Chapter 21

The white meadow that she crossed so swiftly gleamed like the sea, and the cows loomed through the greyness like peaceful apparitions. But the dark wood with its sepulchral fir-tops and mysteriously spreading beech-trees was full of formless terror, and once the girl screamed as the birds flew with an awful sound through the dark undergrowth. A gloomy wood by night has terrors for the bravest, and it was only the certainty that she was leaving girl-life--chaperons, waltz-tunes, and bitter sneering, for ever--that gave courage to proceed. A bit of moss-grown wall, a singularly shaped holly-bush, a white stone, took fantastic and supernatural appearances, and once she stopped, paralyzed with fear, before the grotesque shadow that a dead tree threw over an unexpected glade. A strange bird rose from the bare branches, and at that moment her dress was caught by a bramble, and, when her shriek tore the dark stillness, a hundred wings flew through the pallor of the waning moon.

At the end of this glade there was a paling and a stile that Olive would have to cross, and she could now hear, as she ran forward, the needles of the silver firs rustling with a pricking sound in the wind. The heavy branches stretched from either side, and Olive thought when she had passed this dernful alley she would have nothing more to fear; and she ran on blindly until she almost fell in the arms of someone whom she instantly believed to be Edward.

'Oh! Edward, Edward, I am nearly dead with fright!' she exclaimed.

'I am not Edward,' a woman answered. Olive started a step backwards; she would have fainted, but at the moment the words were spoken Mrs. Lawler's face was revealed in a beam of weak light that fell through a vista in the branches.

'Who are you? Let me pass.'

'Who am I? You know well enough; we haven't been neighbours for fifteen years without knowing each other by sight. So you are going to run away with Captain Hibbert!'

'Oh, Mrs. Lawler, let me pass. I am in a great hurry, I cannot wait; and you won't say anything about meeting me in the wood, will you?'

'Let you pass, indeed; and what do you think I came here for? Oh, I know all about it--all about the corner of the road, and the carriage and post-horses! a very nice little plan and very nicely arranged, but I'm afraid it won't come off--at least, not to-night.'

'Oh, won't it, and why?' cried Olive, clasping her hands. 'Then it was Edward who sent you to meet me, to tell me that--that--What has happened?'

'Sent me to tell you! Whom do you take me for? Is it for a--well, a nice piece of cheek! I carry your messages? Well, I never!'

'Then what did you come here for--how did you know? . . .'

'How did I know? That's my business. What did I come here for? What do you think? Why, to prevent you from going off with Teddy.'

'With Teddy!'

'Yes, with Teddy. Do you think no one calls him Teddy but yourself?'

Then Olive understood, and, with her teeth clenched she said, 'No, it isn't true; it is a lie; I will not believe it. Let me pass. What business have you to detain me?--what right have you to speak to me? We don't know you; no one knows you: you are a bad woman whom no one will know.'

'A bad woman! I like that--and from you. And what do you want to be, why are you running away from home? Why, to be what I was. We're all alike, the same blood runs in our veins, and when the devil is in us we must have sweethearts, get them how we may: the airs and graces come on after; they are only so much trimming.'

'How dare you insult me, you bad woman? Let me pass; I don't know what you mean.'

'Oh yes, you do. You think Teddy will take you off to Paris, and spoon you and take you out; but he won't, at least not to-night. I shan't give him up so easily as you think for, my lady.'

'Give him up! What is he to you? How dare you speak so of my future husband? Captain Hibbert only loves me, he has often told me so.'

'Loves nobody but you! I suppose you think that he never kissed, or spooned, or took anyone on his knee but you. Well, I suppose at twenty we'd believe anything a man told us; and we always think we are getting the first of it when we are only getting someone else's leavings. But it isn't for chicks of girls like you that a man cares, it isn't to you a man comes for the love he wants; your kisses are very skim milk indeed, and it is we who teach them the words of love that they murmur afterwards in your ears.'

