Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood

CHAPTER XXVII. THE MAN AND THE CHILD

It was a fine frosty morning, the invigorating influences of which, acting along with the excitement following immediately upon a sleepless night, overcame in a great measure the depression occasioned by the contemplation of my circumstances. Disinclined notwithstanding for any more pleasant prospect, I sought the rugged common where I had so lately met Catherine Weir in the storm and darkness, and where I had stood without knowing it upon the very verge of the precipice down which my fate was now threatening to hurl me. I reached the same chasm in which I had sought a breathing space on that night, and turning into it, sat down upon a block of sand which the frost had detached from the wall above. And now the tumult began again in my mind, revolving around the vortex of a new centre of difficulty.

For, first of all, I found my mind relieved by the fact that, having urged Catherine to a line of conduct which had resulted in confession,—a confession which, leaving all other considerations of my office out of view, had the greater claim upon my secrecy that it was made in confidence in my uncovenanted honour,—I was not, could not be at liberty to disclose the secret she confided to me, which, disclosed by herself, would have been the revenge from which I had warned her, and at the same time my deliverance. I was relieved I say at first, by this view of the matter, because I might thus keep my own chance of some favourable turn; whereas, if I once told Miss Oldcastle, I must give her up for ever, as I had plainly seen in the watch of the preceding night. But my love did not long remain skulking thus behind the hedge of honour. Suddenly I woke and saw that I was unworthy of the honour of loving her, for that I was glad to be compelled to risk her well-being for the chance of my own happiness; a risk which involved infinitely more wretchedness to her than the loss of my dearest hopes to me; for it is one thing for a man not to marry the woman he loves, and quite another for a woman to marry a man she cannot ever respect. Had I not been withheld partly by my obligation to Catherine, partly by the feeling that I ought to wait and see what God would do, I should have risen that moment and gone straight to Oldcastle Hall, that I might plunge at once into the ocean of my loss, and encounter, with the full sense of honourable degradation, every misconstruction that might justly be devised of my conduct. For that I had given her up first could never be known even to her in this world. I could only save her by encountering and enduring and cherishing her scorn. At least so it seemed to me at the time; and, although I am certain the other higher motives had much to do in holding me back, I am equally certain that this awful vision of the irrevocable fate to follow upon the deed, had great influence, as well, in inclining me to suspend action.

I was still sitting in the hollow, when I heard the sound of horses’ hoofs in the distance, and felt a foreboding of what would appear. I was only a few yards from the road upon which the sand-cleft opened, and could see a space of it sufficient to show the persons even of rapid riders. The sounds drew nearer. I could distinguish the step of a pony and the steps of two horses besides. Up they came and swept past—Miss Oldcastle upon Judy’s pony, and Mr Stoddart upon her horse; with the captain upon his own. How grateful I felt to Mr Stoddart! And the hope arose in me that he had accompanied them at Miss Oldcastle’s request.

I had had no fear of being seen, sitting as I was on the side from which they came. One of the three, however, caught a glimpse of me, and even in the moment ere she vanished I fancied I saw the lily-white grow rosy-red. But it must have been fancy, for she could hardly have been quite pale upon horseback on such a keen morning.

I could not sit any longer. As soon as I ceased to hear the sound of their progress, I rose and walked home—much quieter in heart and mind than when I set out.

As I entered by the nearer gate of the vicarage, I saw Old Rogers enter by the farther. He did not see me, but we met at the door. I greeted him.

“I’m in luck,” he said, “to meet yer reverence just coming home. How’s poor Miss Weir to-day, sir?”

“She was rather better, when I left her this morning, than she had been through the night. I have not heard since. I left my sister with her. I greatly doubt if she will ever get up again. That’s between ourselves, you know. Come in.”

“Thank you, sir. I wanted to have a little talk with you.—You don’t believe what they say—that she tried to kill the poor little fellow?” he asked, as soon as the study door was closed behind us.

“If she did, she was out of her mind for the moment. But I don’t believe it.”

And thereupon I told him what both his master and I thought about it. But I did not tell him what she had said confirmatory of our conclusions.

“That’s just what I came to myself, sir, turning the thing over in my old head. But there’s dreadful things done in the world, sir. There’s my daughter been a-telling of me—”

I was instantly breathless attention. What he chose to tell me I felt at liberty to hear, though I would not have listened to Jane herself.—I must here mention that she and Richard were not yet married, old Mr Brownrigg not having yet consented to any day his son wished to fix; and that she was, therefore, still in her place of attendance upon Miss Oldcastle.

