The Dilemma/Chapter LI
CHAPTER LI.
The opportunity soon came. That day when Yorke went up to town, the wind had set in from the east with a sharp frost; it was still colder when he returned to Hamwell in the evening; and next morning the look of the weather was more suggestive of skating than any other amusement. Miss Cathy, too, came downstairs with a heavy cold — she always got a cold with these horrid east winds, she said — and was house-bound for the day. Mrs. Peevor also was laid up, and did not appear at breakfast; and Miss Maria, as a matter of course, could not think of going out in such weather.
"I am so sorry for your disappointment," said Lucy to Yorke archly, as they stood at the window after breakfast watching the frosty landscape, while Mr. Peevor had gone out of the room on a summons from the bailiff; "what can we do to amuse you? I can't offer to drive you anywhere, because papa would not let the ponies go out this morning without being rough-shod. There is not a bit of danger, of course, but he would be miserable all the time I was away."
"Let us take a walk together," replied Yorke, "and see how the ice looks about bearing; that will be much pleasanter than driving on such a day as this. I am sure you skate like a sylph. Then you have still got to show me the river, although I have been here all these days. A walk to-day will be delightful."
Lucy's eyes brightened at the idea, but there followed a look of hesitation as she turned them away.
Yorke understood the difficulty. "May not the children come with us, and do propriety?" he asked. "I am sure a walk won't do them any harm on such a day as this. The poor little things have hardly been outside the door since I came here. They can bring their hoops to keep themselves warm."
Lucy blushed and laughed and ran off to the nursery; and soon returning in walking-dress with the children, wrapped up in furs so that they could hardly move their limbs, the party started off, first going to the kennels to set Lucy's dog free, which seldom got such a chance of a run. In the avenue they were joined by Mr. Peevor, who said he would accompany them part of the way, although he seemed astonished at their mamma having allowed the children to go out on such a cold morning, and left word at the lodge that the carriage should be sent to meet them as soon as the horses were roughed. Mr. Peevor was in good spirits, for notwithstanding the sudden change of the weather, the temperature of the house had been maintained at 60°; and he remarked more than once that although the heating apparatus had cost a trifle, it was worth any amount of money to keep the house always at the same point of warmth. On reaching the top of the steep hill which led to the river, however, he left them. He did not mind going any distance downhill, he said, but the doctor had advised him to avoid walking up-hill, so he would take his walk before luncheon on the level. So saying, he pursued his way along the highroad, shuffling along staff in hand, the collar of his greatcoat turned up, and an enormous comforter round bis neck.
The others turned off towards the river. The children ran on in front after their hoops, which bounded along the hillside over the frost-bound road, and for the first time Yorke found himself alone with Lucy.
For a short space they walked on in silence. Although Lucy stepped briskly, with a light elastic tread and upright carriage, she took little short steps, which made the pace a mere lounge for her companion; and wearing a sealskin jacket trimmed with fur, she did not feel the cold. Yorke, misled by the warmth of the house, had provided himself with only a light overcoat; and on this his first introduction to an English winter, he shivered under the penetrating wind. Truly this was an untimely occasion for love-making, when his teeth were ready to chatter and his fingers were numb with cold.
Presently they met a peasant-woman coming slowly up the hill, carrying a bundle of sticks on her shoulder, and leading a child with one hand. Both were miserably clad; and the child's face and legs were blue with cold.
By comparison Yorke was warmly dressed; and on seeing what others had to suffer, he was ashamed of his own impatience of the discomfort which he felt.
"Poverty is harder to bear in this country than in India," he observed; "this cold must make an awful addition to the burden."
His companion looked up as if surprised at the remark; she had been expecting him to say something different. He went on — "The poverty in England is dreadful to witness; the tremendous wealth at the other end of the scale makes the contrast all the greater."
"The poor in this parish are all very well cared for, I believe," said Lucy. "I know papa gives away a great deal in coals and blankets every winter; and I believe all our neighbours subscribe too."
