Old Kensington Part 56

'The people who know you as I do will say that Dolly might have been a happy woman,' Rhoda answered; 'that she has wrecked her own happiness;'

and then they were both again silent.

Rhoda was frightened, and trembled as she looked into Robert's offended face. She thought that the end of it all might be that he would go--leave her and all other complications, and Rhoda had not a few of her own. If he were to break free? Rhoda's heart beat with apprehension; her feeling for Robert was more genuine than most of her feelings, and this was her one excuse for the part she had played. Her nature was so narrow, her life had been so stinted, that the first touch of sentiment overbalanced and carried her away. Dolly possessed the genius of living and loving and being to a degree that Rhoda could not even conceive; with all her tact and quickness she could not reach beyond herself. For some days past she had secretly hoped for some such catastrophe as that which had just occurred. She had taken the situation for granted.

'One sometimes knows by instinct what people feel,' she said at last. 'I have long felt that Dolly did not understand you; but then, indeed, you are not easy to understand.' And Robert, raising his eyes from his boots, met the beautiful gloom of her speaking eyes.

One has sometimes watched a cat winding its way between little perils of every sort. Rhoda softly and instinctively avoided the vanities of Robert's mind; she was presently telling him of her troubles, money troubles among the rest. She had spent more than her income; she did not dare confess to Mr. Tapeall; she felt utterly incapable of managing that fortune which ought never to have been hers--which she was ready to give up at any hour.

'Cleverer people than I am might do something with all this money,' said Rhoda. 'Something worth doing: but I seem only to get into trouble. You say you will help me, but you will soon be gone.'

'I shall be always ready to advise you,' said Robert. 'If there is anything at any time----'

'But when you are gone?' said Rhoda, with great emotion.

There was a pause; the horses clattered in under the gateway.

'You must tell me to stay,' said Robert in a low voice, as he helped Rhoda out of the carriage.

As the two slowly mounted the staircase which Dolly had climbed, Jonah, coming away from his aunt's apartment, almost ran up against them.

Robert exclaimed, but Jonah pa.s.sed on. What did Rhoda care that he brushed past as if he had not seen them? She was sure he had seen them, and Rhoda had her own reasons for wis.h.i.+ng no time to be lost before her news was made public. She had won her great stake, secured her prize: her triumph was not complete until others were made aware of all that had happened. She urged Robert to tell his aunt at once.

'It is only fair to yourself. Dolly will be telling her story--dear Dolly, she is always so kind; but still, as you have often said, there are two sides to a question. I am afraid your cousin pa.s.sed us intentionally,' said Rhoda. 'Not that I care for anything now.'

'Let us have our dinner in peace,' said Robert; 'and then I will tell them anything you like,' and he sank down comfortably into one of the big arm-chairs, not sorry to put after dinner out of her mind. While he was with Rhoda he was at ease with himself, and thought of nothing else; but he had vague feelings of a conscience standing outside on the landing and ready to clutch him as he pa.s.sed out of the charm of her presence.

He did not go straight off to his aunt when he left Rhoda, and so it happened that he missed Mrs. Palmer when she burst in upon Rhoda and Miss Rougemont. The resolute Robert was pacing the pavement outside and trying to make up his mind to face those who seemed to him now more like life-long enemies than friends. He took courage at last and determined to get it over, and he turned up the street again and climbed the staircase once more. Philippa had left the hall-door open, and Robert walked in as he had been used to do; he opened the drawing-room door. He was angry with Dolly still, angry with her mother, and ready to resent their reproaches. Robert opened the drawing-room door and stopped short at the threshold....

The room was not dark, for the bright moonlight was pouring in. Dolly was still lying asleep. A log burnt low in the fire-place, crimsoning the silver light. Robert was startled. He came forward a few steps and stood in the darkened room looking at the sleeping girl: something in her unconsciousness, in the utter silence, in the absence of reproach, smote him as no words of blame or appeal could have done. His excuses, his self-a.s.sertions, of what good were they here--who cared for them here? She scarcely moved, she scarcely seemed to breathe; her face looked calm, it was almost like the face of a dead person; and so she was--dead to him.

For an instant he was touched; taken by surprise; he longed to awaken her, to ask her to forgive him for leaving her; but as he stood there a dark figure appeared in the open window; it was Jonah, who did not speak, but who pointed to the door.

At any other time Robert might have resented this, but to-night something had moved his cold and selfish heart, some ray from Dolly's generous spirit had unconsciously reached him at last. He turned away and went quietly out of the room, leaving her sleeping still.

He did not see her again; two days later she left for England.

CHAPTER LIV.

HOLY ST. FRANCIS, WHAT A CHANGE IS HERE.

If when in cheerless wanderings dull and cold, A sense of human kindliness hath found us, We seem to have around us An atmosphere all gold.

--A. Clough.

Twelve o'clock is striking in a bare room full of suns.h.i.+ne. A woman, who is spending her twelfth year in bed, is eating tripe out of a basin; another sitting by the fire is dining off gruel; beds and women alternate all down the ward; two nurses are coming and going, one of them with a black eye. Little garlands of paper, cleverly cut out, decorate the place in honour of some Royal birthday. Two little flags are stuck up against the wall and flying triumphantly from the farther end of the room. A print of the Royal Family, brilliantly coloured, is also pinned up. Mrs. Fane is walking down the middle of the workhouse infirmary with a basket on her arm, when one of the old women puts out a wrinkled hand to call her back.