“—There’s been my daughter a-telling of me,” said Rogers, “that the old lady up at the Hall there is tormenting the life out of that daughter of hers—she don’t look much like hers, do she, sir?—wanting to make her marry a man of her choosing. I saw him go past o’ horseback with her yesterday, and I didn’t more than half like the looks on him. He’s too like a fair-spoken captain I sailed with once, what was the hardest man I ever sailed with. His own way was everything, even after he saw it wouldn’t do. Now, don’t you think, sir, somebody or other ought to interfere? It’s as bad as murder that, and anybody has a right to do summat to perwent it.”

“I don’t know what can be done, Rogers. I CAN’T interfere.”

The old man was silent. Evidently he thought I might interfere if I pleased. I could see what he was thinking. Possibly his daughter had told him something more than he chose to communicate to me. I could not help suspecting the mode in which he judged I might interfere. But I could see no likelihood before me but that of confusion and precipitation. In a word, I had not a plain path to follow.

“Old Rogers,” I said, “I can almost guess what you mean. But I am in more difficulty with regard to what you suggest than I can easily explain to you. I need not tell you, however, that I will turn the whole matter over in my mind.”

“The prey ought to be taken from the lion somehow, if it please God,” returned the old man solemnly. “The poor young lady keeps up as well as she can before her mother; but Jane do say there’s a power o’ crying done in her own room.”

Partly to hide my emotion, partly with the sudden resolve to do something, if anything could be done, I said:—

“I will call on Mr Stoddart this evening. I may hear something from him to suggest a mode of action.”

“I don’t think you’ll get anything worth while from Mr Stoddart. He takes things a deal too easy like. He’ll be this man’s man and that man’s man both at oncet. I beg your pardon, sir. But HE won’t help us.”

“That’s all I can think of at present, though,” I said; whereupon the man-of-war’s man, with true breeding, rose at once, and took a kindly leave.

I was in the storm again. She suffering, resisting, and I standing aloof! But what could I do? She had repelled me—she would repel me. Were I to dare to speak, and so be refused, the separation would be final. She had said that the day might come when she would ask help from me: she had made no movement towards the request. I would gladly die to serve her—yea, more gladly far than live, if that service was to separate us. But what to do I could not see. Still, just to do something, even if a useless something, I would go and see Mr Stoddart that evening. I was sure to find him alone, for he never dined with the family, and I might possibly catch a glimpse of Miss Oldcastle.

I found little Gerard so much better, though very weak, and his mother so quiet, notwithstanding great feverishness, that I might safely leave them to the care of Mary, who had quite recovered from her attack, and her brother Tom. So there was something off my mind for the present.

The heavens were glorious with stars,—Arcturus and his host, the Pleiades, Orion, and all those worlds that shine out when ours is dark; but I did not care for them. Let them shine: they could not shine into me. I tried with feeble effort to lift my eyes to Him who is above the stars, and yet holds the sea, yea, the sea of human thought and trouble, in the hollow of His hand. How much sustaining, although no conscious comforting, I got from that region

   “Where all men’s prayers to Thee raised Return possessed of what they pray Thee.”

I cannot tell. It was not a time favourable to the analysis of feeling—still less of religious feeling. But somehow things did seem a little more endurable before I reached the house.

I was passing across the hall, following the “white wolf” to Mr Stoddart’s room, when the drawing-room door opened, and Miss Oldcastle came half out, but seeing me drew back instantly. A moment after, however, I heard the sound of her dress following us. Light as was her step, every footfall seemed to be upon my heart. I did not dare to look round, for dread of seeing her turn away from me. I felt like one under a spell, or in an endless dream; but gladly would I have walked on for ever in hope, with that silken vortex of sound following me. Soon, however, it ceased. She had turned aside in some other direction, and I passed on to Mr Stoddart’s room.

He received me kindly, as he always did; but his smile flickered uneasily. He seemed in some trouble, and yet pleased to see me.

“I am glad you have taken to horseback,” I said. “It gives me hope that you will be my companion sometimes when I make a round of my parish. I should like you to see some of our people. You would find more in them to interest you than perhaps you would expect.”

I thus tried to seem at ease, as I was far from feeling.

“I am not so fond of riding as I used to be,” returned Mr Stoddart.

“Did you like the Arab horses in India?”

“Yes, after I got used to their careless ways. That horse you must have seen me on the other day, is very nearly a pure Arab. He belongs to Captain Everard, and carries Miss Oldcastle beautifully. I was quite sorry to take him from her, but it was her own doing. She would have me go with her. I think I have lost much firmness since I was ill.”

“If the loss of firmness means the increase of kindness, I do not think you will have to lament it,” I answered. “Does Captain Everard make a long stay?”

“He stays from day to day. I wish he would go. I don’t know what to do. Mrs Oldcastle and he form one party in the house; Miss Oldcastle and Judy another; and each is trying to gain me over. I don’t want to belong to either. If they would only let me alone!”

“What do they want of you, Mr Stoddart?”

