Chapter Twenty Three.
A Walk.
The next day Wareham spent his afternoon by walking into the small country town where was the nearest railway station. Something which Sir Michael wanted gave him the excuse without which a solitary walk becomes a burden in spite of conscientious evokings of the joys of solitude. And he undertook the further office of calling at post-office and station for letters and newspapers, to the disgust of the groom, who had his own Saturday afternoon diversions in view, and felt himself defrauded. In happy ignorance of his displeasure, Wareham whistled to Venom, Hugh’s fox-terrier, and started.
The day was dark and still, life dragging heavily, as it does in September days, yet not without a sombre beauty. Masses of firs here and there relieved the monotony of foliage, and the gorse spread a burnish of gold on broken ground. In the road it was duller. Mud prevailed, and withering grasses coarsely fringed the mud, while autumn had not yet flaunted its yellows and reds to hide decay. Wareham, generally quick to notice nature, walked on unheeding.
Reaching the town at last, it struck him as usual, as an ugly expression of man, varying between squalor and dull respectability, bare brick and slate in rows. The station was uglier, but more attractive in spite of blackness, something of magic still lingering about the sharp bright lines, the rushing monsters that whizz along them, the flaming eyes that glow in the night. Wareham turned towards it.
He was too early. The London express was not due for ten minutes, and he went off to execute Sir Michael’s errand, promising to return later. It had been market morning, and farmers and farmers’ wives yet lingered in the streets, enjoying weekly greetings. One or two carriages drove about, and Wareham noticed the Ormsleigh brougham at the door of a shop. He went to the post-office, and stayed to send off a couple of telegrams in answer to the letters he found there. Then he walked round by the church, for the pleasure of looking at the noble lines of its tower, and, having by this time completely exhausted Venom’s patience, betook himself again to the station.
Newspaper in pocket, he started for home. As dusk approached, the day cleared, and, facing the west as he walked, he noticed signs of preparation in the heavens, as if a pageant might presently disclose itself. The road was inextricably connected with thoughts of Hugh: as boys they had often ridden home under the oaks, and the absence of change in immaterial things is no less oppressive than its presence in material. Hugh’s vitality was so amazing that it was next to impossible to think of his life having gone out from among them.
He was still a little distance from Firleigh when, with a curve of road beyond him, sounds reached his ears, remote, yet carrying something in them which hurried him forward. Venom in front was plainly puzzled; he had halted, and was considering matters with cocked ears and head on one side. A few moments brought Wareham within sight and quickened his steps to a run, for evidently there had been an accident.
The brougham, which he had recognised as belonging to Lord Ormsleigh, was reclining angularly against the hedge, the horses were disengaged and held by a hatless groom, while a couple of other men, one of them the coachman, had apparently just succeeded in extricating two figures from imprisonment in the overturned carriage. It caused Wareham not the smallest astonishment to recognise in one of them Anne Dalrymple. He was by her side the next moment.
“Tell me that you are not hurt!”
Anne, who was very pale, showed more amazement.
“Mr Wareham! Have you sprung out of the earth?”
“Good fortune brought me here. My question first, please.”
“I haven’t a finger-ache, but I am frightened to death, and poor Watkins is worse. Watkins, open your eyes, the danger is over, and the coachman is dying to get to the horses.”
But Watkins insisted upon uttering short cries of terror, and requiring man’s support. Meanwhile Wareham questioned the coachman.
“A broken pole? How’s that?”
“I don’t know, sir. I could have sworn it was sound, but the off-horse gave a bit of a shy, and it snapped like a twig. Never saw such a thing.”
Further explanation put the credit of seizing the horses’ heads upon a young farmer who was passing, and showed all the necessary presence of mind. Anne’s exhortations at last induced Watkins to struggle to the bank, where she shut her eyes tightly to avoid seeing the horses.
“Now, what’s to be done?” said Anne. “We were on our way to Oakwood.”
“And you are two miles from the house.”
“No more? We will walk.”
“Would it not be better to send on the groom with the horses, and let a carriage come back for you?”
