'The poor gentleman from below,' she said, 'is waiting for you in the drawing-room. I told him you would not be long.'
The gentleman was waiting in the drawing-room as Lady Sarah came in with the two little girls shyly following. She would have sent them away, but a sort of shyness habitual to her made her shrink from a scene or an explanation. It may have been some feeling of the same sort which had induced the widower to go away to the farthest window of the room, where he stood leaning out with his back turned for an instant after they had come in.
Coming in out of the dazzle of the streets, the old yellow drawing-room looked dark and dingy; the lights reflected from the great amphitheatre without struck on the panelled doors and fusty hangings. All these furnished houses have a family likeness: chairs with Napoleon backs and brass-bound legs, tables that cry vive l'empire as plain as tables can utter, old-fashioned secretaries standing demure with their backs against the wall, keeping their counsel and their secrets (if there are such things as secrets). The laurel-crowned clocks tick beneath their wreaths and memorials of bygone victories, the looking-glasses placidly relate the faces, the passing figures, the varying lights and changes as they pass before them. To-night a dusky golden light was streaming into the room from behind the hills, that were heaving, so Dolly thought, and dimming the solemn glow of the sky: she saw it all in an instant; and then, with a throb she recognised this wicked husband coming from the window where he had been standing with his back to them. She had never seen him before so close, and yet she seemed to know his face. He looked very cruel, thought Dolly; he had a pale face and white set lips, and a sort of dull black gleam flashed from his eyes. He spoke in a harsh voice. He was very young—a mere boy, with thick fair hair brushed back from his haggard young face. He might have been, perhaps, about two or three and twenty.
'I waited for you, Lady Sarah. I came to say good-by,' he said. 'I am going back to London to-night. I shall never forget your——' His voice broke. 'How good you have been to me,' he said hoarsely, as he took the two thin hands in his and wrung them again and again.
The widow's sad face softened as she told him 'to have trust, to be brave.'
'You don't know what you say,' he said in a common-place way. 'God bless you.' He was going, but seeing the two, Dolly and Rhoda, standing by the door looking at him with wondering faces, he stopped short. 'I forgot,' he said, still in his hard matter-of-fact voice, 'I brought a cross of Emma's; I thought she would wish it. It won't bring ill-luck,' he said, with a ghastly sort of laugh. 'She bore crosses enough in her life, poor soul, but this one, at least, had no nails in it. May I give it to your little girl?' he said, 'unless she is afraid to take anything from me.'
Lady Sarah did not say no, and the pale young man looked vaguely from one to the other of the two little girls as they stood there, and then he took one step towards Dolly, who was the biggest, and who was standing, straight and tall for her age, in her light-coloured dress, with her straw hat hanging on her arm. I don't know how to write this of my poor little heroine. If he had seemed more unhappy, if he had not looked so strangely and spoken so oddly, she might have understood him better; but as it was, she thought he was saying terrible things, laughing and jeering and heartless; so judged Dolly in an innocent severity. Is it so? Are not the children of this world wiser in their generation than the children of light? Are there not depths of sin and repentance undreamt of by the pure in spirit? One seems to grasp at a meaning which eludes one as one strains at it, wondering what is the sermon to be preached upon this text.... It was one that little Dolly, still playing in her childish and peaceful valley, could not understand. She might forgive as time went on; she had not lived long enough yet either to forgive or to forget; never once had it occurred to her that any thought of hers, either of blame or forgiveness, could signify to any other human being, or that any word or sign of hers could have a meaning to any one except herself.
Dolly was true to herself, and in those days she used to think that all her life long she would be always true, and always say all she felt. As life grows long, and people, living on together through time and sorrow and experience, realise more and more the complexities of their own hearts, and sympathise more and more with the failings and sorrows of others, they are apt to ask themselves with dismay if it is a reality of life to be less and less uncompromising as complexities increase, less true to themselves as they are more true to others, and if the very angels of God are wrestling and at war in their hearts. All through her life Dolly found, with a bitter experience, that these two angels of charity and of truth are often very far apart until the miracle of love comes to unite them. She was strong and true; in after days she prayed for charity; with charity came sorrow, and doubt, and perplexity. Charity is long-suffering and kind, and thinks no evil; but then comes truth crying out, 'Is not wrong wrong; is not falsehood a lie?' Perhaps it is because truth is not for this life that the two are at variance, until the day shall come when the light shall come, and with the light peace and knowledge and love, and then charity itself will be no longer needed.
And so Dolly, who in those days had scarcely realised even human charity in her innocent young heart, looked up and saw the wicked man who had been so cruel to his wife coming towards her with a gift in his hand; and as she saw him coming, black against the light of the sunset, she shrank away behind Rhoda, who stood looking up with her dark wistful eyes. The young man saw Dolly shrink from him, and he stopped short; but at the same instant he met the tranquil glance of a trustful upturned face, and, with a sigh, he put the cross (shimmering with a sudden flash of light) into little Rhoda's soft clasping hand.