“Mrs Oldcastle wants me to use my influence with Ethelwyn, to persuade her to behave differently to Captain Everard. The old lady has set her heart on their marriage, and Ethelwyn, though she dares not break with him, she is so much afraid of her mother, yet keeps him somehow at arm’s length. Then Judy is always begging me to stand up for her aunt. But what’s the use of my standing up for her if she won’t stand up for herself; she never says a word to me about it herself. It’s all Judy’s doing. How am I to know what she wants?”

“I thought you said just now she asked you to ride with her?”

“So she did, but nothing more. She did not even press it, only the tears came in her eyes when I refused, and I could not bear that; so I went against my will. I don’t want to make enemies. I am sure I don’t see why she should stand out. He’s a very good match in point of property and family too.”

“Perhaps she does not like him?” I forced myself to say.

“Oh! I suppose not, or she would not be so troublesome. But she could arrange all that if she were inclined to be agreeable to her friends. After all I have done for her! Well, one must not look to be repaid for anything one does for others. I used to be very fond of her: I am getting quite tired of her miserable looks.”

And what had this man done for her, then? He had, for his own amusement, taught her Hindostanee; he had given her some insight into the principles of mechanics, and he had roused in her some taste for the writings of the Mystics. But for all that regarded the dignity of her humanity and her womanhood, if she had had no teaching but what he gave her, her mind would have been merely “an unweeded garden that grows to seed.” And now he complained that in return for his pains she would not submit to the degradation of marrying a man she did not love, in order to leave him in the enjoyment of his own lazy and cowardly peace. Really he was a worse man than I had thought him. Clearly he would not help to keep her in the right path, not even interfere to prevent her from being pushed into the wrong one. But perhaps he was only expressing his own discomfort, not giving his real judgment, and I might be censuring him too hardly.

“What will be the result, do you suppose?” I asked.

“I can’t tell. Sooner or later she will have to give in to her mother. Everybody does. She might as well yield with a good grace.”

“She must do what she thinks right,” I said. “And you, Mr Stoddart, ought to help her to do what is right. You surely would not urge her to marry a man she did not love.”

“Well, no; not exactly urge her. And yet society does not object to it. It is an acknowledged arrangement, common enough.”

“Society is scarcely an interpreter of the divine will. Society will honour vile things enough, so long as the doer has money sufficient to clothe them in a grace not their own. There is a God’s-way of doing everything in the world, up to marrying, or down to paying a bill.”

“Yes, yes, I know what you would say; and I suppose you are right. I will not urge any opinion of mine. Besides, we shall have a little respite soon, for he must join his regiment in a day or two.”

It was some relief to hear this. But I could not with equanimity prosecute a conversation having Miss Oldcastle for the subject of it, and presently took my leave.

As I walked through one of the long passages, but dimly lighted, leading from Mr Stoddart’s apartment to the great staircase, I started at a light touch on my arm. It was from Judy’s hand.

“Dear Mr Walton–” she said, and stopped.

For at the same moment appeared at the farther end of the passage towards which I had been advancing, a figure of which little more than a white face was visible; and the voice of Sarah, through whose softness always ran a harsh thread that made it unmistakable, said,

“Miss Judy, your grandmamma wants you.”

Judy took her hand from my arm, and with an almost martial stride the little creature walked up to the speaker, and stood before her defiantly. I could see them quite well in the fuller light at the end of the passage, where there stood a lamp. I followed slowly that I might not interrupt the child’s behaviour, which moved me strangely in contrast with the pusillanimity I had so lately witnessed in Mr Stoddart.

“Sarah,” she said, “you know you are telling a lie Grannie does NOT want me. You have NOT been in the dining-room since I left it one moment ago. Do you think, you BAD woman, I am going to be afraid of you? I know you better than you think. Go away directly, or I will make you.”

She stamped her little foot, and the “white wolf” turned and walked away without a word.

If the mothers among my readers are shocked at the want of decorum in my friend Judy, I would just say, that valuable as propriety of demeanour is, truth of conduct is infinitely more precious. Glad should I be to think that the even tenor of my children’s good manners could never be interrupted, except by such righteous indignation as carried Judy beyond the strict bounds of good breeding. Nor could I find it in my heart to rebuke her wherein she had been wrong. In the face of her courage and uprightness, the fault was so insignificant that it would have been giving it an altogether undue importance to allude to it at all, and might weaken her confidence in my sympathy with her rectitude. When I joined her she put her hand in mine, and so walked with me down the stair and out at the front door.

“You will take cold, Judy, going out like that,” I said.

“I am in too great a passion to take cold,” she answered. “But I have no time to talk about that creeping creature.—Auntie DOESN’T like Captain Everard; and grannie keeps insisting on it that she shall have him whether she likes him or not. Now do tell me what you think.”

“I do not quite understand you, my child.”

