Chapter 13

Frank took up a volume of Browning, turned over the leaves, and laid the book down to watch a drove of horses that had suddenly been turned out on the green to feed, and he laughed to see the children throwing stones, making them gallop frantically. Very often the thunder of the hoofs alarmed Triss, and he stood on his hind legs and barked. “What is it, old dog? What is it? Like to have a go at the horses? Shall we go out and play with the pugs?” At the mention of going out Triss cocked his ears and barked. “I suppose I must make a move. I wonder what the time is--half-past eleven. Good Heavens! The post will be here at twelve. I had better wait for it.” On waking his first thoughts were for his letters, and almost before he had finished reading them he had begun to think of what the mid-day delivery would bring him. To see the boy pass and so have ocular proof that there was nothing for him seemed to lighten his disappointment. He saw him waste his time with the doctor's horse and then with the maid-servant, and if the old ladies were not about he would stand talking many minutes with their servants. Then he visited the short line of cottages, passed sometimes round the yard or open space at the back of the wheelwright's, where the linen hung on poles between the elms, and once Frank saw the provoking boy hide behind the cricketers' tent and remain watching the match. For half an hour the question--letters or no letters--hung in suspense, and when the loiterer came, stopping every minute to see where the ball was hit to, the joy, heightened by anticipation, was great in receiving a packet of newspapers and various correspondence. Frank often went to meet him. True, he might have nothing for him, he might be going to deliver at the grocer's shop, or at the “Cricketer's Arms.”

“Any letters for me, to-day?”

“Yes, sir, two postcards and a newspaper.”

It was disappointing not to get a letter--postcards meant nothing. He only exchanged a few words with Mrs. Horlock, and passed on to the General, who, at the corner of the Southdown Road where the gossipers met, was discussing a local candidature.

“So you are off to paint. You must come and see the model my wife has done of a horse I once had. I mustn't say much about him, though--it is a sore subject. After winning over a thousand with him I lost it all, and five hundred with it. She never would paint his picture for me; but yesterday was my birthday--I suppose she thought she would give me a treat, she began to model him from memory--wonderful likeness--she knows every bone and sinew in a horse--clever woman, never seen any one like her. Come in to-night, dinner always at eight--old Indians. She'll show it to you.”

“Thanks, not to-night, General; to-morrow night, if you like.”

“Very well, to-morrow night at eight. What a terrible dog that is of yours! You need fear nobody while you have him with you. You must ask my wife to paint him for you, but I forgot, I beg your pardon--you are a painter; you should paint him yourself.”

“I don't paint animals. I shall be very glad if Mrs. Horlock will paint him; there is some beautiful drawing about him--those fore-legs.”

Probably attracted by the dog, Mrs. Horlock came walking towards them. Triss went sidling after Rose, and when Mrs. Horlock called him, he growled.

“I beg of you, Mrs. Horlock, do not touch him; he isn't safe, I assure you. He once bit a man's nose off who was trying to train him to do something or other. I will not be answerable.”

“All nonsense! No dog ever bit me, they know I love them. 'Come to me, sir.' No dog ever bit me but once, and he was a poor mongrel that had been hunted by a lot of horrid men. I was dressing to go to a ball at the Government House, and I heard him under my bed. He had taken refuge under my bed, poor thing. He was frightened to death; he couldn't see me, and he bit me through the wrist. I went to the ball all the same. A dog died of hydrophobia in my arms. He died like a child, licking my hands and face. 'Come here, sir. Come to me.'”

“I wish you wouldn't do it, Mrs. Horlock. I am afraid to call him, for fear he should think I intended to set him at you.”

Triss showed a terrible set of teeth, and his nose seemed to curl back almost into his eyes; but stooping down Mrs. Horlock extended her hands to him. She looked so like herself in the poke bonnet and the black dress, and the kind, intelligent eyes softened the dog's humour, and he came to her.