"Coals won't keep you warm if you have to crawl about on a day like this without any clothes on, like that poor child," retorted Yorke, feeling for the moment quite angry with his companion. "Yet, after all," he thought, "what else is to be expected? To be shut up in a hothouse all your life, every want supplied, guarded from every discomfort, never to do anything useful from one year's end to the other, to see the table spread ever so many times a day with ten times as much food as can be eaten, every want ministered to by a pack of lazy servants, themselves as pampered as their masters — what can be expected from a thoroughly immoral life of this sort but indifference to the needs of others?" Yorke, however, forgot that the senses of others might be dulled by familiarity with the social aspect of England, which struck him so forcibly on seeing it for the first time.
"Are there no poor in India?" asked Lucy, with some hesitation, disconcerted at the sudden change in his manner.
"Plenty," he replied, "including the poor British soldier. We have enough to eat and drink," he added, "and can manage to find ourselves in such light clothing as is needed in that climate; but it is a rough sort of life compared with what some of the good people at home are accustomed to, with their comforts and coddling and luxury."
"I should think a rough life must be very pleasant," said Lucy, after a pause.
"How can you tell what you think, when you have never tried it, accustomed as you are to have every want supplied, and everything done for you? You would always rather ring the bell for the servant to poke the fire, than do it yourself, I'll be bound. And I don't suppose you can remember having ever in your lifetime done your own hair."
"Oh yes, I can," said Lucy, laughing and blushing; "I can do my own hair well enough when I like; but what is the good, if your maid is there to do it for you? But you don't understand what I mean. It is so tiresome having everything done for one, and being of no use to others. Even the children never want to be looked after by us elder ones. You gentlemen go about, and hunt and shoot and travel, just when you please, and can afford to make fun of us girls who stay at home and do nothing."
"No, no, I am not making fun at all. There is nothing for us men to assume superiority about, because we amuse ourselves in our way, while you stay at home and amuse yourselves in yours."
"Amuse ourselves! what amusements have we? You little know how dull we always find it. I don't mean always; of course it is different when you — when we have visitors staying in the house. But you don't know how dull it is when we are alone. One gets up in the morning, really not knowing how the day is to be got through. One can't be always working or reading, you know."
"Then you do read sometimes?"
"You are very sarcastic; because we don't take up books when we have company, we may read a little at other times, I suppose? I don't pretend to be very fond of books, and I hate dry ones, and I daresay you have found out how ignorant I am; but one gets so tired of being of no use to anybody. I often think I should like to be a governess or a needlewoman, or something of that sort, and earn my living."
"So luxury has its pains as well as its pleasures," said Yorke, delighted at this confession, yet still keeping Lucy on the defensive. "Charity begins at home; why not teach your little sisters? "
"Papa would not let me, even if I knew enough to do so. He means to have a French governess for them, and a German one too, as soon as Minnie is eight. He talks of adding schoolrooms to the house after Christmas. We never can do anything for the children except play with them. When they were ill last year, papa got down a couple of nurses from town, one for the day and one for the night, and we were not allowed to go near them for fear of infection, although I believe there was no danger really."
"I am afraid your papa would hardly agree to the governess plan for yourself, laudable though it be. How would you like a life of adventure and travel? "
"Ah, travelling would be delightful. We have often wanted papa to take us for a foreign tour, but I don't think he would like it, and then Mrs. Peevor is so delicate."
"But it is not necessary to travel with one's papa always. You might join a party of friends, for example." Then — after a pause — "Is Mr. Hanckes much of a traveller?"
"How can you be so absurd?" replied Lucy, laughing and blushing, as she turned her head away from her companion's searching gaze. "No, Mr. Hanckes would not leave London and his beloved counting-house for the world. But I should think a life of foreign adventure would be much pleasanter than living in England. England is so stupid and dull — don't you think so?"
"I can't say that I have found it so — especially of late; but still, life in India may have its charms too — don't you think so?"
"Yes, indeed," said Lucy, eagerly, and then looking up and meeting his eyes fixed on her, she saw the trap which had been laid, and she added in some confusion, "or any other country too."
"Italy, for example?"
"Oh yes, I should think it would be delightful to travel in Italy; I do long to see Rome." Little Lucy was trembling with excitement and nervousness combined, and hardly knew what she was saying.
Here a shabby idea possessed Yorke. He saw his power over the poor girl, but still played with her feelings. So he went on: "Was your last visitor from Italy, or going there?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I suppose you have had visitors staying in the house before now, and that then perhaps some other country had the preference over the land of my adoption."