“I know auntie would like to know what you think. But I know she will never ask you herself. So I am asking you whether a lady ought to marry a gentleman she does not like, to please her mother.”

“Certainly not, Judy. It is often wicked, and at best a mistake.”

“Thank you, Mr Walton. I will tell her. She will be glad to hear that you say so, I know.”

“Mind you tell her you asked me, Judy. I should not like her to think I had been interfering, you know.”

“Yes, yes; I know quite well. I will take care. Thank you. He’s going to-morrow. Good night.”

She bounded into the house again, and I walked away down the avenue. I saw and felt the stars now, for hope had come again in my heart, and I thanked the God of hope. “Our minds are small because they are faithless,” I said to myself. “If we had faith in God, as our Lord tells us, our hearts would share in His greatness and peace. For we should not then be shut up in ourselves, but would walk abroad in Him.” And with a light step and a light heart I went home.

CHAPTER XXVIII. OLD MRS TOMKINS

Very severe weather came, and much sickness followed, chiefly amongst the poorer people, who can so ill keep out the cold. Yet some of my well-to-do parishioners were laid up likewise—amongst others Mr Boulderstone, who had an attack of pleurisy. I had grown quite attached to Mr Boulderstone by this time, not because he was what is called interesting, for he was not; not because he was clever, for he was not; not because he was well-read, for he was not; not because he was possessed of influence in the parish, though he had that influence; but simply because he was true; he was what he appeared, felt what he professed, did what he said; appearing kind, and feeling and acting kindly. Such a man is rare and precious, were he as stupid as the Welsh giant in “Jack the Giant-Killer.” I could never see Mr Boulderstone a mile off, but my heart felt the warmer for the sight.

Even in his great pain he seemed to forget himself as he received me, and to gain comfort from my mere presence. I could not help regarding him as a child of heaven, to be treated with the more reverence that he had the less aid to his goodness from his slow understanding. It seemed to me that the angels might gather with reverence around such a man, to watch the gradual and tardy awakening of the intellect in one in whom the heart and the conscience had been awake from the first. The latter safe, they at least would see well that there was no fear for the former. Intelligence is a consequence of love; nor is there any true intelligence without it.

But I could not help feeling keenly the contrast when I went from his warm, comfortable, well-defended chamber, in which every appliance that could alleviate suffering or aid recovery was at hand, like a castle well appointed with arms and engines against the inroads of winter and his yet colder ally Death,—when, I say, I went from his chamber to the cottage of the Tomkinses, and found it, as it were, lying open and bare to the enemy. What holes and cracks there were about the door, through which the fierce wind rushed at once into the room to attack the aged feet and hands and throats! There were no defences of threefold draperies, and no soft carpet on the brick floor,—only a small rug which my sister had carried them laid down before a weak-eyed little fire, that seemed to despair of making anything of it against the huge cold that beleaguered and invaded the place. True, we had had the little cottage patched up. The two Thomas Weirs had been at work upon it for a whole day and a half in the first of the cold weather this winter; but it was like putting the new cloth on the old garment, for fresh places had broken out, and although Mrs Tomkins had fought the cold well with what rags she could spare, and an old knife, yet such razor-edged winds are hard to keep out, and here she was now, lying in bed, and breathing hard, like the sore-pressed garrison which had retreated to its last defence, the keep of the castle. Poor old Tomkins sat shivering over the little fire.

“Come, come, Tomkins! this won’t do,” I said, as I caught up a broken shovel that would have let a lump as big as one’s fist through a hole in the middle of it. “Why don’t you burn your coals in weather like this? Where do you keep them?”

It made my heart ache to see the little heap in a box hardly bigger than the chest of tea my sister brought from London with her. I threw half of it on the fire at once.

“Deary me, Mr Walton! you ARE wasteful, sir. The Lord never sent His good coals to be used that way.”

“He did though, Tomkins,” I answered. “And He’ll send you a little more this evening, after I get home. Keep yourself warm, man. This world’s cold in winter, you know.”

“Indeed, sir, I know that. And I’m like to know it worse afore long. She’s going,” he said, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb towards the bed where his wife lay.

I went to her. I had seen her several times within the last few weeks, but had observed nothing to make me consider her seriously ill. I now saw at a glance that Tomkins was right. She had not long to live.

“I am sorry to see you suffering so much, Mrs Tomkins,” I said.

“I don’t suffer so wery much, sir; though to be sure it be hard to get the breath into my body, sir. And I do feel cold-like, sir.”

“I’m going home directly, and I’ll send you down another blanket. It’s much colder to-day than it was yesterday.”

“It’s not weather-cold, sir, wi’ me. It’s grave-cold, sir. Blankets won’t do me no good, sir. I can’t get it out of my head how perishing cold I shall be when I’m under the mould, sir; though I oughtn’t to mind it when it’s the will o’ God. It’s only till the resurrection, sir.”