“You see--what did I tell you? Dogs know so well those that love them. No animal ever did bite me except that poor frightened creature, and he didn't mean it. We kept him for ten years after that, and how he did love me!”

“Wonderful woman, my wife; she can do what she likes with animals. I was telling Mr. Escott that he must come in and see the model you are making of Snap-dragon.”

“Only an amateur, I never had a lesson in my life. Mr. Escott would think nothing of it, I am sure. But I wish he'd come in and dine with us.”

“He promised to come to-morrow, Lucy; but stay, isn't that the day we are going to have the Bath people in to dine?”

“Never mind--Mr. Escott won't mind, I'm sure. They are very nice, good people, indeed. I'm sure you'll think so. They are all snobs about this place. I never heard of such snobbery in my life. Mrs. So-and-so--over there--once said to me, 'I believe you know all the people who live in those little houses.' She said she wouldn't allow her children even to walk across the green. Did you ever hear of such snobbery?”

“Well, Mrs. Horlock, as I have always said, your position is made; you have your friends who will like you and value you just the same no matter whom you may walk about the green with. Every Viceroy that ever went to India called on you; your position is made.”

“There are a lot of snobs about here; but I mustn't keep Angel waiting, he is never well unless he gets a little exercise. We shall see you then at eight.”

“The cleverest woman I ever knew. I don't say the cleverest that you ever knew. But we have got too many animals; I often wish I could get rid of the brutes,” and the General laughed as he stumped along. “Five horses when two would be sufficient--five horses eating their heads off; then the Circassian goats that the neighbours complain of, and the parrots and the squirrels. There are a few too many, there's no doubt. But once an animal comes into the place she will cherish it for ever. I try to keep Prince out of the drawing-room as much as possible, she says she can't smell him. If that little beast Angel would only die!”

“Why don't you poison him?”

“I would if I dared; but just think, if my wife heard of it she would go out of her mind. I don't think she'd have me in the house.” The General laughed.

“We all have our troubles, General. Good-bye, I'm off to work.”

“Lucky man to have something to do. If I had a little something--just a little something to bring me out, I should be perfectly happy. Then at eight. Good-bye.”

“Half-past twelve! Half the day gone, I really must make an effort to get to the studio earlier. It is, as I said, useless to hope to get through work unless you wake up where your work is. A man doesn't get a chance. I wonder if I could build a bedroom out at the back? I have let Mount Rorke in for three hundred extra this year; he would turn rusty if I spent any more. I must give him a rest; besides, I don't want to have the workmen in again. I wish I could get ivy to grow over those walls, they do look precious shabby.”

He looked at the tall dilapidated walls showing above the dark green of the elder bushes, and lingered, for it was a soft blue summer's day with just a breeze stirring, and the corn waved yellow, and the dim expanses of the Downs extended in faint lines and dim tints.

When he entered his studio his colour scheme pleased him, and looking at the rafters he thought that the stained wood was handsome and appropriate. The grey carpet was soft under foot, and the lustre and form of a grand piano suggested Chopin and Schubert. His studio seemed to him a symbol of his own refinement, and being moved, perhaps, by the silence and the quiet of the north light, he took his violin, and turning from time to time to look on himself on the glass or his picture on the easel, he played Stradella's “Chanson d'Eglise.”

Then seeing, or rather thinking he saw, how he could improve his landscape, he took up his palette, and in a desultory and uncertain fashion he painted till five o'clock. “It is no use,” he thought, “I can do nothing with it until I get a model, but the devil of it is, there are no models in Brighton--at least, I don't know where to go and look for one, and it is no use asking Sally or Maggie to sit. They'll sit for five minutes, and then say they have some work to do at home, and must be off. You must have a professional model, a girl you pay a shilling an hour--I might sling the hammock from there to here--I wonder where I could get a girl who would do. I can't have a girl off the street; she must be more or less respectable--I wonder whom I can get. That girl in the bar-room at the station would do.” Putting his palette away with a lazy gesture, he thought for a few minutes of Lizzie Baker. What had become of her? And why had she disappeared?