The women looked at each other in silence, and both heard the needles shaken through the darkness above them. Mrs. Lawler stood by the stile, her hand was laid on the paling. At last Olive said:

'Let me pass. I will not listen to you any longer; nor do I believe a word you have said. We all know what you are; you are a bad woman whom no one will visit. Let me pass!' and pushing passionately forward she attempted to cross the stile. Then Mrs. Lawler took her by the shoulder and threw her roughly back. She fell to the ground heavily.

'Now you had better get up and go home,' said Mrs. Lawler, and she approached the prostrate girl. 'I didn't mean to hurt you; but you shan't elope with Teddy if I can prevent it. Why don't you get up?'

'Oh! my leg, my leg; you have broken my leg!'

'Let me help you up.'

'Don't touch me,' said Olive, attempting to rise; but the moment she put her right foot to the ground she shrieked with pain, and fell again.

'Well, if you are going to take it in that way, you may remain where you are, and I can't go and ring them up at Brookfield. I don't think there will be much eloping done to-night, so farewell.'

XXVI

About ten o'clock on the night of Olive's elopement, Alice knocked tremblingly at her mother's door.

'Mother,' she said, 'Olive is not in her room, nor yet in the house; I have looked for her everywhere.'

'She is downstairs with her father in the studio,' said Mrs. Barton; and, signing to her daughter to be silent, she led her out of hearing of Barnes, who was folding and putting some dresses away in the wardrobe.

'I have been down to the studio,' Alice replied in a whisper.

'Then I am afraid she has run away with Captain Hibbert. But we shall gain nothing by sending men out with lanterns and making a fuss; by this time she is well on her way to Dublin. She might have done better than Captain Hibbert, but she might also have done worse. She will write to us in a few days to tell us that she is married, and to beg of us to forgive her.'

And that night Mrs. Barton slept even more happily, with her mind more completely at rest, than usual; whereas Alice, fevered with doubt and apprehension, lay awake. At seven o'clock she was at her window, watching the grey morning splinter into sunlight over the quiet fields. Through the mist the gamekeeper came, and another man, carrying a woman between them, and the suspicion that her sister might have been killed in an agrarian outrage gripped her heart like an iron hand. She ran downstairs, and, rushing across the gravel, opened the wicket-gate. Olive was moaning with pain, but her moans were a sweet reassurance in Alice's ears, and without attempting to understand the man's story of how Miss Olive had sprained her ankle in crossing the stile in their wood, and how he had found her as he was going his rounds, she gave the man five shillings, thanked him, and sent him away. Barnes and the butler then carried Olive upstairs, and in the midst of much confusion Mr. Barton rode down the avenue in quest of Dr. Reed--galloped down the avenue, his pale hair blowing in the breeze.

'I wish you had come straight to me,' said Mrs. Barton to Alice, as soon as Barnes had left the room. 'We'd have got her upstairs between us, and then we might have told any story we liked about her illness.'

'But the Lawlers' gamekeeper would know all about it.'

'Ah, yes, that's true. I never heard of anything so unfortunate in my life. An elopement is never very respectable, but an elopement that does not succeed, when the girl comes home again, is just as bad as--I cannot think how Olive could have managed to meet Captain Hibbert and arrange all this business, without my finding it out. I feel sure she must have had the assistance of a third party. I feel certain that all this is Barnes's doing. I am beginning to hate that woman, with her perpetual smile, but it won't do to send her away now; we must wait.' And on these words Mrs. Barton approached the bed.

Shaken with sudden fits of shivering, and her teeth chattering, Olive lay staring blindly at her mother and sister. Her eyes were expressive at once of fear and pain.

'And now, my own darling, will you tell me how all this happened?'

'Oh, not now, mother--not now . . . I don't know; I couldn't help it. . . . You mustn't scold me, I feel too ill to bear it.'

'I am not thinking of scolding you, dearest, and you need not tell me anything you do not like. . . . I know you were going to run away with Captain Hibbert, and met with an accident crossing the stile in the Lawler Wood.'

'Oh, yes, yes; I met that horrid woman, Mrs. Lawler; she knew all about it, and was waiting for me at the stile. She said lots of dreadful things to me . . . I don't remember what; that she had more right to Edward than I--'

'Never mind, dear; don't agitate yourself thinking of what she said.'

