachel," he said—"Rachel."
His head was gently raised, and a cup pressed to his lips. He swallowed something.
He groped in the darkness for a window, and then opened his eyes. Lord Newhaven withdrew a pace or two, and stood looking at him.
Their eyes met.
Neither spoke; but Hugh's eyes, dark with the shadow of death, said plainly, "Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?"
Then he turned them slowly, as an infant turns them to the sky, the climbing woods, leaning over each other's shoulders to look at him, to the warm earth on which he lay. At a little distance was stretched a small rough-haired form. Hugh's eyes fixed on it. It lay very still.
"Crack," he said, suddenly, raising himself on his elbow.
There was neither speech nor language. Crack's tail, that courteous member, made no sign.
"He was under the boat," said Lord Newhaven, looking narrowly at the exhausted face of the man he had saved, and unable for the life of him to help a momentary fellow-feeling about the little dog.
Hugh remembered. It all came back, the boat, Crack's dying gasps, the agonized struggle, the strait gate of death, the difficult passage through it, the calm beyond. He had almost got through, and had been dragged back.
"Why did you interfere?" he said, in sudden passion, his eyes flaming in his white face.
A dull color rose to Lord Newhaven's cheek.
"I thought it was an accident," he said. "If it was not, I beg your pardon."
There was a moment's silence.
"It was an accident," said Hugh, hoarsely, and he turned on his elbow and looked fixedly at the water, so that his companion might not see the working of his face.
Lord Newhaven walked slowly away in the direction of Doll, whose distant figure, followed by another, was hurrying towards them.
"And so there is a Rachel as well, is there?" he said to himself, vainly trying to steel himself against his adversary.
"How is he now?" said Doll, coming within ear-shot.
"He's all right; but you'd better get him into dry clothes, and yourself, too."
"Change on the bank," said Doll, seizing a bundle from the keeper. "It's as hot as an oven in the sun. Why, Scarlett's sitting up! I thought when we laid into him on the bank that he was too far gone, didn't you? I suppose"—hesitating—"Crack?"
Lord Newhaven shook his head.
"I must go back to my boys now," he said, "or they will be getting into mischief."
Doll nodded. He and Lord Newhaven had had a hard fight to get the leaking boat to land with Hugh at the bottom of it. It had filled ominously when Doll ceased baling to help to drag in the heavy, unconscious body.
There had been a moment when, inapprehensive as he was, Doll had remembered, with a qualm, that Lord Newhaven could not swim.
"Every fellow ought to swim," was the moral he drew from the incident and repeated to his wife, who, struck by the soundness of the remark, repeated it to the Gresleys.
Lord Newhaven retraced his steps slowly along the bank in his water-logged boots. He was tired, and he did not hurry, for he could see in the distance two small figures sitting faithfully on a log where he had left them.
"Good little chaps," he said, half aloud.
In spite of himself his thoughts went back to Hugh. His feelings towards him had not changed, but they had been forced during the last half-hour out of their original intrenchments into the open, and were liable to attack from new directions.
It was not that he had virtually saved Hugh's life, for Doll would never have got him into the leaking boat and kept it afloat single-handed. That first moment of enthusiasm, when he had rubbed the senseless limbs and breathed into the cold lips, and had felt his heart leap when life came halting back into them, that moment had passed and left him cold.
But Hugh's melancholy eyes, as they opened once more on this world and met his unflinchingly, haunted him, and the sudden anger at his interference. It was the intrenchment of his contempt that Lord Newhaven missed.
A meaner nature would not have let him off so easily as Hugh had done.
"It was an accident," he said to himself, unwillingly. "He need not have admitted that, but I should have been on a gridiron if he had not. In different circumstances that man and I might have been friends. And if he had got into a scrape of this kind a little further afield I might have helped to get him out of it. He feels it. He has aged during the last two months. But as it is—Upon my word, if he were a boy I should have had to let him off. It would have been too bloodthirsty. But he is seven-and-twenty. He is old enough to know better. She made a fool of him, of course. She made a greater one of me once, for I—married her."
Lord Newhaven reviewed with a dispassionate eye his courtship and marriage.
"A wood anemone," he said to himself; "I likened her to a wood anemone. Good Lord! And I was thirty years of age, while this poor devil is twenty-seven."
Lord Newhaven stopped short with fixed eyes.
"I believe I should have to let him off," he said, half-aloud. "I believe I would let him off if I was not as certain as I stand here that he will never do it."
CHAPTER XXVIII
"The less wit a man has, the less he knows that he wants it."
Hester always took charge of the three elder children and Fräulein of the baby during the six-o'clock service, so that the nurse might go to church. On this particular Sunday afternoon Hester and the children were waiting in the little hall till the bell stopped, before which moment they were forbidden to leave the house. Mr. and Mrs. Gresley had just started for the church, Mr. Gresley looking worn and harassed, for since luncheon he had received what he called "a perfectly unaccountable letter" from one of his principal parishioners, a Dissenter, who had been present at the morning service, and who Mr. Gresley had confidently hoped might have been struck by the sermon. This hope had been justified, but not in the manner Mr. Gresley had expected. Mr. Walsh opined, in a large round hand, that as worms (twice under-dashed) did not usually pay voluntary church and school rates he no longer felt himself under an obligation to do so, etc. The letter was a great, an unexpected blow. Who could have foreseen such a result of the morning's eloquence.