"How can you be so cruel!" she replied, turning her face away indignantly, and then, after a moment's struggle between distress and pride, bursting into tears, stopping short as she did so to cover her face.
"Miss Peevor — Lucy — my dearest Lucy!" cried Yorke, also stopping, and then, after a moment's hesitation, encircling her waist with one arm, while with the other he sought to detach her hands, and make her look up at him. "Lucy, my love, don't cry. I have behaved like a brute; but you will show your forgiveness by looking up at me with your sweet eyes."
Lucy did as she was bid, thereby no doubt deserving the reprobation of every right-thinking young lady; she looked up, smiling through her tears, and Yorke, strengthening the embrace of his engaged arm, and holding her two little struggling hands in one of his, imprinted a kiss on her pretty little mouth. He no longer thought about the cold.
Just then they were interrupted. The children, unnoticed by them, had run back to where they were standing, and were looking up in consternation.
"Why are you crying, Lucy?" said Minnie, almost ready to cry herself from sympathy.
"'Oocie trying 'cause it so told," said Lottie by way of explanation, catching hold of her elder sister's dress with her disengaged hand, while holding her little hoop with the other.
"Yes, dear," said Lucy, stooping down to kiss her little sister, by way of hiding her confusion, "it's very cold, isn't it? let us take a run together;" and holding Lottie by the hand she pressed forward by way of hiding her confusion; while Yorke, giving a hand to little Minnie, and pushing on to keep his place beside her, could see that her face, as she looked downwards with averted glance, expressed mingled confusion and happiness.
A few steps made in silence brought them to the foot of the hill and with an abrupt turn in the road the river came suddenly open to view, running at their feet. The road here branched right and left to Shoalbrook and Castleroyal. No longer the clear placid stream which, shaded by leafy banks, yielded a constant summer delight to denizen of town and country for miles around; yet still the leafless bushes and trees glowing rich red under the winter sun, sparkling with frosty spiracles, and set off by the deep blue background tints, formed a scene full of beauty of its own kind.
On their right, a short distance down the stream, separated from the bank by the towing-path and a little garden, was a wayside inn. A place, no doubt, of much resort in summer; but now the arbour in front was bare and naked; the little tables and forms on each side of the garden-path were tenantless; and except that a column of smoke rose from the chimney into the still air, the house itself looked to be empty.
On the left the road to Castleroyal receded somewhat from the river, the space between the two being occupied as garden-grounds, the houses standing in which, secluded in summer, could now be distinguished through the leafless branches, some small, some large, till the view was bounded by a bend in the river, just where the spire of a country church appeared amidst a grove of venerable elms.
The children began throwing bits of stick into the water, watching them float down the stream.
"That is our boat-house," said Lucy at last, by way of breaking the awkward silence, "on the other side. Papa had it put there to be out of the way of the towing-path."
"It looks a big place to keep a boat in," replied her companion, glad for the moment to pursue indifferent subjects. Must he tell Lucy at once what a mere remnant of a heart he had to offer her? Somehow the fraction seemed just then a good deal larger than he had been accustomed to deem it.
"There are several boats kept there," she rejoined; "the big boat, and the little boat, and Fred's wherry, and Cathy's and my canoes — it is such fun canoing, but we are never allowed to use them except when Fred is here; and then there is the sailing-boat, and the steam-barge."
"A steam-barge? What is that used for?"
"Papa thought it would be very nice to have a steamer for picnic parties, and it was great fun at first steaming up ever so fast against stream; but one soon got tired of sitting in it doing nothing, and I don't think we had it out once all last summer. Papa keeps a man to look after the engine, and lends it to any one who wants it." Lucy rattled on in this way, trying to recover her composure, which was in danger of giving way whenever, glancing up, she caught Yorke's face looking at her with an expression she had never seen it wear before. There was no guile in little Lucy's heart, nor any cause for suspicion in her lover's. Her father, no doubt, wanted her to find a mate of some sort, but no pressure had been needed in this case. Surrounded by almost boundless wealth, these girls had yet led a thoroughly secluded life; this hero, who had appeared like a star among the humdrum people who made up her father's visiting acquaintance, seemed to be the first gentleman, except Fred, whom she had ever known. The noble creature had won her simple little heart at first sight; and now the hopes she had hardly dared form were realized. He had called her his dearest Lucy, and kissed her, and was now looking down fondly on her face. This hero and petted man of fashion, who might no doubt have had his choice of damsels moving in fashionable circles of which she had never stepped on even the outer edge, had deigned to smile on her and was really hers! and to think that only a few weeks ago she had been nearly prevailed on for very pity to accept Mr. Hanckes, when he asked her for the fourth time!
