Chapter Twenty Four.
“The days have vanished, tone and tint,
And yet perhaps the hoarding sense
Gives out at times (he knows not whence)
A little flash, a mystic hint.”
In Memoriam.
When September came, things had changed but little since the summer, except that talk had drifted into other channels, and there was less curiosity in noticing Anthony Miles’s behaviour. He still kept aloof from his friends, and looked worn and haggard, while the charm which used to take the people by storm was rarely visible. The men, who had never liked him so well as the women, grumbled at his manners, and the women confessed that he had lost his pleasantness. Winifred, who now scarcely saw him, used to wonder how true it was, and what she would have found out if the old intercourse had not ceased. One day, when she and Bessie were in the High Street of Aunecester, they met the Bennetts, and Anthony with them; and as they were coming out of a shop it was impossible to avoid walking with them, though he was so cold and constrained that Winifred longed to escape. It was a keen autumnal day, the old town had put on its gayest, in honour of a visit from some learned Association or other; there were bright flags hung across the narrow street, setting off the picturesque gables and archways, and here and there decking some building black with age.
“Are you going to the concert?” asked Mrs Bennett. “Ada would be sadly disappointed if I did not take her; but, really, I have been sitting in the hall and listening to all those lecturers until I have a headache. I think it would be much nicer if they stopped now and then, and let one think about it, for I became quite confused once or twice when the heat made me doze a little, and I heard their voices going on and on about sandstones, and slate, and things that never seemed to come to an end.”
“I was so glad to get out,” Ada said. “I believe Anthony wanted to stay, but I really could not, it was much too learned for me. I suppose you liked it, Miss Chester?”
It seemed as if she could not resist a little impertinent ring in her voice when she spoke to Winifred, and Bessie was going to rush in with a headlong attack, when Mrs Bennett made one of her useful unconscious diversions.
“There are the Needhams,” she said.
“They are going to the concert, I dare say,” said Ada. “Anthony, I hope you took good seats for us?”
“I took what I was given,” he said, a little shortly, and at that moment Ada spied Mr Warren, and invited him graciously to accompany them. It turned out that he had no ticket, and Anthony immediately offered his own.
“Then I shall go back to the hall,” he said, “for Pelham is going to speak, and one does not often get such an opportunity.”
“That will be a capital plan,” said Ada. Winifred could not tell whether she were vexed or not. To her own relief they had reached the end of the street, and there was a little separation; the concert people went one way, the Chesters another, Anthony went back to his lecturing. Just as they parted Winifred asked for Marion.
“She is better, thank you,” he said gravely. “She has been very ill, but we hope it will all go well now.”
“I did not know she had been ill,” said Winifred. She could not avoid a reproachful jar in her voice, and the feeling that her lot was harder than Anthony’s, since she met distrust from him, and he only from an indifferent world. “Does he think we are made of stone?” she said, walking away with a sad heart. Perhaps she was not far wrong. For Anthony’s was a nature which such a blow as he had received, anything indeed which shook his faith in himself or in others, would have a disposition to harden, and all that was about him would certainly take its colouring from himself. He was letting his sympathies dry up, almost forcing them back out of their channels, and was ceasing to believe in any broader or more genial flow in others. People are not so much to us what they are as what we see them, so that there are some for whom the world must be full of terrible companions.
And with poor Anthony the colouring he laid on at this time was cold and grey enough. Every gleam of brightness lay behind him in the old days which had suddenly grown a lifetime apart,—school, college, home, where on all sides he was the most popular, the most brilliant, the most full of life. And now—old friends had failed him, old hopes had been killed, old aims seemed unreal, old dreams foolishness. The saddest part of it all was that he was making even his dreariest fancies truth. There are few friendships that will stand the test of one dropping away from the bond: as to hopes and dreams and aims, they too become what a man makes them,—no less and no more. He was beginning to feel with impatient weariness that his engagement was not fulfilling even the moderate amount of contentment which he had expected. He had never professed to himself any overwhelming passion of love for Ada, but he had turned to her when he was sore and wroth with all the world, and it had seemed to him as if here were a little haven of moderate calm. If he had loved her better he would have felt as if she had a right to demand more, but I doubt whether this ever troubled him. With an older man also the experiment might have succeeded better, but his life was too young, and as yet too full of mute yearnings, for a reaction not to follow. It was not that clear-sightedness was awakened in him: the girl’s character was just one which the dullest woman would have fathomed, and scarcely a man have read rightly,—it was rather a cloudy dissatisfaction, a weariness, a consciousness that neither touched the other nor ever would, a sense of failure. No thought of escape was haunting him, he had a vague impression that his destiny might for a time be delayed, but meanwhile his destiny stood before him, and he knew that he was moving towards it, whether with willing or reluctant steps.
