Old Kensington Part 13

'She makes the very most,' says George, stopping short, of what she does, and so do you;' and he looked away from Dolly's entreating face.

Again poor Dolly's indignation masters her prudence. 'How can you be so mean and ungrateful?' she says.

'Ungrateful!' cries George, in a pa.s.sion; 'you get all you like out of Aunt Sarah; to me she doles out hard words and a miserable pittance, and you expect me to be grateful. I can see what Robert and Frank Raban think as well as if they said it.'

Dolly sprang past him and rushed out of the room in tears.

'Dolly! Dolly! forgive me, do forgive me! I'm a brute,' says George, running after her,--he had really talked on without knowing what he said--'please stop!'

'Dolly!' cries Lady Sarah from the breakfast-room.

Dolly went flying along the oak hall and up the old staircase and across the ivy window. She could not speak. She ran up to her room, and slammed the door, and burst out sobbing. She did not heed the voices calling then, but in after days, long, long after, she used to hear them at times, and how plainly they sounded, when all was silent--'Dolly, Dolly!' they called. People say that voices travel on through s.p.a.ce,--they travel on through life, and across time,--is it not so?

Years have pa.s.sed since they may have been uttered, but do we not hear them again and again, and answer back longing into the past?

Meanwhile poor Dolly banged the door in indignation She was glad George was sorry, but how dared he suspect her? How dared Mr. Raban--Mr. Raban, who did not pay his debts--What did she care?--What did they know?

_They_ did not understand how she loved her brother in her own way, her very own; loving him and taking care for him and fighting his battles....

'Oh, George, how cruel you are,' sobbed poor Dolly, sitting on her window-sill. The warm sun was pouring through the open cas.e.m.e.nt, spreading the shadow of the panes and the framework upon the carpetless floor; in a corner of the window a little pot of mignonette stood ready to start to life; a bird came with the shadow of its little breast upon the bars, and chirruped a cheerful chirp. Dolly looked up, breathed in the sun and the bird-chirp, how could she help it? Then her wooden clock struck, it distracted her somehow, and her indignation abated; the girl got up, bathed her red eyes, and went to the gla.s.s to straighten her crisp locks and limp tucker. 'Who is knocking?--come in,' said Dolly.

She did not look round, she was too busy struggling with her laces: presently she saw a face reflected in the gla.s.s beside her own, a pale brown face with black hair and slow, dark eyes, and close little red lips.

'Why, Rhoda, have you come for me?' said Dolly, looking round, sighing and soothed.

At the same time a voice from the garden below cried out, 'Dolly, come down! Have you forgiven me?'

'Yes, George,' said Dolly, looking out from her window.

'Here, let me help you,' cried Rhoda. 'Dolly, Mr. Robert and your brother sent me to find you.'

CHAPTER XVI.

A WALKING PARTY.

Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite Beyond it blooms the garden that I love; News from the teeming city comes to it, In sound of funeral or marriage bells.

The young people were starting for another walk that afternoon. Rhoda and Dolly were holding up their parasols and their white dresses out of the dust. They were half-way down the suns.h.i.+ny lane when they met Frank Raban (of whom they had been speaking) coming to call at Church House.

'You had much better come along with us, Frank,' said George, who was always delighted to welcome his friends, however soon he might quarrel with them afterwards.

'I have an appointment at five o'clock,' said Raban, hesitating, and with a glance at Miss Vanborough, who was standing a little apart, and watching the people pa.s.sing up and down the road.

'Five o'clock!' said George; 'five o'clock is ever so far away--on board a steamer, somewhere in the Indian Ocean; the pa.s.sengers are looking over the s.h.i.+p's side at the porpoises. Where is your appointment?'

'Do you know a place called Nightingale Lane?' said Frank.

'I know Nightingale Lane; it is as good a place as any other. Come, we will show you the way;' and, putting his arm through Frank's, George dragged him along.

'I wish George had not asked him,' said Robert, in a low voice. 'There were several things I wanted to consult you about, Dolly! but I must get a quiet half-hour. Not now, at some better opportunity.'