It was nearly a year and a half ago now. What a jolly day up the river! All the beauty of the flowing water, the crowning woods and whispering rushes filled his mind, and yielding to the moment's emotion he took some verses out of an escritoire and altered several lines. Another abandoning the search for a suitable rhyme he turned to a portrait of Maggie which he had begun a few days before. She stood in a pose that was habitual to her--her hands linked behind her, the head leaned on one side, the little black eyes--but not ugly eyes--fixed in a sweet subtle and enquiring look. The thinness, and, indeed, the angularity of her figure was almost powerfully indicated with broad lines of paint and charcoal. It was Frank's most successful effort. He knew this, and he said to himself, “Not half bad, very like her, quite the character; the drawing is right, if I could only go on with it; if I could only model the face. I see very well where I shall get into trouble--that shadow about the neck, the jawbone, the cheekbone, and then all that rich colour about the eyes.” Then he thought he would walk over to the Manor House, and he must hasten, for it was half-past five, and tea was always ready in the verandah.

He stayed for dinner; he talked to Mr. Brookes about painters in the billiard-room; he strayed through the shadows and the perfumes of leaves and flowers through the gentle moonlight with his arms about the girls. And as they walked it seemed to Frank that his life was so mingled with theirs that he could not think of one sister apart from the other. The dusk gathered; the sky became a decoration in blue and gold; the scent of the sea came over the embankment, filling the garden. Day followed day, without anything happening to stay or check the gentle tide of their mutual affections; neither was jealous of her sister, for their desires were set upon others. Frank was but an ideal, a repose, a pious aspiration which joined their hands and hearts leaving them free of any stress of passion, Maggie claiming him a little more than Sally, and Sally yielding her claim to her without knowing that she was yielding it.

It is only natures that are never gross--calm and tepid livers--that are really incapable of ideality, of real and adequate aspiration; nature works by flux and reflux; and if we waive the rough temper and the coarse edge of passion due to youth, it will not be impossible to conceive another picture of these girls. Sally, good-hearted and true, full of sturdy, homely sense, willing to take care of a man's money, and make him a straightforward wife; Maggie, gentle and sinuating--always a little false, but always attractive, the enchantment of a man's home. Frank, notwithstanding his genuine admiration of all that was young and sweet and pure, was of poor and separating fibre, and it is clear that it will take all the strength of society to support him and save him from sinking of his own weight.

One day, as he was coming through the station from the post-office, he met Maggie with a young man. He was introduced, and they returned to the Manor House to play tennis. Instead of playing they talked, and the set fell through, and after tea they disappeared, and Sally proposed not to disturb them, for they had gone, she said, to sit in the shade at the end of the garden. The marked mystery of the new flirtation piqued Frank's curiosity, and, striving to veil his question, he asked Sally who the young man was, and if her father knew he was coming to the Manor House.

“He! Don't you know? That's the fellow we often speak of--the only fellow Maggie ever really cared for. He has just come back from America. He is going to begin business in London.”

A sickening pain rose from his heart to his eyes, and he longed to place his hand on his heart.

“So that is the man she is engaged to,” he said, after a pause. “I remember, now, you have spoken to me of him.”

“She is not exactly engaged to him. Father would never hear of it; he hasn't a cent, and I believe he lost the little he had in America--now mind you must take care not to let out to father that he has been here; there would be the deuce of a row, and I promised Maggie not to tell any one; she has been nice to me lately, and I want to play fair with her if she will play fair with me.”

“Oh, I won't tell any one; I won't even let Maggie know that I know it was he.”

“It doesn't matter about Maggie, she will tell you herself, no doubt; she doesn't mind your knowing. What do you think of him? Isn't he nice-looking?”

