CHAPTER VIII
The winter and the spring had passed, and the house was complete.
It was a fine morning in the early part of June, and Barnet, though
not in the habit of rising early, had taken a long walk before
breakfast; returning by way of the new building. A sufficiently
exciting cause of his restlessness to-day might have been the
intelligence which had reached him the night before, that Lucy
Savile was going to India after all, and notwithstanding the
representations of her friends that such a journey was unadvisable
in many ways for an unpractised girl, unless some more definite
advantage lay at the end of it than she could show to be the case.
Barnet's walk up the slope to the building betrayed that he was in a
dissatisfied mood. He hardly saw that the dewy time of day lent an
unusual freshness to the bushes and trees which had so recently put
on their summer habit of heavy leafage, and made his newly-laid lawn
look as well established as an old manorial meadow. The house had
been so adroitly placed between six tall elms which were growing on
the site beforehand, that they seemed like real ancestral trees; and
the rooks, young and old, cawed melodiously to their visitor.
The door was not locked, and he entered. No workmen appeared to be
present, and he walked from sunny window to sunny window of the
empty rooms, with a sense of seclusion which might have been very
pleasant but for the antecedent knowledge that his almost paternal
care of Lucy Savile was to be thrown away by her wilfulness.
Footsteps echoed through an adjoining room; and bending his eyes in
that direction, he perceived Mr. Jones, the architect. He had come
to look over the building before giving the contractor his final
certificate. They walked over the house together. Everything was
finished except the papering: there were the latest improvements of
the period in bell-hanging, ventilating, smoke-jacks, fire-grates,
and French windows. The business was soon ended, and Jones, having
directed Barnet's attention to a roll of wall-paper patterns which
lay on a bench for his choice, was leaving to keep another
engagement, when Barnet said, 'Is the tomb finished yet for Mrs.
Downe?'
'Well--yes: it is at last,' said the architect, coming back and
speaking as if he were in a mood to make a confidence. 'I have had
no end of trouble in the matter, and, to tell the truth, I am
heartily glad it is over.'
Barnet expressed his surprise. 'I thought poor Downe had given up
those extravagant notions of his? then he has gone back to the altar
and canopy after all? Well, he is to be excused, poor fellow!'
'O no--he has not at all gone back to them--quite the reverse,'
Jones hastened to say. 'He has so reduced design after design, that
the whole thing has been nothing but waste labour for me; till in
the end it has become a common headstone, which a mason put up in
half a day.'
'A common headstone?' said Barnet.
'Yes. I held out for some time for the addition of a footstone at
least. But he said, "O no--he couldn't afford it."'
'Ah, well--his family is growing up, poor fellow, and his expenses
are getting serious.'
'Yes, exactly,' said Jones, as if the subject were none of his. And
again directing Barnet's attention to the wall-papers, the bustling
architect left him to keep some other engagement.
'A common headstone,' murmured Barnet, left again to himself. He
mused a minute or two, and next began looking over and selecting
from the patterns; but had not long been engaged in the work when he
heard another footstep on the gravel without, and somebody enter the
open porch.
Barnet went to the door--it was his manservant in search of him.
'I have been trying for some time to find you, sir,' he said. 'This
letter has come by the post, and it is marked immediate. And
there's this one from Mr. Downe, who called just now wanting to see
you.' He searched his pocket for the second.
Barnet took the first letter--it had a black border, and bore the
London postmark. It was not in his wife's handwriting, or in that
of any person he knew; but conjecture soon ceased as he read the
page, wherein he was briefly informed that Mrs. Barnet had died
suddenly on the previous day, at the furnished villa she had
occupied near London.
Barnet looked vaguely round the empty hall, at the blank walls, out
of the doorway. Drawing a long palpitating breath, and with eyes
downcast, he turned and climbed the stairs slowly, like a man who
doubted their stability. The fact of his wife having, as it were,
died once already, and lived on again, had entirely dislodged the
possibility of her actual death from his conjecture. He went to the
landing, leant over the balusters, and after a reverie, of whose
duration he had but the faintest notion, turned to the window and
stretched his gaze to the cottage further down the road, which was
visible from his landing, and from which Lucy still walked to the
solicitor's house by a cross path. The faint words that came from
his moving lips were simply, 'At last!'
Then, almost involuntarily, Barnet fell down on his knees and
murmured some incoherent words of thanksgiving. Surely his virtue
in restoring his wife to life had been rewarded! But, as if the
impulse struck uneasily on his conscience, he quickly rose, brushed
the dust from his trousers and set himself to think of his next
movements. He could not start for London for some hours; and as he
had no preparations to make that could not be made in half-an-hour,
he mechanically descended and resumed his occupation of turning over
the wall-papers. They had all got brighter for him, those papers.
It was all changed--who would sit in the rooms that they were to
line? He went on to muse upon Lucy's conduct in so frequently
coming to the house with the children; her occasional blush in
speaking to him; her evident interest in him. What woman can in the
long run avoid being interested in a man whom she knows to be
devoted to her? If human solicitation could ever effect anything,
there should be no going to India for Lucy now. All the papers
previously chosen seemed wrong in their shades, and he began from
the beginning to choose again.
While entering on the task he heard a forced 'Ahem!' from without
the porch, evidently uttered to attract his attention, and footsteps
again advancing to the door. His man, whom he had quite forgotten
in his mental turmoil, was still waiting there.