“Thank you. No more carriages to-day. I had a momentary expectation of being kicked into splinters with the brougham. Come, Watkins, you are not really hurt, and I am sure you would rather walk. Think of the tea that waits for you.”
But Watkins’ protestations became piteous. She described herself as all of a tremble, and as unable to stir. Anne tried arguments to no purpose until her patience failed.
“If you like it best then,” she said, “you must stay here until we can send for you, for I am going to walk, and the coachman thinks they can get the carriage home by leading the horses.”
“What, stay here by myself, ma’am, in this dismal road!” cried Watkins, roused to protest.
“If you can’t walk. Unless you prefer to get into the brougham.”
This she declared to be out of the question, and was melting into tears, when the young farmer, moved to compassion, stepped forward with a suggestion. A little way from the road, it appeared, there was a house. If the young lady felt herself able to walk so far, he would be happy to show her the way, and she could stop there until they sent a trap from Oakwood. Watkins, taking a good look at him, and recognising a preserver in a very personable young man, closed her eyes again, sighed, and consented.
“The young lady being provided for, now for the young woman,” said Anne, turning with a smile to Wareham. “I am not so helpless as Watkins, but to walk in the rear of this melancholy procession is not particularly inviting. Is there no shorter way across the fields?”
He glanced at her from head to foot.
“You don’t look fit for walking,” he said, “except in the park.”
“I don’t dress for the lanes,” she answered coolly.
“And your shoes are absurdly thin.”
“When you have finished your criticisms, perhaps you will answer my question. One no more expects criticism from a novel-writer than pepper from an oyster.”
“Thank you. I accept the simile.”
“One good turn deserves another, so will you tell me whether you are going to show me a pleasanter way than the road in company with a broken-down brougham? Or shall I ask the coachman?”
“Certainly not,” said Wareham hastily. Anne’s question was by no means such a simple matter as she imagined. The shortest way to Oakwood took them, beyond a doubt, exactly in front of the house at Firleigh; it would, indeed, be necessary to pass directly before the window. And he dared not cause Sir Michael such a shock. Firleigh lay in the region where little events are chronicled. The appearance of Mr Wareham and a strange young lady, beautiful and beautifully dressed, would reach Sir Michael with the rapidity of an electric shock, and, require explanations. This, at any rate, must be avoided. He must take her into the grounds, but a circuit through a wood would have to be made. He explained that they need not follow the road for more than a quarter of a mile.
“Come, then,” said Anne, “let us get over the quarter of a mile.”
She was in high spirits, disposed to laughter as he had never before seen her, rippling with fun over Watkins, her preliminary look at the young farmer, and evident appreciation of his civility.
“I shall hear so much about him to-night that I hope he may drive all that she felt and did in the carriage out of her head.”
“You were not frightened yourself?”
“Oh yes, as much as I had time to be. But as to nerves, Watkins usurped the display. The bump against the bank reassured me at once.”
“I bless the farmer.”
“Yes. Without him,”—Anne turned paler, she was perhaps more shaken than she knew.
“I suppose that you?”
“I,” said Wareham, deliberately uttering the last thing that he desired to say, “I was, as usual—too late.”
She looked at him inquiringly; their eyes met, naturally she expected more. His mouth grew rigid, under a sudden impression of his own weakness, when he had thought himself absolutely safe, and he added hurriedly—
“Do you see that gate? There we turn off.” Anne’s voice was a little colder than it had been.
“I have not apologised. I may be taking you out of your way. Are you staying in the neighbourhood?”
“At Firleigh.”
There was a momentary pause before she asked—
“And are we near Firleigh?”
“We are going to cut across part of it now.” He opened the gate as he spoke, and she walked by his side for some minutes in silence. Then she said—
“It is curious that we should have met. Of course, I knew that Oakwood and Firleigh were near each other, but—it seemed unlikely that you should be here. Poor Hugh!”
“He would like to know he was remembered.”
“He asked me to think of him sometimes. If that were all—it would be easier to satisfy the dead than the living, for who can help remembering?”
“Not I,” said Wareham, with a sigh.
“His grave?”
