LOVE LANE FROM KENSINGTON TO FULHAM.
Where are the great, whom thou wouldst wish to praise thee?
Where are the pure, whom thou wouldst choose to love thee?
Where are the brave, to stand supreme above thee,
Whose high commands would cheer, whose chiding raise thee?
Seek, seeker, in thyself, submit to find
In the stones bread, and life in the blank mind.
—A. T. Clough.
Robert came up to town on the Tuesday, as he had promised Dolly. As he came along, he told himself that he had deserved some reward for his patience in waiting. He had resisted many a sentimental impulse, not wishing to distract his mind until the summer term was over. He might almost have trusted himself to propose at Easter, and to go on calmly with his papers, for he was not like George, whose wandering attention seemed distracted by every passing emotion. Robert's stiff black face melted a little as he indulged in a lover-like dream. He saw Dolly as she would be one day, ruling his household, welcoming his guests, admired by them all. Henley had too good taste to like a stupid woman. Nothing would ever have induced him to think of a plain one. He wished for a certain amount of good-breeding and habit of the world.... All these qualifications he had discovered in his cousin, not to speak of other prospects depending on her aunt's good pleasure.
Old Sam opened the door, grinning his congratulations. Robert found Dolly sitting with her mother on the terrace. Philippa jumped up to meet him, and embraced him too with effusion.
'We were expecting you,' she said. 'I have much to say to you; come with me.' And clasping her hands upon his arm, she would have immediately drawn him away into the house, if Robert had not said with some slight embarrassment, 'Presently, my dear aunt, I shall be quite at your service; but I have not yet spoken to Dolly.' Dolly did not move, but waited for Robert to come to her—then she looked up suddenly.
Dolly's manner was charming in those days—a little reserved, but confident and sympathetic, a little abrupt at times, but bright and melancholy at once. Later in life some of its shadows seemed to drown the light in her honest face; her mistakes made her more shy, and more reserved; she caught something of Henley's coldness of manner, and was altered, so her friends thought.
I don't, for my own part, believe that people change. But it is not the less true that they have many things in them, many emotions and passing moods, and as days and feelings follow, each soul's experience is written down here and there, and in other souls, and by signs, and by work done, and by work undone, and by what is forgotten, as well as that which is remembered, by the influence of to-day, and of the past that is not over. Perhaps, one day, we may know ourselves at last, and read our story plainly written in our own and other people's lives.
Dolly, in those days, was young and confident and undismayed. It seems strange to make a merit as we do of youth, of inexperience, of hardness of heart. Her untroubled young spirit had little sympathy for others more weary and wayworn. She loved, but without sympathy; but all the same, the brightness of her youth and its unconscious sweetness spread and warmed, and comforted those upon whom its influence fell.
Dorothea Vanborough was a woman of many-changing emotions and sentiments; frank to herself, doubting herself all the while; diffident where she should have been bold, loving the right above all things, and from very excess of scruples, troubled at times, and hard to others. Then came regret and self-abasement and reproach, how bitter none can tell but those who, like her, have suffered from many and complicated emotions—trusting, mistrusting, longing for truth, and, from this very longing, failing often. She loved because she was young and her heart was tender and humble. She doubted because she was young and because the truth was in her, urging her to do that which she would not have done, and to feel the things that she would not have felt. But all this was only revealed to her later, only it was there from the beginning. Dolly was very shy and very happy all these early days.
Frank Raban thought Dolly careless, hard in her judgments, spoiled by the love that was showered upon her; he thought she was not kind to Rhoda. All this he dwelt upon, nor could he forget her judgment upon himself. Poor Raban acknowledged that for him no judgment could be too severe, and yet he would have loved Dolly to be pitiful; although she could now never be anything to him—never, so long as they both lived. When the news came of her engagement, it was a pain to him that he had long expected, and that he accepted. One failure in life was enough. He made no advance; he watched her; he let her go, foolish man! without a word. Sometimes Rhoda would talk to him about Dolly. Frank always listened.
