CHAPTER II.
THE EVE OF LIBERTY.
Miss Grey remained in the park until the sun had gone down and the stars, with their faint light, seemed as she moved homeward to be like bright sparkles entangled among the high branches of the trees. She had a great deal to think of, and she troubled herself little about the mental depression of her rejected lover. All the purpose of her life was now summed up in a resolve to get away from Keeton and to bury herself in London.
She knew that any opposition to her proposal on the part of those who were still supposed to be her guardians would only be founded on an objection to it as something unwomanly, venturous, and revolutionary, and not by any means the result of any grief for her going away. Ever since her mother's death and her father's second marriage she had only chafed at existence, and found those around her disagreeable, and no doubt made herself disagreeable to them. She had ceased to feel any respect for her father when he married again, and he knew it and became cold and constrained with her. Only just before his death had there been anything like a revival of their affection for each other. He had been a man of some substance and authority in his town, had built houses, and got together property, and he left his daughter a not inconsiderable annuity as a charge upon his property, and placed her under the guardianship of the elderly and respectable Nonconformist minister, who, as luck would have it, afterward married his young widow. Minola had seen so many marriages during her short experience, and had disliked two at least of them so thoroughly, that she was much inclined to say with one of her heroes that there should be no more of them. For a long time she had made up her mind that when she came of age she would go to London and live there. She still wanted a few months of the time of independence, but the manner in which Mr. Augustus Sheppard was pressed upon her by himself and others made her resolve to anticipate the course of the seasons a little, and go away at once. In London she made up her mind that she would lead a life of enchantment: of delightful and semi-savage solitude, in the midst of the crowd; of wild independence and scorn of all the ways of men, with books at her command, with the art galleries and museums, of which she had read so much, always within easy reach, and the streets which were alive for her with such sweet and dear associations all around her.
Miss Grey knew London well. She had never yet set foot in it, or been anywhere out of her native town; but she had studied London as a general may study the map of some country which he expects one day to invade. Many and many a night, when all in the house but she were fast asleep, she had had the map of London spread out before her, and had puzzled her way through the endless intricacies of its streets. Few women of her age, or of any age, actually living in the metropolis, had anything like the knowledge of its districts and its principal streets that she had. She felt in anticipation the pride and delight of being able to go whither she would about London without having to ask her way of any one. Some particular association identified every place in her mind. The living and the dead, the romantic and the real, history and fiction, all combined to supply her with labels of association, which she might mentally put upon every quarter and district, and almost upon every street which had a name worth knowing. As we all know Venice before we have seen it, and when we get there can recognize everything we want to see without need of guide to name it for us, so Minola Grey knew London. It is no wonder now that her mind was in a perturbed condition. She was going to leave the place in which so far all her life literally had been passed. She was going to live in that other place which had for years been her dream, her study, her self-appointed destiny. She was going to pass away for ever from uncongenial and odious companionship, and to live a life of sweet, proud, lonely independence.
The loneliness, however, was not to be literal and absolute. In all romantic adventures there is companionship. The knight has his squire, Rosalind has her Celia. Minola Grey was to have her companion in her great enterprise. It had not indeed occurred to her to think about the inconvenience or oddness of a girl living absolutely alone in London, but the kindly destinies had provided her with a comrade. Having lingered long in the park and turned back again and again for another view of some favorite spot, having gathered many a leaf and flower for remembrance, and having looked up many times with throbbing heart at the white, trembling stars that would shine upon her soon in London, Miss Grey at last made up her mind and passed resolutely out at the great gate and went to seek this companion. She was glad to leave the park now in any case, for in the fine evenings of summer and autumn it was the custom of Keeton people to make it their promenade. All the engaged couples of the place would soon be there under the trees. When a lad and lass were seen to walk boldly and openly together of evenings in that park, and to pass and repass their neighbors without effort at avoiding such encounters, it was as well known that they were engaged as though the fact had been proclaimed by the town-crier. A jury of Keeton folk would have assumed a promise of marriage and proceeded to award damages for its breach if it were proved that a young man had walked openly for any three evenings in the park with a girl whom he afterward declined to make his wife. Minola did not care to meet any of the joyous couples or their friends, and even already the twitter of voices and the titter of feminine laughter were beginning to make themselves heard among the darkling paths and across the broad green lanes of the park.