'Why, Robert!' said Dolly; 'what can you have to say that will take half-an-hour! 'She was, however, much flattered that Robert should wish to consult her, and she walked along brightly.

It was a lovely spring afternoon: people were all out in the open air; the little Quaker children who lived in the house at the corner of the terrace were looking out of window with their prim little bonnets, and Dolly, who knew them, nodded gaily as she pa.s.sed. She was quite happy again. Robert had looked at her so kindly. She was in charity with the whole world. She had scarcely had a word of explanation with George, but she had made it up with him in her heart. When he asked her for a second help of cold pie at luncheon, she took it as a sign of forgiveness. They went on now by the brown houses of Phillimore Terrace, until they reached a place where the bricks turn into green leaves, and branches arch overhead, and two long avenues lead from the ancient high road of the Trin.o.bants all the way to the palatine heights of Campden Hill.

When they were in the avenue, the young people went and stood under the shade of a tree. George was leaning against the iron rail that separates the public walk from the park beyond. They were standing with their feet on the turf in a cris-cross of shadow, of twigs, and green blades sprouting between. Beyond the rail the lawns and fields sloped to where the old arcades and the many roofs and turrets of Holland House rose, with their weather-c.o.c.ks veering upon the sky. Great trees were spreading their shadows upon the gra.s.s. Some cows were trailing across the meadow, and from beyond the high walls came the echo of the streets without--a surging sound of voices and wheels, a rising tide of life, of countless feet beating upon the stones. Here, behind the walls, all was sweet and peaceful afternoon, and high overhead hung a pale daylight moon.

'Are not you glad to have seen this pretty view of the old house, Mr.

Raban?' said Dolly to Frank, who happened to be standing next to her.

'Don't you like old houses?' she added, graciously, in her new-found amenity.

'I don't know' said Frank. 'They are too much like coffins and full of dead men's bones. Modern lath and plaster has the great advantage of being easily swept away with its own generation. These poor old places seem to me all out of place among omnibuses and railway whistles.'

'The a.s.sociations of Holland House must be very interesting,' said Robert.

'I hate a.s.sociations,' said Frank, looking hard at Dolly. 'To-day is just as good as yesterday.'

Dolly looked surprised, then blushed up.

It is strange enough, after one revelation of a man or woman, to meet with another of the same person at some different time. The same person and not the same. The same voice and face, looking and saying such other things, to which we ourselves respond how differently. Here were Raban and Dolly, who had first met by a grave, now coming together in another world and state, with people laughing and talking; with motion, with festivity. Walking side by side through the early summer streets, where all seemed life, not death; hope and progress, not sorrow and retrospect--for Dolly's heart was full of the wonder of life and of the dazzling present. After that first meeting, she had begun to look upon the Raban of to-day as a new person altogether, a person who interested her, though she did not like him. Even Dorothea in her softest moods seemed scarcely to thaw poor Frank. When he met her, his old, sad, desperate self used to rise like a phantom between them--no wonder he was cold, and silent, and abrupt. He could talk to others--to Rhoda, who wore his poor wife's s.h.i.+ning cross, and had stood by her coffin, as he thought, and who now met him with looks of sympathy, and who seemed to have forgotten the past. To Miss Vanborough he rarely spoke; he barely answered her if she spoke to him; and yet I don't think there was a word or look of Dolly's that Raban ever forgot. All her poor little faults he remembered afterwards; her impatient ways, and imperious gestures, her hasty impulse and her innocent severity. What strange debtor and creditor account was this between them?