'She does not mean to be cold. Indeed, I don't think so—I am so used to her manner that I do not think of it,' Rhoda would say. 'Dear Dolly is full of good and generous impulses. She will make Robert Henley a noble wife if he only gives in to her in everything. I would I were half as good as she is; but she is a little hasty at times, and wants every one to do as she tells them.'
'And you do as everybody tells you,' said Raban.
And to do Rhoda justice, she worked her fingers to the bone, she walked to poor people's houses through the rain and mud; she was always good-tempered, she was a valuable inmate in the household. Zoe said she couldn't think how Rhoda got through half what she did. 'Here, there, and everywhere,' says Zoe, in an aggrieved voice, 'before I have time to turn.'
Notwithstanding the engagement, the little household at Church House went its usual course. Lady Sarah had followed her own beaten ways so long, that she seemed, from habit, to travel on whether or not her interest went with her. Those old days are almost forgotten now, even by the people who lived in them. With a strange, present thrill Dolly remembers sometimes, as she passes through the old haunts of her early youth, a past instant of time, a past state of sentiment, as bygone as the hour to which it belonged. Passing by the old busy corner of the church not long ago, Dolly remembered how she and Robert had met Raban there one day, just after their news had been made public. He tried to avoid them, then changed his mind and came straight up and shook hands, uttering his good wishes in a cold, odd manner, that Dolly thought almost unkind.
'I am afraid my good wishes can add little to your happiness, but I congratulate you,' he said to Robert; 'and I wish you all happiness,' he said to Dolly; and then they were all silent for a minute.
'You will come soon, won't you?' said Dolly, shyly.
'Good-by,' said Frank Raban, walking away very quickly.
He had meant to keep away, but he came just as usual to Church House, and was there even more constantly. Lady Sarah was glad of his companionship for George, who seemed in a very strange and excited state of mind.
The summer of '54 was an eventful summer; and while Dolly was living in her own youthful world, concentrated in the overwhelming interests that had come of late, in old and the new ties, so hard to grasp, so hard to loose, armies were marching, fleets were sailing, politicians and emperors were pondering upon the great catastrophe that seemed imminent. War had been declared; with it the great fleets had come speeding across the sea from one horizon to another. The events of the day only reached Dolly in echoes from a long way off, brought by Robert and by George, printed in the paper. Robert was no keen politician. He was too full of his own new plans and new career. George was far more excited, and of a more fiery temper. Frank Raban and George and he used to have long and angry arguments Raban maintained that the whole thing was a mistake, a surrender to popular outcry. George and Robert were for fighting at any price: for once they agreed.
'I don't see,' said George, 'what there is in life to make it so preferable to anything else, to every sense of honour and of consideration, of liberty of action. Life, to be worth anything, is only a combination of all these things; and for one or any of them I think a man should be willing to play his stake.'
'Of course, of course, if it were necessary,' said Henley, 'one would do what was expected of one. There is my cousin, Jonah Henley, joining his regiment next week. I confess it is on different grounds from you that I approve of this war. I do not like to see England falling in the—a—estimation of Europe: we can afford to go to war. Russia's pretensions are intolerable; and, with France to assist us, I believe the Government is thoroughly justified in the course it is pursuing.'
'I don't think we are ready,' said Raban, in his odd, constrained voice. 'I don't think we are justified. We sit at home and write heroic newspaper articles, and we send out poor fellows by rank and by file to be pounded at and cut to mincemeat, for what? Suppose we put things back a hundred years, what good shall we have done?'
'But think of our Overland Route,' said Henley; 'suppose the future should interfere with the P. and O.'
There were green lanes in those days leading from the far end of that lane in which Church House was built to others that crossed a wide and spreading country: it is not even yet quite overflooded by the waves of brick—that tide that flows out in long, strange furrows, and never ebbs away. Dolly and Henley went wandering along these lanes one fine afternoon; they were going they knew not where; into a land of Canaan, so Dolly thought it: green cabbages, a long, gleaming canal, hawthorn hedges, and a great overarched sky that began to turn red when the sun set. Now and then they came to some old house that had outstood storms and years, fluttering signals of distress in the shape of old shirts and clothes hung out to dry; in the distance rose Kensington spires and steeples; now and then a workman trudged by on his way home; distant bells rang in this wide, desolate country. Women come tramping home from their long day's work in the fields, and look hard at the handsome young couple, Dolly with cast-down eyes, Robert with his nose up in the air. The women trudge wearily home; the young folks walk step by step into life. The birds cross the sky in a sudden flight; the cabbages grow where they are planted.