“You must see it.”
“And his father—?”
“Sir Michael is too ill to receive visitors.” Wareham spoke hastily.
“Ah, poor old man! But I must drive over and see his sister.” A touch of hesitation reaching her, she said sharply, “No?”
“Remember that they were irritated, rather, I should say, Sir Michael was irritated, by your dismissal of Hugh. Something of displeasure you must expect.”
They faced the west and a fir wood as they walked. Grey clouds covered and contracted the sky, but at the horizon lifted sufficiently to show a fiercely burning line of red, cut by the stems of the fir-trees. Anne stared before her, with her head thrown back. Wareham let his fancy skip to possible futures when they two should walk together, side by side, with no shadows between them. But he would keep faith with Hugh, control voice and look.
“They are unjust,” slowly said Anne, at last, and he started, brought back from rapturous dreams.
“He is an old man, very feeble, and had but one son,” he pleaded. “Ella, I am sure, judges more fairly.”
“Unlike a woman, then. If that is their feeling, I wish I had not come here. I assure you, though you may not believe it, that there was some—sentiment in my visit. I believed I should be welcomed. I should be, if they understood. That was the one time in my life in which I acted unselfishly. And if I had been left alone—if you, for instance, had not taken upon yourself to set poor Hugh upon my track—it would all have died gently away. Friends meddling. When has it not brought mischief!” Anger suited her, and the darkening of her eyes. Wareham felt no uneasiness from her wrath, so lost was he in admiration. “And for a man to meddle! As if his fingers were delicate enough for the task of dealing with our vanity!” She laughed shortly, disdainfully. Suddenly she flashed out—“What did he tell you?”
“He?”
“He. Hugh.” As he hesitated, she added impatiently—“He must have spoken of me?”
“He told me”—Wareham spoke measuredly—“that he believed he should have won you.”
Her face softened, she turned dewy eyes towards him.
“I am glad, I am glad. He deserved to be happy. It is so dreadful to die, and, poor fellow, I have thought since that I might have given him more comfort. Dear Hugh!”
“You loved him!” Wareham exclaimed involuntarily.
Anne flung him another glance.
“Almost,” she said.
“If he could only hear you!”
“Ah,” she said, with a movement of her head, “almost would not have satisfied him or—” She paused.
“Or?”
“Or me.”
There was another silence, silence more significant than speech. When Wareham spoke, his voice was hoarse.
“You have given up, then, that fiction that you are heartless?”
“I do not know,” said Anne quietly. “Was it not you that tried to argue me out of it?”
“You must learn it by something different from argument,” he replied slowly.
She made no answer. In one hand he carried a newspaper, unconscious that he held it in a grasp like that of a vice. They reached the wood at this moment, and stepped under the firs. Anne asked whether they could see the house.
“By coming a little to the right. It lies in a hollow.”
She stood still and looked.
“And I am not permitted to go there?”
“Illness excuses everything. I assure you Sir Michael’s condition is such that we don’t know what a day may bring. That has kept me here.”
“One hears of nothing but death,” said Anne restlessly. “I do not like the house. I cannot fancy Hugh in it. It is gloomy.”
“You see it on a dark day, and saddened. It may be fancy, but I always think that old family places share the feelings of their owners.”
“Then Oakwood should be cheerful?”
“It is.”
“You come there sometimes?” Anne asked. She had turned her back sharply upon Firleigh, and was walking on.
“Sometimes. I shoot with Lord Oakleigh on Monday.”
“That will not be of much use to us women.”
“But I shall venture to call, and inquire for—”
“For Watkins,” Anne broke in with a laugh. “Hers will be the sufferings. We mistresses are made of sterner stuff. Well, we all have what we ask for, and depend upon it, Watkins will get her sympathy.”
He inquired whether her stay would be long. She smiled at the idea.
“You know what these autumn campaigns are like. A flying two or three days, then, bag and baggage, away to the next station. A ‘prest’ day no longer exists. You would discomfit your host and hostess very much by staying.”
“Where has the change come from?”