"The truth is," said Mr. Gresley, tremulously, "that they can't and won't hear reason. They can't controvert what I say, so they take refuge in petty spite like this. I must own I am disappointed in Walsh. He is a man of some education, and liberal as regards money. I had thought he was better than most of them, and now he turns on me like this."
"It's a way worms have," said Hester.
"Oh, don't run a simile to death, Hester," said Mr. Gresley, impatiently. "If you had listened to what I tried to say this morning you would have seen I only used the word worm figuratively. I never meant it literally, as any one could see who was not determined to misunderstand me. Worms pay school-rates! Such folly is positively sickening, if it were not malicious."
Hester had remained silent. She had been deeply vexed for her brother at the incident.
As the church-bell stopped the swing-door opened, and Boulou hurried in, like a great personage, conscious that others have waited, and bearing with him an aroma of Irish stew and onions, which showed that he had been exchanging affabilities with the cook. For the truth must be owned. No spinster over forty could look unmoved on Boulou. Alas! for the Vicarage cook, who "had kept herself to herself" for nearly fifty years, only to fall the victim of a "grande passion" for Boulou.
The little Lovelace bounded in, and the expedition started. It was Regie's turn to choose where they should go, and he decided on the "shrubbery," a little wood through which ran the private path to Wilderleigh. Doll Loftus had given the Gresleys leave to take the children there.
"Oh, Regie, we always go there," said Mary, plaintively, who invariably chose the Pratts' park, with its rustic bridges and châlets, which Mr. Pratt, in a gracious moment, had "thrown open" to the Gresleys on Sundays, because, as he expressed it, "they must feel so cramped in their little garden."
But Regie adhered to his determination, and to the "shrubberies" they went. Hester was too tired to play with them, too tired even to tell them a story; so she sat under a tree while they circled in the coppice near at hand.
As we grow older we realize that in the new gardens where life leads us we never learn the shrubs and trees by heart as we did as children in our old Garden of Eden, round the little gabled house where we were born. We were so thorough as children. We knew the underneath of every laurel-bush, the shape of its bunches of darkling branches, the green dust that our small restless bodies rubbed off from its under twigs. We see now as strangers those little hanging horse-tails of pink, which sad-faced elders call ribes; but once long ago, when the world was young, we knew them eye to eye, and the compact little black insects on them, and the quaint taste of them, and the clean, clean smell of them. Everything had a taste in those days, and was submitted to that test, just as until it had been licked the real color of any object of interest was not ascertained. There was a certain scarlet berry, very red without and very white within, which we were warned was deadly poison. How well, after a quarter of a century, we remember the bitter taste of it; how much better than many other forbidden fruits duly essayed in later years. We ate those scarlet berries and lived, though warned to the contrary.
Presently Boulou, who could do nothing simply, found a dead mouse, where any one else could have found it, in the middle of the path, and made it an occasion for a theatrical display of growlings and shakings. The children decided to bury it, and after a becoming silence their voices could be heard singing "Home, Sweet Home," as the body was being lowered into the grave previously dug by Boulou, who had to be forcibly restrained from going on digging it after the obsequies were over.
"He never knows when to stop," said Regie, wearily, as Boulou, with a little plaster of earth on his nose, was carried coughing back to Hester.
As she took him Rachel and Sybell came slowly down the path towards them, and the latter greeted Hester with an effusion which suggested that when two is not company three may be.
"A most vexing thing has happened," said Sybell, in a gratified tone, sitting down under Hester's tree. "I really don't think I am to blame. You know Mr. Tristram, the charming artist who has been staying with us?"
"I know him," said Hester.
"Well, he was set on making a sketch of me for one of his large pictures, and it was to have been finished to-day. I don't see any harm myself in drawing on Sunday. I know the Gresleys do, and I love the Gresleys, he has such a powerful mind; but one must think for one's self, and it was only the upper lip, so I consented to sit for him at four o'clock. I noticed he seemed a little—well rather—"
"Just so," said Hester.
"The last few days. But, of course, I took no notice of it. A married woman often has to deal with such things without making a fuss about them. Well, I overslept myself, and it was nearly half-past four before I awoke. And when I went into my sitting-room a servant brought me a note. It was from him, saying he had been obliged to leave Wilderleigh suddenly on urgent business, and asking that his baggage might be sent after him."
Hester raised her eyes slightly, as if words failed her. Sybell's conversation always interested her.
"Perhaps the reason she is never told anything," she said to herself, "is because the ground the confidence would cover is invariably built over already by a fiction of her own which it would not please her to see destroyed."
"Who would have thought," continued Sybell, "that he would have behaved in that way because I was one little half-hour late. And of course the pretext of urgent business is too transparent, because there is no Sunday post, and the telegraph-boy had not been up. I asked that. And he was so anxious to finish the sketch. He almost asked to stay over Sunday on purpose."
Rachel and Hester looked on the ground.
"Rachel said he was all right in the garden just before, didn't you, Rachel?"
"I said I thought he was a little nervous."
And what did he talk to you about?"
"He spoke about the low tone of the morals of the day, and about marriage."
"Ah! I don't wonder he talked to you, Rachel, you are so sympathetic. I expect lots of people confide in you about their troubles and love affairs. Morals of the day! Marriage! Poor, poor Mr. Tristram! I shall tell Doll quietly this evening. On the whole, it is just as well he is gone."
"Just as well," said Rachel and Hester, with surprising unanimity.