There are some people we only seem to love all the more because they belong to past sorrow. Perhaps it is that they are of the guild of those who are initiated into the sad secrets of life. Others bring back the pain without its consolation; and so Dolly, who was connected with the tragedy of poor Frank Raban's life, frightened him. When, as now, he thought he had seen a remembering look in her eyes, the whole unforgettable past would come before him with cruel vividness. She seemed to him like one of the avenging angels with the flaming swords, ready to strike. Little he knew her! The poor angel might lift the heavy sword, but it would be with a trembling hand. She might remember, but it was as a child remembers--with awe, but without judgment. The little girl he had known had pinned up her locks in great brown loops; her short skirts now fell in voluminous folds; she was a whole head taller, and nearly seventeen: but if the truth were told, I do not think that any other particular change had come to her, so peaceful had been her experience. Frank was far more changed. He had fought a hard fight with himself since that terrible day he had sat under the arch in the twilight. He had conquered Peace in some degree, and now already he felt it was no longer peace that he wanted, but more trouble. Already, in his heart, he rebelled at the semi-claustration of the tranquil refuge he had found, where the ivy b.u.t.tresses and scrolled iron gateways seemed to shut out wider horizons. But hitherto work was what he wanted, not liberty. He had made debts and difficulties for himself during that wild, foolish time at Paris! These very debts and difficulties were his best friends now, and kept him steady to his task. He accepted the yoke, thankful for an honest means of livelihood. He took the first chance that offered, and he put a shoulder to the old pulley at which he had tugged as a boy with a dream of something beyond, and at which he laboured as a man with some sense of duty done. He went on in a dogged, hopeless way from day to day. He is a man of little faith, and yet of tender heart.

Some one says that the world is a mirror that reflects the faces that we bring to the surface. Frank's scepticisms met him at every turn. He even judged his own ideal; and as he could not but think of Dolly every hour of the day, he doubted her unceasingly. There seemed scarcely a responsive chord left to him with which to vibrate to the song of those about him. Until he believed in himself again, he could not heartily believe in others.

Others, meanwhile, were happily not silent because of his reserve, and were chattering and laughing gaily. Rhoda was sitting on the shady corner of a bench, George was swinging his legs on the railing. Dolly did not sit down. She was not tired; she was in high spirits. By degrees, she seemed to absorb all her companion's life and brightness.

So Raban thought as he glanced from Rhoda's pale face to Miss Vanborough's beaming countenance. Dolly's brown hair was waving in a pretty drift, her violet ribbons seemed to make her grey eyes look violet. She had a long neck, a long chin; her white ample skirt almost hid Rhoda as she sat in her corner. The girl s.h.i.+fted gently from her seat, and slid away when Dolly--Dolly sobering down--began to tell some of Lady Sarah's stories of Holland House and its inmates.

'There was beautiful Lady Diana Rich,' said Dorothea, pointing with her gloved hand.

'Don't say Diana,' cries George; 'say Dina.'

'She was walking in the Park,' continues his sister, unheeding the interruption, 'when she met a lady coming from behind a tree dressed, as she was herself, in a habit. Then she recognised herself,' Dolly said, slowly, opening her grey eyes; 'and she went home, and she died within a----'

Dolly, hearing a rustle, looked over her shoulder, and her sentence broke down. A white figure was coming from behind the great stem of the elm-tree, near which they were standing. In a moment, Dolly recovered herself, and began to laugh.

'Rhoda!' she said. 'I did not know you had moved. I thought you were my fetch.'

'No; I'm myself, and I don't like ghost stories,' said Rhoda, in her shrill voice. 'They frighten me so, though I don't believe a word of them. Do you, Mr. Raban?'

'Not believe!' cries George, putting himself in between Frank and Rhoda.

'Don't you believe in the White Lady of Holland House? She flits through the rooms once a year all in white satin, on the day of her husband's execution. They cut off his head in a silver nightcap, and she can't rest in her grave when she thinks of it.'

'Poor ghost!' said Dolly. 'I'm so sorry for ghosts. I sometimes think I know some live ones,' the girl added, looking at Frank unconsciously, and with more softness than he had believed her capable of.

'The first Lord Holland was a Rich,' said Henley, tapping with his cane upon the iron bars. 'He must have been the father of Lady Diana. He married a Cope. The Copes built the house, you know. I believe Aubrey de Vere was the original possessor of the property. It then pa.s.sed to the monks of Abingdon.'

'What a fund of information!' said George, laughing. 'Raban is immensely impressed.'