'Ain't we grand, mum?' says the old woman, looking up. 'It does us all good;' and she nods and goes on with her gruel again.

'How is Betty Hodge to-day?' says Mrs. Fane. The old woman points significantly.

All this time some one has been lying quite still at the further end of the room, covered by a sheet.

'At eight o'clock this morning she went off werry comfortable,' says the old woman. 'Mrs. Baker she is to scrub the steps now; the matron sent word this morning.'

That is all. In this infirmary of the workhouse it is a matter of course that people should die. It does not mean a black carriage, nodding feathers, nor blinds drawn, and tombstones with inscriptions. It means, ease at last, release from the poor old body that used to scrub the steps so wearily day after day. There it was, quite still in the suns.h.i.+ne, with the garlands on the wall.

'_I_ shan't be long,' said the old tripe-woman, sententiously. 'She has been expecting to go for months. A friend has sent her a shroud and some silver paper ready cut; she says it is all ready, and she has seen the priest.'

'Ah! Mrs. Blaney, you are a sufferer,' says the nurse with the black eye. 'She can't eat, mum, but she likes her cup of tea;' and the nurse, who also likes her cup of tea, eyes the little packet which she sees coming out of Mrs. Fane's basket, and fetches a canister, into which she elaborately shakes the refres.h.i.+ng shower.

Mrs. Fane hurries on, for she has a guest at home expecting her, and a tea-party organising for that afternoon, and she has still a visit to pay in the men's ward. Some one brought her a message--a man called Smith wanted to speak to her; and she walked along the whitewashed walls and past check blue counterpanes, looking for her pet.i.tioner. By one of the high windows of the ward lay a brown haggard face, with a rough chin, and the little old slip-shod messenger pointed to attract Mrs.

Fane's attention. She remembered the man at once. He had come to see her not long before. She had sent him some money to Paris--his own money, that he had given to a nurse to keep. Mrs. Fane looked with her kind round eyes into the worn face that tried to upraise itself to greet her.

'I am sorry to see you here,' she said. 'Did you not find your friends?'

'Gone to America,' gasped the man.

'You know I have still got some of your money,' said Mrs. Fane, sitting down by the bedside.

'It were about that I made so bold as to hask for to see you, mum,' said the man. 'I have a boy at Dartford,' he went on, breathing painfully.

'He ain't a good boy, but I've wrote to him to go to you, and if you would please keep the money for him, mum--three pound sixteen the Reverend calc'lated it--with what you sent for my journey here. I had better have stopped where I was and where the young lady found me. Lord!

what a turn she giv' me. I know'd it was all up when I seed her come in.'

He was muttering on vacantly, as people do who are very weak. Mrs.

Fane's kind heart ached for his lonely woebegone state. She took his hand in hers--how many sick hands had she clasped in her healing palm--but poor Smith was beyond her help.

'I see a young fellow that died beside me at the battle of the Alma,'

said Smith, 'and when that young lady came up, as you might be, it brought it all back as it might be now. He was a gentleman, they said; he weren't half a bad chap.'

'Who are you speaking of?' said Mrs. Fane, not quite following.

'They called him George--George Vance,' said the man; 'but that were not his name no more than Smith is mine.'

'I have heard of a man of that name who was wounded at the Alma; I did not know that he had died there,' said Mrs. Fane. Her hand began to tremble a little, but she spoke very quietly.

Smith hesitated for a minute, then he looked up into the clear constraining eyes that seemed to him to be expecting his answer. 'It ain't no odds to me now,' he said, hoa.r.s.ely, whether I speak the tru--uth or not; you're a lady, and will keep the money safe for my poor lad. Captain Henley he offered a matter o' twenty pound if we found poor Vance alive. He were a free-handed chap were poor Vance. We know'd he would not grudge the money.... And when the Roosians shot him, poor fellow, it wasn't no odds to him.

Mrs. Fane looking round saw the chaplain pa.s.sing, and she whispered to the old attendant to bring him to her.

'And so you said that you had found him alive, I suppose?' said Mrs.

Fane, quickly guessing at the truth.

'Well, mum, you ain't far wrong,' said Smith, looking at his thin brown fingers. 'There was another chap of our corps died on the way to the s.h.i.+ps. It were a long way to carry them down to the sh.o.r.e: we changed their names. We didn't think we had done no great harm; for twenty pound is twenty pound; but I have heard as how a fortune was lost thro' it all--a poor chap like me has no fortune to lose.'

'It was the young lady you saw who lost her fortune,' said Mrs. Fane, controlling herself, and trying to hide her agitation. 'You did her great injury, you see, though you did not mean it. But you can repair this wrong. I think you will like to do so,' she said, 'and--and--we shall all be very much obliged to you.' 'Mr. Morgan,' Mrs. Fane continued, turning to the chaplain, who had come up to the bedside, 'here is a poor fellow who wishes to do us a service, and to make a statement, and I want you to take it down.' She had writing materials in her basket. She often wrote the sick people's letters for them.