'And then, as I tried to pass her, she pushed me and I fell, and hurt my ankle so badly that I could not get up; and she taunted me, and she said she could not help me home because we were not on visiting terms. And I lay in that dreadful wood all night. But I can't speak any more, I feel too ill; and I never wish to see Edward again. . . . The pain of my ankle is something terrible.'

Mrs. Barton looked at Alice expressively, and she whispered in her ear:

'This is all Barnes's doing, but we cannot send her away. . . . We must put a bold face on it, and brave it out.'

Dr. Reed was announced.

'Oh, how do you do, doctor? . . . It is so good of you to come at once. . . . We were afraid Mr. Barton would not find you at home. I am afraid that Olive has sprained her foot badly. Last night she went out for a walk rather late in the evening, and, in endeavouring to cross a stile, she slipped and hurt herself so badly that she was unable to return home, and lay exposed for several hours to the heavy night dews. I am afraid she has caught a severe cold. . . . She has been shivering.'

'Can I see her foot?'

'Certainly. Olive, dear, will you allow Dr. Reed to see your ankle?'

'Oh, take care, mamma; you are hurting me!' shrieked the girl, as Mrs. Barton removed the bedclothes. At this moment a knock was heard at the door.

'Who on earth is this?' cried Mrs. Barton. 'Alice, will you go and see? Say that I am engaged, and can attend to nothing now.'

When Alice returned to the bedside she drew her mother imperatively towards the window. 'Captain Hibbert is waiting in the drawing-room. He says he must see you.'

At the mention of Captain Hibbert's name Mrs. Barton's admirably governed temper showed signs of yielding: her face contracted and she bit her lips.

'You must go down and see him. Tell him that Olive is very ill and that the doctor is with her. And mind you, you must not answer any questions. Say that I cannot see him, but that I am greatly surprised at his forcing his way into my house after what has passed between us; that I hope he will never intrude himself upon us again; that I cannot have my daughter's life endangered, and that, if he insists on persecuting us, I shall have to write to his Colonel.'

'Do you not think that father would be the person to make such explanations?'

'You know your father could not be trusted to talk sensibly for five minutes--at least,' she said, correcting herself, 'on anything that did not concern painting or singing. . . . But,' she continued, following her daughter to the door, 'on second thoughts I do not think it would be advisible to bring matters to a crisis. . . . I do not know how this affair will affect Olive's chances, and if he is anxious to marry her I do not see why he should not; . . . she may not be able to get any better. So you had better, I think, put him off--pretend that we are very angry, and get him to promise not to try to see or to write to Olive until, let us say, the end of the year. It will only make him more keen on her.'

When Alice opened the drawing-room door Captain Hibbert rushed forward; his soft eyes were bright with excitement, and his tall figure was thrown into a beautiful pose when he stopped.

'Oh, I beg your pardon. Miss Barton. I had expected your sister.'

'My sister is very ill in bed, and the doctor is with her.'

'Ill in bed!'

'Yes, she sprained her ankle last night in attempting to cross the stile in the wood at the end of our lawn.'

'Oh, that was the reason . . . then . . . Can I see your sister for a few minutes?'

'It is quite impossible; and my mother desires me to say that she is very much surprised that you should come here. . . . We know all about your attempt to induce Olive to leave her home.'

'Then she has told you? But if you knew how I love her, you would not blame me. What else could I do? Your mother would not let me see her, and she was very unhappy at home; you did not know this, but I did, and if luck hadn't been against me--Ah! but what's the use in talking of luck; luck was against me, or she would have been my wife now. And what a little thing suffices to blight a man's happiness in life; what a little, oh, what a little!' he said, speaking in a voice full of bitterness; and he buried his face in his hands.