From the gates of the park one passed, as has been said already, almost directly into the town. The town itself was divided in twain by a river, the river spanned by a bridge which had a certain fame from the fact of its having been the scene of a brave stand and a terrible slaughter during the civil wars after Charles I. had set up his standard at Nottingham. To be sure there was not much left of the genuine old bridge on which the fight was fought, nor did the broad, flat, handsome, and altogether modern structure bear much resemblance to the sort of bridge which might have crossed a river in the days of the Cavaliers. Residents of Keeton always, however, boasted of the fact that one of the arches of the bridge was just the same underneath as it had always been, and insisted on bringing the stranger down by devious and grassy paths to the river's edge in order that he might see for himself the old stones still holding together which had perhaps been shaken by the tramp of Rupert's troopers. On the park side of the bridge lay the genteeler and more pretentious houses, the semi-detached villas and lodges and crescents of Keeton; and there too were the humbler cottages. On the other side of the bridge were the business streets and the clustering shops, most of them old-fashioned and dark, with low, beetling fronts and narrow panes in the windows, and only here and there a showy and modern establishment, with its stucco front and its plate glass. The streets were all so narrow that they seemed as if they must be only passages leading to broader thoroughfares. The stranger walked on and on, thinking he was coming to the actual town of Dukes-Keeton, until he walked out at the other side and found he had left it behind him.
Minola Grey crossed the bridge, although her own home lay on the side nearest the park, and made her way through the narrow streets. She glanced with a shudder at one formal official looking house of dark brick which she had to pass, and the door of which bore a huge brass plate with the words "Sheppard & Sheppard, Solicitors and Land Agents." Another expression of dislike or pain crossed her handsome, pale, and emotional face when she passed a little lane, closed at the further end by the heavy, sombre front of a chapel, for it was there that she had even still to pass some trying, unsympathetic hours of the Sunday listening to a preacher whose eloquence was rather too familiar to her all the week. At length she passed the front of a large building of light-colored stone, with a Greek portico and row of pillars and high flight of steps, and which to the eye of any intelligent mortal had "Court House" written on its very face. Miss Grey went on and passed its front entrance, then turning down a narrow street, of which the building itself formed one side, she came to a little open door, went in, ran lightly up a flight of stone steps, and found herself in dun and dimly lighted corridors of stone.
A ray or two of the evening light still flickered through the small windows of the roof. But for this all would seemingly have been dark. Minola's footfall echoed through the passages. The place appeared ghostly and sad, and the presence of youth, grace, and energetic womanhood was strangely out of keeping with all around. The whole expression and manner of Miss Grey brightened, however, as she passed along these gaunt and echoing corridors. In the sunlight of the park there seemed something melancholy in the face of the girl which was not in accord with her years, her figure, and her deep, soft eyes. Now, in this dismal old passage of damp resounding stone, she seemed so joyous that her passing along might have been that of another Pippa. The place was not very unlike a prison, and an observer might have been pleased to think that, as the light step of the girl passed the door of each cell, and the flutter of her garments was faintly heard, some little gleam of hope, some gentle memory, some breath of forgotten woods and fields, some softening inspiration of human love, was borne in to every imprisoned heart. But this was no prison; only the courthouse where prisoners were tried; and its rooms, occupied in the day by judges, lawyers, policemen, public, suitors, and culprits, were now locked, empty, and silent.
Minola went on, singing to herself as she went, her song growing louder and bolder until at last it thrilled finely up to the stone roofs of the grim halls and corridors. For Minola was of that temperament to which resolve of any kind soon brings the excitement of high spirits, and she sang now out of sheer courage and purpose.
Presently she stopped at a low, dark, oaken door which looked as if it might admit to some dingy lumber-room or closet; and this door opened instantly and she was in presence of a pretty and cheerful little picture. The side of the building where the room was set looked upon the broadest and clearest space in the town, and through the open window could be seen distinctly the glassy gray of the quiet river and even the trees of the park, a dark mass beneath the pale summer sky. Although the room was lit only by the twilight, in which the latest lingering reflection of the sunset still lived, it looked bright to the girl who had come from the heavy dusk and gloom of the corridors with their roof-windows and their rows of grim doors. A room ought to look bright, too, when the visitor on just appearing on its threshold is rushed upon and clasped and kissed and greeted as "You dear, dear darling." Such a welcome met Miss Grey, and then she was instantly drawn into the room, the door of which was closed behind her.
