CHAPTER XII.
It is always rather melancholy arriving at home alone, and I miss Palestrina very much at these times, and I feel ill-disposed towards Thomas. Down-Jock pretended not to know me, and barked furiously when I drove up to the door, and then ran away on three legs, making believe, as he sometimes does when he wants to appeal to one's pity, that he is old and lame.
It was still early in the afternoon, and the sunshine was blazing over everything when I hobbled down the hill to inquire for Miss Lydia. The houses in Stowel are all roofed with red tiles, and each garden has flowering shrubs in it or beds full of bright-coloured flowers, so that the little place has a very warm and happy look on a sunny summer day. A great heavy horse-chestnut tree hung over the walls of the doctor's house, and scattered fragments of pink blossom when the soft air stirred gently. The wistaria on the post-office was in full bloom. And the place was so full of pleasant sounds this afternoon—of singing birds, and heavy-rolling wagons moving up the broad street, and the laughter of children, and the soft rush of the summer wind through the trees—that one felt that a day like this gave one a very strong leaning in favour of the happy view that life is, after all, a good thing.
One had, of course, to stop and speak to several old friends, who said they were thankful to see me back, as though a visit to London was an expedition fraught with many dangers.
When I reached the little cottage with the green gate, and the maid opened the door to me, she told me that Lydia Blind had died an hour ago.
The staircase of the little house is directly opposite the front door. I could not but believe that if I waited a little while Miss Lydia would descend the stairs, as she always did, with a smile which never failed to welcome every one. Or, if she were not within doors, that I would only have to pass out into the little garden at the back of the house to find her. I thought suddenly of the words of a boy I used to know at school, who, when a young playfellow died, said between his sobs, "It was so hard upon him dying before he had had a good time." Certainly ever since we knew her Lydia's life had been one long sacrifice to a witless invalid, and I couldn't help feeling that perhaps no one would ever know the extent of her patient service. Probably there never lived a more unselfish woman, and I cannot think why she never married.
She was a person who lacked worldly wisdom, and in worldly matters she was not prosperous—she never sowed that sort of grain. It was very touching to find that she had not even a few trinkets to leave behind, but that one by one each had been sold to pay for something for the invalid—a doctor's fee, or a chemist's heavy bill. She left the world as unobtrusively as she lived in it. Her last illness was very sudden and brief, and probably she would have been thankful that the little household was spared any extra expense.
The news of Lydia's death was unexpected by every one. When I turned and left the house and was walking home again, I met Mrs. Taylor going to inquire about her neighbour's health, with an offering of fruit in a little basket. She begged me, in the Stowel fashion, to turn and walk back with her, declaring that she felt so seriously upset by the news that if I would only see her as far as her gate I should be doing her a kindness. In the garden the General, who had run down to Stowel for a couple of days, was reclining in a deck-chair, Indian fashion. He was reading some cookery recipes in a number of Truth, and he turned to his niece as she crossed the lawn and said, "Do you think your cook could manage this, Mary? Select a fine pineapple——"
"Oh, uncle," said Mrs. Taylor with a good deal of feeling, "we have had such bad news! Our dear old friend in the village, Miss Lydia Blind, is dead."
"What Lydia Blind?" said the General; and Mrs. Taylor replied,—
"You never knew her, dear. She wasn't able to come to the party; indeed, I think she has been ailing ever since about that time, but we had no idea that the end was so near."
"It can't be the Lydia Blind I used to know?" said the General.
"Oh no, you couldn't have known her," said Mrs. Taylor with a sob; "she was just a dear old maiden lady living in the village on very small means."
"She hadn't a sister called Belinda, had she?" said the General.
Mrs. Taylor said she had, and I remembered suddenly how I had seen Lydia Blind standing one morning in front of the General's picture in the photographer's shop, and had heard her say, "I used to know him."
Mrs. Taylor went indoors, and I said good-bye, but the General said to me abruptly, "I should like to see her; will you take me there?" And he did not speak again until we found ourselves in the little porch of the cottage. He looked very tall standing by the low door of the house, and an odd idea came to me that Miss Lydia would have been proud of her afternoon caller.
"Let me go alone," he said gruffly, when he had asked permission to go to her room; and I waited in Lydia's morning-room, with its twine cases and unframed sketches, and the photographs of babies.