They missed the Chelsea Lane. Dolly should have known the way, but she was absorbed and unobservant, and those cross-ways were a labyrinth except for those who were well used to them. They found themselves presently in the Old Brompton Road, with its elm-trees and old gable roofs darkening against the sunset. How sweet it was, with red lights burning, people slowly straggling like themselves, and enjoying the gentle ease of the twilight and of the soft west wind. Dolly led Henley back by the old winding road, with its bends and fancies; its cottages, within close-built walls; and stately old houses, with iron scroll-work on their garden gates, and gardens not yet destroyed. Then they came to a rueful row of bricks and staring windows. A young couple stood side by side against the low rail in front of their home. Dolly remembered this afterwards; for the sky was very splendid just then, and the young woman's violet dress seemed to blaze with the beautiful light, as she stood in her quaint little garden, looking out across the road to the well-remembered pond and some fields beyond. Along the distant line of the plains great soft ships of vapour were floating; the windows of the distant houses flashed; the pond looked all splendid and sombre in its shady corner. The evening seemed vast and sweet, and Dolly's heart was full.
'Are you tired?' said Robert, seeing that she lingered.
'Tired? no,' said Dorothea. 'I was looking at the sky, and wondering how it would have been if you had gone away and never——?' She stopped.
'Why think about it?' said Robert. 'You would have married somebody else, I suppose.'
He said it in a matter-of-fact sort of way, and for a moment Dolly's eyebrows seemed to darken over her eyes. It was a mere nothing, the passing shadow of a thought.
'You are right,' said Dolly, wistfully. 'It is no use thinking how unhappy one might have been. Have you ever been very unhappy, Robert?' Now that she was so happy, Dolly seemed, for the first time, to realise what sorrow might be.
'A certain young lady made me very unhappy one day not long ago,' said Robert, 'when she tried to freeze me up with a snowball.'
This was not what Dolly meant: she was in earnest, and he answered her with a joke; she wanted a sign, and no sign was given to her.
They had just reached home, when Robert said, with his hand on the bell: 'This has not been unhappy, has it, Dolly? We shall have a great many more walks together when I can spare the time. But you must talk to me more, and not be so shy, dearest.'
Something flew by as he spoke, and went fluttering into the ivy.
'That was a bat,' said Dolly, shrinking, while Robert stood shaking his umbrella-stick among the ivy leaves; but it was too dark to see anything distinctly.
'I hope,' said Robert, sentimentally, 'to come and see you constantly when this term is over. Then we shall know more of each other, Dora.'
'Don't we know each other?' asked Dolly, with one of her quick glances; 'I think I know you quite well, Robert—better than I know myself almost,' she added, with a sigh.
When they came into the drawing-room the lamp was alight, and George and Rhoda were there with Lady Sarah. George was talking at the very pitch of his melancholy voice, Lady Sarah was listening with a pale, fixed face, like a person who has made up her mind.
Rhoda was twirling her work round and round her fingers. She had broken the wool, and dropped the stitches. It was by a strong effort that she sat so still.
'Here is George announcing his intentions,' said Lady Sarah, as they came in. 'Perhaps you, Robert, will be able to preach good sense to him.'
'Oh, Aunt Sarah!' Dolly cried, springing forward, 'at last he has told you.... Has Rhoda?' Dolly's two hands were clasped in excitement. Lady Sarah looked at her in some surprise.
There was a crash, a scream from Rhoda. The flower-glass had gone over on the table beside her, and all the water was running about over the carpet.
'My dress—my Sunday best!' cried Rhoda. 'Lady Sarah, I am so sorry.'
Dolly bent over to pick up the table, and, as she did so, Rhoda whispered, 'Be silent, or you will ruin George.'