The occupant of the room who thus welcomed Minola was a woman not far short probably of forty years of age. She was short, she was decidedly growing fat, she had a face which ought from its outlines and its color to be rather humorous and mirthful than otherwise, and a pair of very fine, deep, and consequently somewhat melancholy eyes. These eyes were the only beauty of Miss Mary Blanchet's face. She had not good sight, for all their brightness. When any one talked with her at some little distance across a room, or even across a broad table, he could easily see by the irresponsive look of the eyes—the eyes which never quite found a common focus with his even during the most animated interchange of thought—that Miss Blanchet had short sight. But Miss Blanchet always frankly and firmly declined to put on spectacles. "I have only my eyes to boast of, my dear," she said to all her female advisers, "and I am not going to cover them with ugly spectacles, you may be sure." Hers was a life of the simplest vanity, the most innocent affectation. Her eyes had driven her into poetry, love, and disappointment. She was understood to have loved very deeply and to have been deserted. None of her friends could quite remember the lover, but every one said that no doubt there must have been such a person. Miss Blanchet never actually spoke of him, but she somehow suggested his memory.
Miss Blanchet was a poetess. She had published by subscription a volume of verses, which was favorably noticed in the local newspapers and of which she sent a copy to the Queen, whereof Her Majesty had been kindly pleased to accept. Thus the poetess became a celebrity and a sort of public character in Dukes-Keeton, and when her father died it was felt that the town ought to do something for one who had done so much for it. It made her custodian of the courthouse, entrusted with the charge of seeing that it was kept clean, ventilated, water-besprinkled; that when assizes came on, the judges' rooms were fittingly adorned and that bouquets of flowers were placed every morning on the bench on which they sat. This place Miss Blanchet had held for many years. The rising generation had forgotten all about her poetry, and indeed, as she seldom went out of her own little domain, had for the most part forgotten her existence.
When Minola Grey was a little girl her mother was one of Miss Mary Blanchet's chiefest patronesses. It was in great measure by the influence of Minola's father that Miss Blanchet obtained her place in the courthouse. Little Minola thought her a great poetess and a remarkably beautiful woman, and accepted somehow the impression that she had a romantic and mysterious love history. It was a rare delight for her to be taken to spend an evening with Miss Blanchet, to drink tea in her pretty and well kept little room, to walk with her through the stone passages of the courthouse, and hear her repeat her poems. As Minola grew she outgrew the poems, but the affection survived; and after her mother's death she found no congenial or sympathetic friend anywhere in Keeton but Mary Blanchet. The relationship between the two curiously changed. The tall girl of twenty became the leader, the heroine, the queen; and Mary Blanchet, sensible little woman enough in many ways, would have turned African explorer or joined in a rebellion of women against men if Miss Grey had given her the word of command.
"I know your mind is made up, dear, now that you have come," Miss Blanchet said when the first rapture of greeting was over.
Minola took off her hat and threw it on the little sofa with the air of one who feels thoroughly at home. It may be remarked as characteristic of this young woman that in going toward the sofa she had to pass the chimney-piece with its mirror, and that she did not even cast a glance at her own image in the glass.
"Mary," she asked gravely, "am I a man and a brother, that you expect me to change my mind? You are not repenting, I hope?"
"Oh, no, my dear. I have all the advantages, you know. I am so tired of this place and the work—dear me!"
"And I hate to see you at such work. You might almost as well be a servant. Years ago I made up my mind to take you out of this wretched place as soon as I should be of age and my own mistress."
"Well, I have sent in my resignation, and I am free. But I am a little afraid about you. You have been used to every luxury—and the carriage—and all that."
"One of my ambitions is to drive in a hansom cab. Another is to have a latch-key. Both will soon be gratified. I am only sorry for one thing."
"What is that, dear?"
"That we can't be Rosalind and Celia; that I can't put on man's clothes and liberty."
"But you don't like men—you always want to avoid them."
Miss Grey said nothing in defence of her own consistency. She was thinking that if she had been a man, she would have been spared the vexation of having to listen to Mr. Augustus Sheppard's proposals.
"I suspect," Miss Blanchet said, "that people will say we are more like Don Quixote and Sancho Panza."
"Oh, I of course; I am the faithful follower."
"You—poor little poetess, full of dreams, and hopes, and unselfishness! Why, I shall have to see that you get something to eat at tolerably regular intervals."
"How happy we shall be! And I shall be able to complete my poem! Do you know, Minola," she said confidentially, "I do believe I shall be able to make a career in London. I do indeed! The miserable details of daily life here pressed me down, down," and she pressed her own hand upon her forehead to illustrate the idea. "There, in freedom and quiet, I do think I shall be able to prove to the world that I am worth a hearing!"
This was a tender subject with Miss Grey. She could not bear to disturb by a word the harmless illusion of her friend, and yet the almost fierce truthfulness of her nature would not allow her to murmur a sentence of unmeaning flattery.
"One word, Mary," she said; "if you grow famous, no marrying—mind!"
Little Miss Blanchet laughed and then grew sad, and cast her eyes down.