“I confess I should never have thought of calling him handsome--would you? And do you think he is quite a gentleman?”

“He seems to me to be all right.”

“All right, yes, but isn't there a something? You can see he is in trade--all the trading people look alike, at least so I think.”

“But we are in trade, and I think he is quite as good as we are. But you seem quite put out. Would you like to take his place? I didn't know you were in love with Maggie.”

“I don't know that I am in love with her. I like her very much; but, love or no love, I don't think it is right for her to walk round the garden alone with that fellow the whole afternoon. I don't think it is very polite to me, and she knows her father does not like--”

“But you mustn't say anything to father; mind you have promised me.”

“Oh, I shan't say anything about it.”

Frank longed to get up from the tea-table and rush after Maggie. His heart ached to see her. He trembled lest she loved the man she was with, and rejoiced and took courage from the knowledge that she had not formally pledged herself to him. Frank was the romantic husband, not the lover; he found neither charm nor excitement in change; his heart demanded one single, avowed, and binding faith. He could take a woman who had sinned to his heart, and admit her to all his trust, for stolen kisses and illicit love were unfelt and imperfectly understood by him, and were considered as shadows and thin fancies, and not as facts full of mental consequences. He answered Sally in monosyllables, and on the first opportunity he pleaded letters to write, and withdrew. The gladness he felt that Maggie was truly not engaged to this fellow quickened and dominated his regret that the girls were inclined to behave so indiscreetly. The moment Mr. Brookes turned his back it began--that perpetual going and coming of men--it really wasn't right. Sally was a coarser nature, but Maggie! He might speak to Mr. Brookes; no, that wouldn't do. He might speak to Willy; but Willy didn't care--he was absorbed in his wife and his speculations.

His little dinner at Mrs. Heald's passed in irritation and discomfort, and after dinner he stood at the window, his brain full of Maggie--her graces, her fascinating cunning, and all her picturesqueness. He knew nothing yet of his passion, nor did he think he could not bear to lose her until he went from the stuffy cottage towards his studio thinking of his portrait of her. He wanted to muse on the little eyes as he had rendered them. He saw the faults in the drawing hardly at all, and his pain softened and almost ceased when he took up the violin, but when he put it down the flow of subjective emotion ceased, and he stared on the concrete and realistic image of his thought--Maggie passing through the shade with the young stranger.

Who was he? By whose authority was he there? Was he one of those men whose only pleasure is to tempt girls, to corrupt them? Had he thought of this before his duty would have been to interpose; and he saw himself striding down the garden and telling Maggie that he insisted on her coming back to the verandah to her sister. It did not matter if he had no right, he was prepared to answer for his conduct to her father and brother. Did that man look like one of those men who are always sitting with girls in far corners out of sight? Ah, if he were sure that he was one of those dastardly ruffians he would seek him out, force him to speak his intentions. If a girl's father and brother will not look after her, a friend must say “I will.” Yes, he would have to thrash him, kill him, if it were necessary. She might hate him for it at first, but in the end she would recognise him as her saviour.

It was too late now, the man was in Brighton. To-morrow? Elated with what he deemed “duty,” with what he deemed “for the sake of the girl,” he strode about, thinking of “the ruffian”; no thought came to him of how much of the sin, if sin there was, had originated in Maggie; he saw her merely as a poor little thing, led like a lamb. Following the idea of saving came the idea of possession. When she clung to the husband she would tremble at the danger she had escaped. Their home, their table, their fireside; protection from evil, now all wild winds might rage--they would be safe. The vision was constitutional and characteristic of his soul. He was out of thought of all but himself, his dream evolved in pure idea, removed from and independent of all limitations--out of concern of the world's favour--Mount Rorke, Mr. Brookes, or even the girl's grace. As this temper passed, as reality again interposed, and as he saw the garden with Maggie leaving him for another, he viewed her conduct suddenly in relation to himself. What did she mean by treating him so, and for whom? One day he would be Lord Mount Rorke! The Brookes knew nobody. He had only met a lot of cads at their house; they did not know any one but cads. The Brookes were cads! The father was a vulgar old City man, who talked about money and bought ridiculous pictures. The girls, too, were vulgar and coarse. God only knew how many lovers they had not had. Willy was the best of the bunch, but he was a fool. His miserliness and his vegetable shop--hateful! The whole place was hateful; he wished he had never come there; since he had been there he had never been treated even as a gentleman. The Brookes had treated him shamefully.