"I cannot see the sister," said the General irritably, when he had rejoined me in the darkened room. "Is she still dumb, poor thing? If ever there was a case," he went on, "of one life—and, to my mind, the sweeter and the better life—being sacrificed to another, it is in the case of Lydia Blind." He sat down on the little green sofa, and looked about him with eyes that seemed to see nothing. "I never expected such a thing," he said; "I couldn't have expected a thing like this ... I didn't even know she lived here.... Do you remember her," he said, "when she was very pretty? No, no, of course you wouldn't.... It doesn't hurt you to walk a little, does it? I have lived nearly all my life out of doors, and when anything upsets me I cannot stand being within four walls...."
We went out and crossed the field-path into the woods beyond. The paths of the wood are narrow and uneven, and at first we walked in single file, until we came to the broader road beyond the stream, and then we walked on side by side, the General suiting his pace to my slow, awkward gait.
"... Did you ever know the Bazeleys at all? No, you wouldn't, of course: that would be before your time. They had a very pretty place in Lincolnshire—a charming place—with a veranda round the house, and wicker-chairs with coloured cushions on them—more like an Indian house than an English one.... Harold Bazeley was in love with Lydia too." (I believe the General was talking more to himself than to me.) "It was one night sitting in the veranda that I heard him begin to make love to her for all he was worth, and I had to cut it.... Poor chap! he came into the smoking-room that night, where I was sitting alone, and he sat down by the table and put his head in his hands. He may have been saying his prayers (for he was always a religious man ... he did a lot of good for the men under him in India), and I sat with him till it was time to go to bed. I don't know if it was any comfort to him, but I knew from his face that Lydia must have said no, and I thought perhaps he wouldn't like being alone.... Well, then of course one didn't like to rush in and ask one's best friend's girl to marry one so soon after his disappointment. One had very strict ideas about honour in those days; I hope one has not lost them.... It is very odd that I was never here before, until last spring. Nearly all my service has been abroad, and I generally used to spend my leave hunting or in London, and my niece used to come up and stay with me there.... I didn't care much for Taylor in those days, but he really isn't a bad sort of fellow."
The sun began to sink behind the trees, and the General seemed to wake from the reverie in which he had been talking to me, and said: "You oughtn't to be out after sunset, if you have still got malaria about you," and we began to walk slowly homewards.
"It was just such an evening as this," he said, "when I bade her good-bye, meaning to come back in a little while and ask her to marry me. She was standing by the gate—fine old gates with stone pillars to them, and the sun shone full in her eyes.... I suppose that gentle, sweet look never left them, did it? They were closed, of course, when I saw them just now.... She was wearing a white dress that evening, I remember—a sort of muslin dress which I suppose would not be fashionable now, but which looked very pretty then. It had a lot of pink ribbons about it, and there was a great bunch of pink moss-roses in the ribbon of her belt.... Do you know I never picture her except as the girl who stood by the gate with the sun behind her, and the roses in her belt. I think I lost my head a little when it came to saying good-bye, and I began to say things which I had not meant to say—she looked so pretty with the red sunlight upon her, and her white muslin dress almost turned to pink in the glare.... I don't think she was surprised, only sweeter and gentler than before, and a curious, happy look was in her eyes. But I stopped in time, and stammered like a fool, thinking of poor Harold Bazeley, and then I said good-bye rather hurriedly. But I came back again to the gate where she was still standing, and asked if I might have one of the roses in her belt. And she gave me the whole bunch.
"... It must have been after this that the father died and left them very poor, and then the sister (this one, Belinda) had a stroke of paralysis, and there was no one to look after her but Lydia.... I wrote and proposed to her before I went to India—asked her to come with me as my wife. But she said she could not marry while her sister lived. It isn't as though we could have remained in England, and she could have lived with us; but of course India would have been an impossibility for the poor thing. We never thought in those days that poor Belinda would live long. And then she made a sort of recovery, but was still quite helpless, and Lydia wrote and asked me to wait for her no longer.... I never heard that she had come to live at Stowel."
The broad, wide village road was dim with twilight when we walked homewards along it—The Uncle and I. The children had all gone indoors, and the flowers in the little garden had lost their colour in the dim light.
As we passed by the cottage the General halted on the quiet, deserted road and took off his hat, then he leaned over the little green paling and drew towards him a branch of a moss-rose tree that Miss Lydia had planted there. He plucked a bud from it and held it to his face. Then he said gently, "They are the same sort, but they do not smell so sweet."