"Who would ask me to marry, my dearest? And even if they did, the buried past would come out of the grave—and——"
She slightly raised both hands in deprecation of this mournful resurrection.
"Well, I have all to go through with my people yet."
"They won't prevent you?" Miss Blanchet asked anxiously.
"They can't. In a few months I should be my own mistress; and what is the use of waiting? Besides, they don't really care—except for the sake of showing authority and proving to girls that they ought to be contented slaves. They know now that I am no slave. I do believe my esteemed step-father—or step-stepfather, if there is such a word—would consent to emancipate me if he could do so with the proper ceremonial—the slap on the cheek."
The allusion was lost on Miss Blanchet.
"Mr. Saulsbury is a stern man indeed," she said, "but very good; that we must admit."
"All good men, it seems, are hard, and all soft men are bad."
"What of Mr. Augustus Sheppard?" Miss Blanchet asked softly. "How will he take your going away?"
"I have not asked him, Mary. But I can tell you if you care to know. He will take it with perfect composure. He has about as much capacity for foolish affection as your hearth-broom there."
"I think you are mistaken, Minola—I do indeed. I think that man is really——"
"Well. Is really what?"
"You won't be angry if I say it?"
Minola seemed as if she were going to be angry, but she looked into the little poetess's kindly, wistful eyes, and broke into a laugh.
"I couldn't be angry with you, Mary, if I had ten times my capacity for anger—and that would be a goodly quantity! Well, what is Mr. Sheppard really, as you were going to say?"
"Really in love with you, dear."
"You kind and believing little poetess—full of faith in simple true love and all the rest of it! Mr. Sheppard likes what he considers a respectable connection in Keeton. Failing in one chance he will find another, and there is an end of that."
"I don't think so," Miss Blanchet said gravely. "Well, we shall see."
"We shall not see him any more. We shall live a glorious, lonely, independent life. I shall study humanity from some lofty garret window among the stars. London shall be my bark and my bride, as the old songs about the Rovers used to say. All the weaknesses of humanity shall reveal themselves to me in the people next door to us and over the way. I'll study in the British Museum! I'll spend hours in the National Gallery! I'll lie under the trees in Epping Forest! I think I'll go to the gallery of a theatre! Liberté, liberté, cherie!" And Miss Grey proceeded to chant from the "Marseillaise" with splendid energy as she walked up and down the room with clasped hands of mock heroic passion.
"You said something about a man and a brother just now, dear," Miss Blanchet gently interposed. "I have something to tell you about a man and a brother. My brother is back again in London."
Miss Blanchet made this communication in the tone of one who is trying to seem as if it would be welcome.
"Your brother? He has come back?" Miss Grey did not like to add, "I am so sorry," but that was exactly what she would have said if she had spoken her mind.
"Yes, my dear—quite reformed and as steady as can be, and going to make a great name in London. Oh, you may trust him to this time—you may indeed."
Miss Grey's handsome and only too expressive features showed signs of profound dissatisfaction.
"I couldn't help telling him that we were going to live in London—one's brother, you know."
"Yes, one's brother," Miss Grey said with sarcastic emphasis. "They are an affectionate race, these brothers! Then he knows all about our expedition? Has he been here, Mary?"
"Oh, no, dear; but he wrote to me—such beautiful letters! Perhaps you would like to read them?"
Miss Grey was silent, and was evidently fighting some battle with herself. At last she said:
"Well, Mary dear, it can't be helped, and I dare say he won't trouble to come very often to see us. But I hope he will come as often as you like, for you might be terribly lonely. I don't care to know anybody. I mean to study human nature, not to know people."
"But you have some friends in London, and you are going to see them."
"Oh—Lucy Money; yes. She was at school with us, and we used to be fond of each other. I think of calling to see her, but she may be changed ever so much, and perhaps we shan't get on together at all. Her father has become a sort of great man in London, I believe—I don't know how. They won't trouble us much, I dare say."
The friends then sat and talked for a short time about their project. It is curious to observe that though they were such devoted friends they looked on their joint purpose with very different eyes. The young woman, with her beauty, her spirit, and her talents, was absolutely sincere and single-minded, and was going to London with the sole purpose of living a free, secluded life, without ambition, without thought of any manner of success. The poor little old maid had her head already filled with wild dreams of fame to be found in London, of a distinguished brother, a bright career, publishers seeking for everything she wrote, and her name often in the papers. Devoted as she was to Miss Grey, or perhaps because she was so devoted to her, she had already been forming vague but delightful hopes about the reformed brother which she would not now for all the world have ventured to hint to her friend.