'Ruined?' said Robert. 'Your dress is not ruined, Rhoda. I speak from experience, for I wear a silk gown myself.'
'George says he will not take my living,' said Lady Sarah. 'He wishes to be——What do you wish to be, George?'
George, somewhat confused, said he wished to be a soldier—anything but a clergyman.
'You don't mean to say you are going to be such a—that you refuse seven hundred a year?' said Henley, stopping short.
'Confound it!' cried George, 'can't you all leave a poor fellow in peace?' And he burst out of the room.
'Come here, Dolly,' said Mrs. Palmer, from a distant corner of the room; 'make this foolish darling do as his aunt wishes. I am sure the Admiral would quite feel as I do.'
'Seven hundred a year,' said Lady Sarah. 'Wretched boy! I shall sell the presentation.'
'Oh, Robert!' said Dolly, 'he is right if he can't make up his mind. I know Aunt Sarah thinks so.'
Dolly could not help being vexed with Robert. He shrugged his shoulders, said that George would regret his decision, and went on to talk of various plans that he himself had at heart, just as if George had never existed.
'I want you to trust Dolly to me for a few days,' said he. 'I want to take her down to Smokethwaite with my aunt. She must see Jonah before he leaves. They all write, and urge her coming.'
Lady Sarah agreed, with a sigh, and her eyes filled with tears. She turned away abruptly to hide them.
Many and many were the tears she wiped away, for fear Dolly should see them. George's whole body was not so dear to her as Dolly's little finger. She blamed herself in vain afterwards, when it was too late. Sometimes she could hardly bear to see her niece come into the room with her smiling face, and she scarcely answered when the sweet girl's voice came echoing and calling about the house. Could it be true that it was going, that sweet voice? Laughing, scolding, chattering, hour by hour—were the many footsteps going, too, and the rustle of her dress, and the look of her happy eyes? was the time already come for Dolly to fly away from the old nest that had sheltered her for so short a time? She seemed scarcely to have come—scarcely to have begun her sweet home song—and already she was eager to go!
But Rhoda had come up, looking very pale, to say good-night. As she said good-by, Dolly followed her out, and tried to put in some little word for George. 'Rhoda, he has been true to himself,' she whispered; 'that is best of all—is not it?'
'Let him be true to himself, by all means,' said Rhoda.
She was thoroughly out of temper. Dolly had not improved matters by talking about them. George came out of the oak room prepared to walk back with her. 'No, thank you,' said Rhoda, trembling very much. 'I won't trouble you to come home with me.'
She was tying her bonnet and pinning on her shawl in an agitated way. George watched her in silence. When she was ready to go, he held out his hand. 'Good-night,' he said.
'Good-night,' said Rhoda, hurrying off without looking up, and passing out into the street.
It was unbearable. If George loved her he might do as she wished. But he would sacrifice nothing—not one fancy. Her Uncle John was a clergyman. It was a very high calling. Rhoda thought of the pretty little parsonage-house, and the church, and the cottages all round about, only waiting to be done good to, while the apples were baking on the trees and cakes in the oven, all of which good things George had refused—George, who did not know one bit what he was doing, nor what it was to scrape, and starve, and live with dull, stinted, scraping people. She was quite tired of it all. It was not a real life that she led; it was a housekeeper's situation, just like Aunt Morgan. She had done her best, and she had earned a rest, and she would not begin all over again. George might be as true as he liked. Rhoda ran up the steps of the old brown house in a silent passion, and gave a sharp pull at the bell. Yes, she hated it all. She was utterly tired of it all—of the noisy home, of Aunt Morgan's precepts and flannels. She could hear the clink of plates in the dining-room, where the inevitable anters of cheese and cold meat were set out on the shabby table-cloth, where her Aunt Morgan stood in her black cap and stiff brown curls, carving slice after slice for the hungry curate. 'You are late, Rhoda,' said her aunt. 'I suppose you stayed to late dinner with your friends?'
'No; but I am not hungry,' said Rhoda, shrinking away.
'Why, Rhoda, what is the matter?' said John, kindly, and he held out his big hand to her.