Of Winifred he thought very little. He did not choose to think of her. If ever there had been a day when it had seemed as if she might have become a part of his life, that day was gone like many another day. She and the world were against him, and if his own heart had been on that side, poor Anthony in his desperation would have fought against them,—heart and all. It would all come to an end some time, and meanwhile—Well, meanwhile he could go on towards the end.
As he walked down the old street under the flags, a sudden brightening of sunshine lit up the gay fluttering colours, a fresh breeze was blowing, the houses had irregular lines, rich bits of carving, black woodwork,—an odd sort of mediaeval life quietly kept, as it were, above the buying and selling and coming and going: now and then a narrow opening would disclose some little crooked passage, narrow, and ill-paved with stones which many a generation had worn down; while between the gables you might catch a glimpse of the soft darkness of the old Cathedral rising out of the green turf, trees from which a yellow leaf or two was sweeping softly down, a misty, tender autumnal sky, figures passing with a kind of grave busy idleness. There was a band marching up the street, and at the corner Anthony met Mr Wood, of the Grange, and at the same moment Mr Robert Mannering.
“Glad to see you,” said the latter, ignoring the younger man’s evident desire to hurry on. “You’re the very couple I should have chosen to run my head against, for Charles never rested until he had made Pelham and Smith, and half a dozen of their like, engage to dine with us to-morrow, and they’ll certainly not be content with me for a listener, so take pity, both of you, will you? Half past seven, unless they give us a terribly long-winded afternoon, and then Mrs Jones will be in a rage, and woe betide us!”
“No, no,” said Mr Wood, shaking his head, and going on. “Don’t expect me. I’ve just had a dose of Smith, and his long words frighten me. They don’t seem quite tame.”
“I’m sorry that I can’t join you,” said Anthony, putting on his impracticable look.
“Come, come. You’ve treated us very scurvily of late. Miss Lovell must spare you for once, Anthony.”
“Thank you. It is not possible.”
He said it so curtly, that Mr Robert’s face grew a shade redder; but as he watched the young man walking away down the street with short, quick steps, the anger changed in a moment into a sort of kind trouble.
“He’ll have none of it, and if it’s shame I don’t know but what I like him the better, poor boy! I know I’d give pretty nearly anything to be able to put out my hand and tell him I believe that confounded story to be a lie. But I can’t, and he knows it. The mischief I’ve seen in my day that had money at the bottom of it! Well, I hope that pretty little girl will make him a good wife, and I shall make it up to Margaret’s child by and by. There goes Sir Peter, on his way to patronise the Association, I’ll be bound. He’ll walk up to the front and believe they know all about him, how many pheasants he has in his covers, and what a big man he is in his own little particular valley. Why shouldn’t he?—we’re all alike. I caught myself thinking that Parker would be astonished if he could only see my Farleyense; and there’s Charles as proud as a peacock over his Homer that he’s going to display, and Mrs Jones thinking all the world will be struck with the frilling in which she’ll dress up her ham, and so we go on,—one fool very much like another fool. And as the least we can do is to humour one another, and as, to judge from the shops, the Association has in it a largely devouring element, I’ll go and look after Mrs Jones’s lobster.”