“From superhuman efforts to exorcise the fiend—dullness. He is the only evil power which the century has not whitewashed, and he takes advantage of his position to keep us all in thraldom. The very flutter of his shadow is enough.”
She lapsed into silence. The wood by this time lay behind them, and before, a rich country of broad outlines. The sky had lost its fire, heavy clouds menaced, once or twice Wareham thought he felt a drop of rain. Saying this to Anne, she turned her face upward. “Have we much further to go?”
“A quarter of a mile to the lodge, half to the house. You can just see the red chimneys.”
“By walking fast, I dare say we shall escape it.” She did not, however, increase her pace. Her next remark was to suggest that he should turn back. “Aren’t you afraid that Sir Michael may hear that you have been walking with me? And through part of his own land!”
“It is very probable that he will hear of it,” said Wareham quietly.
“And you will be in disgrace!” She aimed at light ridicule, but there was a touch of sharpness in her tone, which told him that the old man’s ill opinion had stung her. The next moment she owned it. “If only I could see him! He must have got a distorted notion into his mind. Perhaps you share it still?” Gladly would he have accepted these invitations to the personal. All he dared say was that it was not unnatural that Hugh’s father should have brooded over his son’s disappointment.
“And his death has fixed it indelibly in his mind.”
Anne moved a little faster.
“Perhaps he lays that also to my charge?”
“He could not be so unjust.”
Suddenly she stood still and faced him, soft entreaty in her eyes.
“Mr Wareham, are you my friend?”
Was it the pallor of the gathering clouds which whitened his face? He stammered—
“That—” “And more,” was on his lips, when he succeeded in turning it into, “That I think you know.”
“The only one, then, that I have here. Try to make them feel more forgivingly. Once, I know, you felt as they do; now, if my heart is to be trusted, you are kinder. After—what has past, it hurts to be so harshly judged. Please be on my side.”
Pride, worldliness had all vanished. She spoke like a child, and looked at him beseechingly—so beseechingly that his heart rose in a wild clamour of desire to take her into his arms. The force with which he had to hold back this desire left him staring stupidly, only able to stammer out—
“You need not ask me!”
Perhaps Anne read the turmoil in his face, for her eyes smiled at him, but the next moment she turned away, and walked on silently. When she spoke it was to say—
“Here is the lodge, and your labour ended.”
“I can’t leave you till we reach the house.”
“Oh, very well.” Her tone was indifferent, but presently she put an unexpected question—“You remember Lord Milborough?”
“Certainly,” said Wareham, wondering what he was to hear.
“He hopes you will come to Thorpe next month, when he has some big shoots.”
“Big shoots are not at all in my way.”
“So I supposed. Still, as Lady Dalrymple and I and many other delightful people will be there, your highness may perhaps condescend to find attraction, if not in pheasants?”
Her tone was bantering, but did he dream when he read in it a touch of pressure? Prudence shook a warning finger, Love laughed.
“It is very good of you to suggest it,” said Wareham, “but I really think you must be mistaken, for Lord Milborough and I only exchanged a few words, and—”
“He is even less in your way than big shoots, you would like to say,” broke in Anne, with a laugh. “Well, I own one may have too much of his society.”
“Then why go there?” asked Wareham bluntly.
“Can one choose just what one likes? When I can, I do.” She quickened her pace. “Here is the rain at last.”
“And in three minutes the house.”
The door was open, lights streamed out; evidently another arrival had just taken place, and there was some amazement on the face of the servants at seeing Miss Dalrymple appear in the dusk, escorted by Mr Wareham.
“You will come in?” she said.
“Thank you, no. Sir Michael will be expecting me. I hope you won’t be the worse for your misadventure.”
From the hall she waved her hand without answering. Wareham turned away.
His walk back was mechanical, and he was scarcely conscious of the rain. It was as if Hugh was by his side, asking if his promise had been kept, demanding an inquiry into words and looks. If thoughts had been in the compact, miserable failure would have been the verdict; as it was, Wareham did not believe that he had betrayed himself. But was ever man so hampered! From first to last since he had known Anne, Love and Honour had struggled; there never had been a moment in which he felt himself free to say, “Dear, I love you!” and yet all the bonds were unseen, some might even say, fantastical. And now, at last, when Death had stepped in between the combatants, even Death could not avail. What must Anne think, if Anne thought at all about the matter? He counted the days. A month had passed.