"These villas must be very pretty in the summer," observed Yorke, still disposed for the present to cover the position with commonplaces; "but I should not fancy them at this season. They look cold and damp."
"No one stays in them during the winter," said Lucy; "they all belong to London people, who merely come down for the summer months."
"That one seems to be inhabited," observed Yorke; "look at the smoke coming from the chimney." He pointed to the house nearest to them, standing in a little garden in the angle where the road left the river — a small, rather dilapidated cottage of wood. In the summer, and when covered with leafy creepers to hide the state of disrepair, it might have been attractive from its picturesque situation, but now it looked shabby and forlorn.
"That little cottage has been taken only lately," replied Lucy, "by an invalid lady."
"It does not seem a very good situation for an invalid; do you know her?"
"Papa and Mrs. Peevor have called on her, — we always call on everybody, you know, as soon as they come to his neighbourhood," she said, with a little jerk of the chin and pout of the lip, which Yorke thought very piquant, "although everybody does not always return our calls. But they did not see her. I daresay it would be too far for her to walk to "The Beeches" in return; but I am sure papa would send a carriage for her in a minute if he knew how to offer it without giving offence."
"Is the lady a widow?"
"No; I believe her husband is abroad somewhere, but we really know very little about her. She is a Mrs. Wood. These must be her children, I think;" and as Lucy spoke, a maid with two children, coming along the Coldbrook road past the inn while they had been looking up the river, was almost close to them. She was a common-looking girl, who might be a maid of all work. The children, although evidently of gentle-folk, were poorly and not very warmly clad. One, a little girl who might be between four and five years old, the maid led by the hand, the younger she carried in her arms.
As the little party passed by where Yorke and Lucy were standing, the child on foot turned to look at Minnie and Lottie, the servant meanwhile dragging her along.
Yorke stepped up to them, and the girl stopped and made a rough curtsy.
"You seem cold, my little maid," said Yorke to the child, taking her face kindly between his hands, "you must get indoors by the fire, and then you will soon be warm again."
The child looked up at him inquiringly, without replying, and then turned towards Minnie and Lottie, who had come up and were standing by. She had an oval face, and large, dark, melancholy, eyes, and only wanted colour to be very pretty.
She looked as if admiringly at the rich fur-trimmed jackets and gay worsted gaiters which Minnie and Lottie wore, in marked contrast to her own shabby clothes. There seemed no envy in her gaze, although perchance some vague perception may have aroused the child's mind that these fine clothes symbolized the difference in the lot of the happy wearers from that which had been cast for herself.
Minnie and Lottie, their hoops, in one hand, and holding the skirts of their elder sister's dress with the other, stood looking at the little stranger with the sort of mistrust that children are wont to evince towards other children at first sight.
Yorke, too, looked silently at the little pale sad face, which seemed to him to call up memories of some bygone scene, when and how he could not tell; perchance some dim-remembered dream.
Then the younger child in the nurse's arms began to whimper, and turning its face away as if frightened, hid it in the girl's shoulder; and the latter, with another awkward curtsy, stepped out towards the cottage, dragging the elder child after her.
"Poor little things!" said Lucy, as they passed on, "they must feel the cold terribly. Don't you wish you had brought some sugarplums, Lottie, to give to that poor little girl?"
"Me told too," said Lottie, "and me so tired — won't you tarry me, 'Oocie? "And, indeed, these little hot-house plants were already feeling the reaction from their unwonted exercise; and Lucy observing that her papa would scold them for having come so far, the party set out homewards, Yorke carrying Lottie on his shoulder, while Lucy led the other little one by the hand.