Alice's eyes as she looked at him were expressive of her thoughts--they beamed at once with pity and admiration. He was but the ordinary handsome young man that in England nature seems to reproduce in everlasting stereotype. Long graceful legs, clad in tight-fitting trousers, slender hips rising architecturally to square wide shoulders, a thin strong neck and a tiny head--yes, a head so small that an artist would at once mark off eight on his sheet of double elephant. And now he lay over the back of a chair weeping like a child; in the intensity of his grief he was no longer commonplace; and as Alice looked at this superb animal thrown back in a superb abandonment of pose, her heart filled with the natural pity that the female feels always for the male in distress, and the impulse within her was to put her arms about him and console him; and then she understood her sister's passion for him, and her mind formulated it thus: 'How handsome he is! Any girl would like a man like that.' And as Alice surrendered herself to those sensuous, or rather romantic feelings, her nature quickened to a sense of pleasure, and she grew gentler with him, and was glad to listen while he sobbed out his sorrows to her.

'Oh, why,' he exclaimed, 'did she fall over that thrice-accursed stile! In five minutes more we would have been in each other's arms, and for ever. I had a couple of the best post-horses in Gort; they'd have taken us to Athenry in a couple of hours, and then--Oh! what luck, what luck!'

'But do you not know that Olive met Mrs. Lawler in the wood, and that it was she who--'

'What do you say? You don't mean to tell me that it was Mrs. Lawler who prevented Olive from meeting me? Oh, what beasts, what devils women are,' he said; 'and the worst of it is that one cannot be even with them, and they know it. If you only knew,' he said, turning almost fiercely upon Alice, 'how I loved your sister, you would pity me; but I suppose it is all over now. Is she very ill?'

'We don't know yet. She has sprained her ankle very badly, and is shivering terribly; she was lying out all night in the wet wood.'

He did not answer at once. He walked once or twice up and down the room, and then he said, taking Alice's hand in his, 'Will you be a friend to me, Miss Barton?' He could get no further, for tears were rolling down his cheeks.

Alice looked at him tenderly; she was much touched by the manifestation of his love, and at the end of a long silence she said:

'Now, Captain Hibbert, I want you to listen to me. Don't cry any more, but listen.'

'I dare say I look a great fool.'

'No, indeed you do not,' she answered; and then in kindly worded phrases she told him that, at least for the present, he must not attempt to correspond with Olive. 'Give me your word of honour that you will neither write nor speak to her for, let us say, six months, and I will promise to be your friend.'

'I will do anything you ask me to do, but will you in return promise to write and tell me how she is getting on, and if she is in any danger?'

'I think I can promise to do that; I will write and tell you how Olive is in a few days. Now we must say good-bye; and you will not forget your promise to me, as I shall not forget mine to you.'

When Alice went upstairs, Dr. Reed and Mrs. Barton were talking on the landing.

'And what do you think, doctor?' asked the anxious mother.

'It is impossible to say. She has evidently received a severe nervous shock, and this and the exposure to which she was subjected may develop into something serious. You will give her that Dover's powder to-night, and you will see that she has absolute quiet and rest. Have you got a reliable nurse?'

'Yes, the young ladies have a maid; I think Barnes can be trusted to carry out your orders, doctor.'

'Oh, mamma, I hope you will allow me to nurse my sister; I should not like to leave her in charge of a servant.'

'I am afraid you are not strong enough, dear.'

'Oh, yes, I am; am I not strong enough, doctor?'

Dr. Reed looked for a moment steadily at Alice. 'Your sister will,' he said, 'require a good deal of looking after. But if you will not overdo it, I think you seem quite strong enough to nurse her. But you must not sit up at night with her too regularly; you must share the labour with someone.'

'She will do that with me,' said Mrs. Barton, speaking more kindly, Alice thought, than she had ever heard her speak before.

Then a wailing voice was heard calling to Alice.

'Go in and see what she wants, dear, but you will not encourage her to talk much; the doctor does not wish it.'

The room did not look the same to Alice as it had ever looked before. Her eyes fell on the Persian rugs laid between the two white beds and the tall glass in the wardrobe where Olive wasted half-an-hour every evening, examining her beauty. Would she ever do so again? Now a broken reflection of feverish eyes and blonde hair was what remained. The white curtains of the chimneypiece had been drawn aside, a bright fire was burning, and Barnes was removing a foot-pan of hot water.