The skeleton of Frank's soul is easy to trace in this mental crisis--his quixotism, his wish to sally forth and save women, his yearning for a pretty little wife, who would sit on his knee and kiss him, saying, “Poor old boy, you are tired now;” therefore an emotional and distorted apprehension of things, a tendency to think himself a wronged and persecuted person, and under much bravado and swagger the cringe that is so inveterate in the Celt.

Next morning he thought of her lightly, without bitterness and almost without desire; but after breakfast his heart began to ache again. He strove to read, he went to his studio, he went to Brighton; but he saw Maggie in all things. She was with him--a sort of vague pain that kept him strangely conscious of life.

Once convinced he was a lover he became the man with a mission; his heart swelled with mysterious promptings, and felt the spur of duty. No longer was delay admissible. A day, an hour might involve the loss of all. Should he go round to the Manor House and tell Maggie of the message he had received to love her and save her? She would now be watering her flowers in the green-houses. But that other fellow might be there--he had heard something about an appointment. No, he had better write. If he wrote at once, absolutely at once, he would be in time for the six o'clock delivery. Snatching a sheet of paper he wrote:--

“DEAREST MAGGIE,--I have loved you a long while, I remember many things that make me think that I have always loved you; but to-day I have learnt that you are the one great and absorbing influence--that without you my life would be stupid and meaningless, whereas with you it shall be a joy, an achievement.

“I have frittered away much time; my efforts in painting and poetry have been lacking in strength and persistency. I have vacillated and wandered, and I did not know why; but now I know why--because you were not by me to encourage me, to help me by your presence and beauty. I will not speak of the position I offer you--I know it is unworthy of you. I would like to give you a throne; but, alas, I can but promise you a coronet.”

His hand stopped and he raised his eyes from the paper. He recollected the day he saw her a child, the day they went blackberrying over the hills. He saw her again, she was older and prettier, and she wore a tailor-cut cloth dress. How pretty she looked that day, and also when she wore that summer dress, those blue ribbons. All the colour, innocence, and mirth of his childhood came upon him sweetly, like an odour that passes and recalls. He sighed, and he murmured, “She is mine by right, all this could not have been if she were not for me.” Ah! how he longed to sit with her, even at her feet, and tell her how his life would be but worship of her. He regretted that he was not poor, for to unite himself more closely to her he would have liked to win her clothes and food by his labour; and hearing himself speaking of love and seeing her as a maiden with the May time about her, his dreams drifted until the ticking of the clock forced him to remember that he could tell her nothing now of all his romance, so with pain and despair at heart he wrote,

“Never before did I so ardently feel the necessity of seeing you, of sharing my soul with you, and yet now is the moment when I say, I must end. But let this end be the beginning of our life of love, devotion, and trust. I will come to-night to see you; I will not go into the billiard-room, but will walk straight to the drawing-room. Do be there. Dearest Maggie, I am yours and yours only.”

He seized his hat and rushed to the post. He was in time, and now that the step had been taken, he walked back looking more than usually handsome and tall, pleased to see the children run out of school and roll on the grass, pleased to linger with the General.

“Where are you going, sir?” said the old man.

“I'm going to my studio to play the fiddle. Will you come? I'll give you a glass of sherry, and--”

“Never touch anything, except at meals. I used to when I was as young as you, but not now. But I will go and hear a little music.”