This arrangement was not favourable for pursuing the conversation into the interesting course it had taken before; and it was still hovering about the commonplace when the rumble of carriage-wheels was heard, and the landau drove up. Mrs. Peevor was inside, having come downstairs in time to take her usual drive, and the whole party were taken up and the horses turned towards home. And wrapped up in rugs, and sitting on Yorke's knee, with genial warmth diffused through the carriage by an ample hot-water cistern (a special arrangement designed by Johnson the engineer), little Lottie soon forgot her troubles.
"You must have been cold, indeed, my darlings," said their mamma, as they drew near home; "it is really not weather for children to be walking about in."
"Lucy was very cold too," said Minnie "Lucy was crying with cold."
"'Oocie was trying with told," interrupted Lottie, " and so Turnel 'Orke tissed her ——"
"Look at the pretty white frost on the trees, Lottie, dear," said Yorke, bumping his little charge up and down on his knee so that speech failed the child for further revelations. Her mamma, however, did not appear to notice the remark, nor Lucy's confusion; and the house being now reached, the latter at once ran up-stairs to her room.
Yorke inquired of the servant who opened the door where Mr. Peevor could be found. The die was cast; and Lucy's last glance as she hurried away half frightened, yet radiant with joy, rilled him with elation.
Mr. Peevor had not yet returned from his walk. But the man had in his hand a telegram just arrived for Yorke.
It was from his London agents. A Mrs. Polwheedle had just called to inquire his address, and wished most particularly to see him on very urgent business. She was staying at the —— Hotel.
Very urgent business! Here was an interruption indeed. Yorke looked at his watch. There was just time, by taking the carriage still at the door, to catch a train at the Hamwell station. If he waited for Mr. Peevor's return, and missed that, he must wait three hours for another, and would not be able to get back till quite late; so his resolution was taken at once, and declining Mrs. Peevor's proposal for luncheon first, and promising to be back for dinner if possible, he jumped into the carriage and drove off. Go he must under the circumstances, and the sooner he got away the sooner he should get back. Mrs. Polwheedle! He had almost forgotten her existence, but he remembered now having heard that she had left India. But what could she want with him? Perhaps she might want to see him for mere curiosity, or because she found herself bewildered on first coming home. Even if she were in trouble it would hardly be necessary to stay over the day in town. And his thoughts going back to the event of the morning, the recollection of the scene on the hill soon drove out from them Mrs. Polwheedle and her message, as he realized the fact that the irrevocable step was taken which must lead to a new path in life. For more had passed on that occasion than has here been told; the exchange of looks and glances, and all the sweet telegraphy of love which cannot be set down in words. And he divined, and truly, that not only had Lucy given him her heart, but that the gift had now been given for the first time. His part must now be to acquire the lover's enthusiasm in return, and indeed he found himself making rapid progress in that direction. If he could not get back by dinner-time, he would at any rate return soon afterwards, in time to speak to Mr. Peevor that very night, and seeing Lucy once again, to reassure himself of her feelings towards him.
In pleasant musings of this kind the short journey was soon accomplished, when, as he got out of the carriage at the terminus, he saw his old friend Maxwell stepping from another compartment higher up the platform.
Pressing forward through the crowd, he overtook him just as he was hailing a cab. Again there was the same mixture of reserve and confusion with cordiality which had marked Maxwell's manner at the last meeting. He had been down near Castleroyal, he said, to visit an old friend who was a great invalid. He must hurry away now, having an urgent appointment; would not Yorke come and dine with him at the Asiatic Club that evening? — no, not that evening, he was engaged, but the following — and have a talk over old times; and Yorke accepting the invitation, the other, again pleading hurry, drove off.
Then, as Yorke stood watching the receding cab, while mingled feelings of annoyance and surprise at this strange reception came uppermost, the truth suddenly flashed upon him. Maxwell's visits, the confusion at meeting him, — it was all plain now. The child whose face had moved him so strongly at the time was Olivia's child, and Olivia herself was the sick lady. The very name, too, assumed by the lady whose husband was abroad, ought to have furnished the clue. How dull of him not to have understood this sooner! It was Olivia who lived in the poor cottage by the river; Olivia deserted by her husband, living there alone with her children, ill and in want. And he had been all this time in England, and had even passed her door, and had brought her no succour! And as her old lover stood on the spot where he had parted from Maxwell, musing, amid the bustle of the busy station, over what had just happened, while each moment the feeling of certainty that he had guessed right grew stronger, all thought of present aims and hopes, and even of the cause for his journey, passed away, while his memory wandered back to old times, treading again once more the familiar scenes which it had so often trod before.