Nearing the house, he resolved that Sir Michael should hear from him who it was to whom the accident had happened, for chance mention of her name, which might very well occur, would give him a distrust of Wareham. But he found that there had been an increase of illness which made all speech impossible, and Ella was so much occupied with her father that he did not see her until late, when she came in to the drawing-room to find him sitting there with Mrs Newbold. The rain had increased to a wild storm, and a log fire was burning. Ella slipped into a three-cornered chair, close by the hearth.
“Better,” she said, in answer to her aunt’s inquiry, “and asking for you.”
Mrs Newbold bustled off. Wareham said something about the storm.
“And you were caught in it?”
“That was no hardship. I simply walked home and changed, and it did not come on till late.”
“But tell me about the accident.”
“Ah, you’ve heard of it?”
“We hear everything,” and she laughed. “If you would like to know how, in this particular case, understand that the stable-boy’s father lives at a house where the lady’s-maid was taken to rest, and she related that her mistress was walking to Oakwood with a gentleman, whose description Jem recognised as yours. He brought home the lady’s name, and my maid conveyed it to me.”
“It is all true,” Wareham said gravely, “and I should have taken Miss Dalrymple by the short cut in front of the house, but that I was afraid of annoying Sir Michael. We went round by the wood instead.”
“And she was not hurt?” asked the girl, spreading out her hands to the blaze. “I should like to see her—to talk to her.”
“That is what she wishes very much. What do you think? Can she come?”
Ella shook her head. It was impossible.
“Perhaps,” she said, “she may be at church to-morrow, and if father is well enough I shall go. Did she speak of—Hugh?”
“And of Hugh’s family. Evidently when she came here she meant to have seen you all. But—as you say—it’s impossible.”
Wareham had also thought about the coming day, its delights and its dangers. Dear delight to look at her, danger lest he should fail in his promise. But here, he told himself, that could not happen; here, where Hugh’s face met him everywhere, here, where Hugh himself lay at rest, neither friend nor love could forget him. When the day arrived it was blustering and wet: Ella and he walked to church under drenched trees, and she wondered whether Miss Dalrymple would be there. Wareham could not doubt it. Nature would draw her to look at a grave. He felt it. He had a curious desire, too, for her to see the lines of old Forbes’ linking past centuries to present, from whom Hugh drew his brave blood. The Oakwood estates doubled, trebled the Firleigh ones, but Oakwood was a mushroom compared to Firleigh, and Lord Oakleigh’s a new title, while the other belonged to the soil.
Anne, however, was not there. He was disappointed, but excuses tripped promptly up. No other ladies came from the house, and to have seen Hugh’s grave in company with her jovial host would have been like sitting with a jester to view a tragedy. He was sure that Anne had done well to avoid it. Could he have taken her there! And a whisper suggested that Anne could generally arrange what she liked. He flung it from him. Here, after all that had passed, she must have walked warily, or have attracted curious eyes. Ella, too, Ella would have been jealous if Hugh had not his due. And the due meant much.
What Ella thought she did not say. The girl had a curiously reserved nature; it seemed so impossible for her to express her feelings, that she was not credited with many. Their walk back was silent; wind-driven rain beat in their faces, and splashed heavily from the trees, sodden flowers lay prostrate in the garden, an old grey dial turned its weatherbeaten face vainly upwards. Wareham tried to shake off the gloom.
“You don’t mind rain, Ella,” he said. “Come for a stretch this afternoon.”
“Perhaps, if father keeps better. But he may want me to sit with him.”
“You don’t get air enough.”
“I find one can live very well without it.”
“Live, but not thrive. We’ll take the dogs, and get to the top of Slopton ridge.” The next moment she stopped, all the colour out of her face.
“Dick—look!” she cried with anguish.
For all the blinds were down, and one more Forbes had joined his forefathers.