'Sit down here by me, Alice; I want to talk to you.'

'The doctor has forbidden you to talk, dear; he says you must have perfect rest and quiet.'

'I must talk a little to you; if I didn't I should go mad.'

'Well, what is it, dear?'

'I will tell you presently,' said the sick girl, glancing at Barnes.

'You can tidy up the room afterwards, Barnes; Miss Olive wants to talk to me now.'

'Oh, Alice, tell me,' cried the girl, when the servant had left the room, 'I don't want to ask mamma--she won't tell me the exact truth; but you will. Tell me what the doctor said. . . . Did he say I was going to die?'

'Going to die? Olive, who ever heard of such a thing? You really must not give way to such fancies.'

'Well, tell me what he said.'

'He said that you had received a severe nervous shock, that you had been subjected to several hours' exposure, that you must take great care of yourself, and, above all, have perfect rest and quiet, and not excite yourself, and not talk.'

'Is that all he said? Then he cannot know how ill I feel; perhaps I ought to see another doctor. But I don't believe anyone could do me much good. Oh, I feel wretchedly ill, and somehow I seem to know I am going to die! It would be very horrible to die; but young girls no older than I have died--have been cut off in the beginning of their life. And we have seen nothing of life, only a few balls and parties. It would be terrible to die so soon. When Violet carried off the Marquis I felt so bitterly ashamed that I thought I would have liked to die; but not now--now I know that Edward loves me I would not care to die; it would be terrible to die before I was married. Wouldn't it, Alice? . . . But you don't answer me; did you never think about death?'

Then, as the thin wailing voice sank into her ears, Alice started from her dreams, and she strove to submit her attention to her sister.

'Yes, dear, of course I have. Death is, no doubt, a very terrible thing, but we can do no good by thinking of it.'

'Oh yes, we should, Alice, for this is not the only world--there is another and a better one; and, as mamma says, and as religion says, we are only here to try and get a good place in it. You are surprised to hear me speak like this; you think I never think of anything but the colour of a bonnet-string, but I do.'

'I am sure you do, Olive; I never doubted it; but I wish you would now do what the doctor orders, and refrain from talking and exciting yourself, and try and get well. You may then think of death and other gloomy things as much as you like.'

'You don't understand, Alice; one can't think of death, then--one has so much else to think of; one is so taken up with other ideas. It is only when one is ill that one really begins to see what life is. You have never been ill, and you don't know how terribly near death seems to have come--very near. Perhaps I ought to see the priest; it would be just as well, just in case I should die. Don't you think so?'

'I don't think there is any more danger of your dying now than there was a month ago, dear, and I am sure you can have nothing on your mind that demands immediate confession,' she said, her voice trembling a little.

'Oh yes, I have, Alice, and a very great deal; I have been very wicked.'

'Very wicked!'

'Well, I know you aren't pious, Alice, and perhaps you don't believe there is harm in such things, but I do; and I know it was very wrong, and perhaps a mortal sin, to try to run away with Edward. But I loved him so very dearly, and I was so tired of staying at home and being taken out to parties. And when you are in love with a man you forget everything. At least I did; and when he asked to kiss me I couldn't refuse. You won't tell anyone, Alice dear, that I told you this.' Alice shook her head, and Olive continued, in spite of all that the doctor had said:

'But you don't know how lonely I feel at home; you never feel lonely, I dare say, for you only think of your books and papers, and don't realize what a disgrace it would be if I didn't marry, and after all the trouble that mamma has taken. But I don't know what will become of me now. I'm going to be dreadfully ill, and when I get well I shall be pretty no longer; I am sure I am looking wretchedly. I must see myself--fetch the glass, Alice, Alice.'

Olive lay whining and calling for her sister, and when Dr. Reed came he ordered several inches of the pale silky hair to be cut away and a cold lotion to be applied to the forehead, and some sliced lemons were given to her to suck.