A train was on the point of starting for Castleroyal, and there was just time to get a ticket for Shoalbrook and take his place in it. He had no definite idea of what he would do, but at least he would go down and look again at the poor cottage by the river, and perhaps gain access to Olivia, with offers of service; at any rate the journey was necessary, if only to get rid of the restless eagerness that now possessed him.
He left the train at Shoalbrook, and by way at once of warming himself and calming down the excitement under which he laboured — not lessened by the reflection which overtook him on the journey that he had deserted Mrs. Polwheedle in her call for succour — he set out to walk the three miles or more up the river-bank which would bring him to the point he had visited in the morning. The weather by this time had changed with the true fickleness of an English climate; a dull afternoon had succeeded to the bright morning: the thaw which had set in had restored the surface of the ground to its ordinary winter state; the rising wind drove the mist in his face as he trudged along the miry path; and the short winter's day was coming to an end as he reached the spot where he had met Olivia's children. Changed was the scene now, and dull and drear the view which would look so bright and cheerful at the same hour on a summer's day. At his feet ran the river, swollen and rapid, the banks silent and deserted, and the only signs of life the light in the windows of the wayside inn which he had just passed. The cottage, from where he stood, was dark and silent, and seemed as if deserted. Irresolute he walked a little way past it, up the river-bank, asking himself what he should do next Suppose that Olivia, if still there, was too ill to see him? In any case, might not the shock of meeting him in this way do her harm? Or suppose that under the burden of her misfortunes she had come to regard him as an enemy, as no doubt her husband did, what good would come of his presenting himself thus unexpectedly? She might refuse to see him. And before the stern facts of the situation the indefinite hopes of a meeting which had brought him down from London melted away. He would have done better to wait and see Maxwell first, and learn how matters stood. Mrs. Polwheedle's message, too, was probably connected with Olivia. He should at any rate have waited to see her. Yet how wait when Olivia was in want and trouble? And all this time he had been spending his money on amusement, living a life of luxury and pleasure. And thus reproaching himself there came up a vision of "The Beeches" with all its profusion and waste, and for the moment it and its inmates seemed objects for contempt and almost aversion, while his heart was filled with deepest pity for his old love, the glorious creature he had once known radiant with youth and beauty, now living in this squalor, prematurely aged no doubt by care and sickness, the mother of these poor half-clothed children.
Turning in his irresolution, and walking back again past the cottage, still dark and silent, in the direction of the inn, he met a person, the first he had seen, coming towards him, evidently a resident in the neighbourhood from his leisurely pace; and under a sudden impulse Yorke turned towards him to inquire whether the occupants of the cottage had left it. But as he did so, the stranger, who wore a broad-brimmed hat and large cloak, turned away suddenly, declining his proposal so pointedly that Yorke desisted from his purpose, noticing, as the stranger hurried off to avoid him, that, although walking quickly, he was lame, and moved with evident difficulty.
"The gentleman takes me for a tramp, I suppose," thought Yorke; "and yet even in this light I hardly look like one, although in one sense he is right. But perhaps I shall get some information at the inn." And he continued his course in that direction.
Arrived in front of the inn he turned round to look at the cottage, from this point about a couple of hundred yards off. The outline of the roof could now scarcely be made out in the dim twilight; but while gazing at it a light suddenly appeared in an upper window. So, then, Olivia was still there. "That is her room, no doubt," he said to himself. "Poor soul! she has to be sparing of candles, I suppose;" and again there came up a vision of "The Beeches," and the brilliant illumination of which it was the scene every afternoon, when Johnson the engineer attended by a footman went round to light up the house. "Olivia must be keeping her room," he continued, soliloquizing, "so it would have been useless going to the house after all."
But no! while he stood watching the light, it suddenly disappeared from the upper window, and after a brief pause reappeared in a lower room. It had evidently been carried down-stairs. And Yorke, acting under a sudden impulse, hurried across the intervening space, and entering the little garden by the wicket-gate, went up to the door of the cottage and rang the bell