He turned down a narrow street. The Cathedral chimes were ringing, dropping down one after the other with a slow stately gravity. People were making their way across the Close to the different doors. The streets had their gay flags, and carriages, and groups in the shops, and mothers bringing little convoys from the dancing academy, and stopping to look at materials for winter frocks,—but hardly a touch of these excitements had reached the Close. It seemed as if nothing could ruffle its quiet air; as if, under the shadow of the old Cathedral, life and death itself would make no stir. The chimes ceased, the figures had gone softly in; presently there floated out dim harmonies from the organ. As Mr Mannering passed along under one of the old houses he met the Squire.
“Winifred and Bess are there,” he said, nodding towards the Cathedral. “The children like to go in for the service. They’re good children—mine—God bless them!” he went on, with a sudden abruptness which made Mr Robert glance in his face.
“Good? They’re as good as gold.”
“So I think, so I think. Bess, now. She’s a spirit of her own, up in a moment, like a horse that has got a mouth worth humouring, but all over with the flash, and not a bit of sulkiness to turn sour afterwards. And Winifred, she’s been a mother to her sister. She has, hasn’t she, Mannering?”
“Don’t harrow a poor old bachelor’s feelings. You know I have lost my heart to Miss Winifred ever since she was ten years old, and she refused to marry me, even then,—point-blank.”
But the Squire did not seem to be listening to his answer, or if he heard it, it blended itself with other thoughts. He said with something that seemed like a painful effort, “Pitt had a notion that Anthony Miles liked Winifred. There never was anything of the kind, but he took it into his head. I’m glad with all my heart that Pitt was mistaken, for I would not have one of my girls suffer in that way for a thousand pounds. But I’ve been thinking to-day,—I don’t know what sets all these things running in my head, unless it is that it is my wedding-day.—My wedding-day, seven-and-twenty years ago, and little Harry was born the year after. I wasn’t as good a husband as I should have been, I know, Mannering, but I used to think, if little Harry had lived—”
He stopped. He had been speaking throughout in a slow disjointed way, so unlike himself that Mr Robert felt uncomfortable while hardly knowing why.
“Come,” he said cheerily. “Look at your two girls, and remember what you have just been saying about them.”
The Squire shook his head.
“They’re well enough,” he said, “but they’re not Harry. Who was I talking of—Anthony Miles, wasn’t it? I’ve been thinking that perhaps I’ve been too hard on the boy. It would have broken his father’s heart if he had known it, for there wasn’t a more honourable man breathing; but if my Harry had grown up, though he never could have done such a thing as that, he might have got into scrapes, and then if I had been dead and gone it would have been hard for never a one to stick by the lad. I don’t know how it is. I believe I’ve such a hasty tongue I never could keep back what comes uppermost. Many a box in the ear my poor mother has given me for it, though she always said all the same, ‘Have it out, and have done with it, Frank.’ It was a low thing for him to do, sir,” went on the Squire, firing up, and striking the ground with his stick by way of emphasis, “but—I don’t know—I should be glad to shake hands with him again. Somehow I feel as if it couldn’t be right as it is, with his father gone, and my little lad who might have grown up.”
And so, across long years there came the clasp of baby fingers, and the echo of a message which was given to us for a Child’s sake,—peace and good-will.
“I wish you would,” Mr Mannering said heartily. “He is somewhere about in the town at this very minute; perhaps you’ll meet him. Only you mustn’t mind—”
He hesitated, for he did not feel sure of Anthony’s manner of accepting a reconciliation, or whether, indeed, he would accept it at all, and yet he did not like to throw difficulties in the way. But the Squire understood him with unusual quickness.
“You mean the lad’s a bit cranky,” he said, “but that’s to be expected. Perhaps he and I may fire up a little, for, as I said, I’m never sure of myself, but there’s his father between us, and—well, I think we shall shake hands this time.”
Not as he thought; but was it the less truly so far as he was concerned? For a minute or two Mr Robert stood and looked after him as he went along the Close, a thick, sturdy figure, with country-cut clothes, and the unmistakable air of a gentleman. The Cathedral towers rose up on one side in soft noble lines against the quiet sky, leaves fluttered gently down, a little child ran across the stones in pursuit of a puppy, and fell almost at the Squire’s feet. Mr Robert saw him pick it up, brush its frock like a woman, and stop its cries with something out of his pocket. The child toddled back triumphant, the Squire walked on towards the High Street, and Mr Robert turned in the other direction. Some indefinite sense of uneasiness had touched him, though, after all, there was no form to give it. If Mr Chester’s manner had been at first slightly unusual, he explained it himself by saying that he had been stirred by old recollections, and the vagueness his friend had noticed quite died away by the end of their conversation. He was walking slowly, but with no perceptible faltering.
“And a man’s wedding-day must be enough to set things going in his head,” Mr Robert reflected. “If matters had fallen out differently now with Margaret Hare—Well, well, so I am going to make an old fool of myself, too. I’d better get on to the carrier, and set Mrs Jones’s mind easy about her lobster.”
Distances are not very great in Aunecester, and it did not take long for Mr Mannering to reach the White Horse, transact his business, and go back to the principal street to wait for his brother. There was one particular bookseller’s shop, to which people had parcels sent, and where they lounged away what time they had in hand, and just before he reached it Mr Mannering noticed an unusual stir and thickening of the passers-by. He concluded that the band might be playing again, or that some little event connected with the Association had attracted a crowd. It was not until he was close to one of the groups that the scattered words they let fall attracted his attention.
“An accident, did you say?” he said, stopping before a man whose face was red and heated.
“Yes, sir. A gentleman knocked down. That’s the boy, and a chase I’ve had to catch him.”
Mr Mannering began to see a horse, a policeman, and a frightened-looking lad in the midst of the crowd.
“Nothing very serious, I hope?”
“It looked serious, sir, when we picked him up. He is took into the shop, and they’ve sent for the doctor. Boys don’t care what they ride over.”
“I fancy something was wrong before the horse touched him, though,” said another man, with a child in his arms. “There was time enough else for him to have got out of the way.”
“Who is it?” asked Mr Mannering, with a sudden wakening of anxiety. At that moment Anthony Miles came quickly out of the shop, almost running against him in his hurry.
“Have you seen them?” he said hastily, when he saw who it was. His face was drawn and pallid, like that of a man who has received a great shock.
“Who, who?” said Mr Robert, gripping his arm. “It isn’t the Squire that’s hurt?”
“Yes,” said Anthony impatiently. “He’s in there. Somebody must find Winifred, or she’ll be in the thick of it in a minute.”
“She is at the Cathedral, she and Bessie,” said Mr Mannering, asking no more questions, but feeling his heart sink. “They must be coming out about this time. God help them, poor children!”
Anthony was off before the words were out of his mouth. Mr Robert, his kind ugly face a shade paler than usual, turned into the shop, which was full of curious customers, and made his way to a back room to which they motioned him gravely.
It was a little dark room, lit only by a skylight, on which the blacks had rested many a day, and hung all round with heavy draperies of cloaks and other garments, which at this moment had something weird in their familiar aspect. The Squire had been laid upon chairs, hastily placed together to form a couch; the doctor and one or two of the shop-people were talking together in a low voice as Mr Robert came in, and a frightened girl, holding a bottle in her hand, stood a little behind the group.
By their faces he knew at once that there was no hope. Perhaps for the moment what came most sharply home to him was the incongruity of the Squire’s fresh open-air daily life, and this strange death-room of his. He said eagerly to the doctor,—
“Can’t we get him out of this?”
“Not to Thorpe,” Dr Fletcher said gravely. “But we can move him to my house. I have sent for a carriage.”
“Is he quite unconscious?”
“Quite. There will be no suffering.”
There was no need to ask more. Death itself seems as helplessly matter of fact as the life before it. Mr Robert stood and looked down with moist eyes at the honest face that had been so full of vigour but the day before, when the Squire went through his day’s shooting like a man of half his years; and then thought of him as he had seen him that very hour, on his way to make peace, comforting a little child. Those had been his last words, the kind, good heart showing itself behind its little roughnesses, and softened as it may have been—who knows?—by a dim foreshadowing.