'I beg your pardon, sir,' the man said from round the doorway; 'but
here's the note from Mr. Downe that you didn't take. He called just
after you went out, and as he couldn't wait, he wrote this on your
study-table.'
He handed in the letter--no black-bordered one now, but a practical-
looking note in the well-known writing of the solicitor.
'DEAR BARNET'--it ran--'Perhaps you will be prepared for the
information I am about to give--that Lucy Savile and myself are
going to be married this morning. I have hitherto said nothing as
to my intention to any of my friends, for reasons which I am sure
you will fully appreciate. The crisis has been brought about by her
expressing her intention to join her brother in India. I then
discovered that I could not do without her.
'It is to be quite a private wedding; but it is my particular wish
that you come down here quietly at ten, and go to church with us; it
will add greatly to the pleasure I shall experience in the ceremony,
and, I believe, to Lucy's also. I have called on you very early to
make the request, in the belief that I should find you at home; but
you are beforehand with me in your early rising.--Yours sincerely,
C. Downe.'
'Need I wait, sir?' said the servant after a dead silence.
'That will do, William. No answer,' said Barnet calmly.
When the man had gone Barnet re-read the letter. Turning eventually
to the wall-papers, which he had been at such pains to select, he
deliberately tore them into halves and quarters, and threw them into
the empty fireplace. Then he went out of the house; locked the
door, and stood in the front awhile. Instead of returning into the
town, he went down the harbour-road and thoughtfully lingered about
by the sea, near the spot where the body of Downe's late wife had
been found and brought ashore.
Barnet was a man with a rich capacity for misery, and there is no
doubt that he exercised it to its fullest extent now. The events
that had, as it were, dashed themselves together into one half-hour
of this day showed that curious refinement of cruelty in their
arrangement which often proceeds from the bosom of the whimsical god
at other times known as blind Circumstance. That his few minutes of
hope, between the reading of the first and second letters, had
carried him to extraordinary heights of rapture was proved by the
immensity of his suffering now. The sun blazing into his face would
have shown a close watcher that a horizontal line, which he had
never noticed before, but which was never to be gone thereafter, was
somehow gradually forming itself in the smooth of his forehead. His
eyes, of a light hazel, had a curious look which can only be
described by the word bruised; the sorrow that looked from them
being largely mixed with the surprise of a man taken unawares.
The secondary particulars of his present position, too, were odd
enough, though for some time they appeared to engage little of his
attention. Not a soul in the town knew, as yet, of his wife's
death; and he almost owed Downe the kindness of not publishing it
till the day was over: the conjuncture, taken with that which had
accompanied the death of Mrs. Downe, being so singular as to be
quite sufficient to darken the pleasure of the impressionable
solicitor to a cruel extent, if made known to him. But as Barnet
could not set out on his journey to London, where his wife lay, for
some hours (there being at this date no railway within a distance of
many miles), no great reason existed why he should leave the town.
Impulse in all its forms characterized Barnet, and when he heard the
distant clock strike the hour of ten his feet began to carry him up
the harbour-road with the manner of a man who must do something to
bring himself to life. He passed Lucy Savile's old house, his own
new one, and came in view of the church. Now he gave a perceptible
start, and his mechanical condition went away. Before the church-
gate were a couple of carriages, and Barnet then could perceive that
the marriage between Downe and Lucy was at that moment being
solemnized within. A feeling of sudden, proud self-confidence, an
indocile wish to walk unmoved in spite of grim environments, plainly
possessed him, and when he reached the wicket-gate he turned in
without apparent effort. Pacing up the paved footway he entered the
church and stood for a while in the nave passage. A group of people
was standing round the vestry door; Barnet advanced through these
and stepped into the vestry.
There they were, busily signing their names. Seeing Downe about to
look round, Barnet averted his somewhat disturbed face for a second
or two; when he turned again front to front he was calm and quite
smiling; it was a creditable triumph over himself, and deserved to
be remembered in his native town. He greeted Downe heartily,
offering his congratulations.
It seemed as if Barnet expected a half-guilty look upon Lucy's face;
but no, save the natural flush and flurry engendered by the service
just performed, there was nothing whatever in her bearing which
showed a disturbed mind: her gray-brown eyes carried in them now as
at other times the well-known expression of common-sensed rectitude
which never went so far as to touch on hardness. She shook hands
with him, and Downe said warmly, 'I wish you could have come sooner:
I called on purpose to ask you. You'll drive back with us now?'
'No, no,' said Barnet; 'I am not at all prepared; but I thought I
would look in upon you for a moment, even though I had not time to
go home and dress. I'll stand back and see you pass out, and
observe the effect of the spectacle upon myself as one of the
public.'
Then Lucy and her husband laughed, and Barnet laughed and retired;
and the quiet little party went gliding down the nave and towards
the porch, Lucy's new silk dress sweeping with a smart rustle round
the base-mouldings of the ancient font, and Downe's little daughters
following in a state of round-eyed interest in their position, and
that of Lucy, their teacher and friend.
So Downe was comforted after his Emily's death, which had taken
place twelve months, two weeks, and three days before that time.
When the two flys had driven off and the spectators had vanished,
Barnet followed to the door, and went out into the sun. He took no
more trouble to preserve a spruce exterior; his step was unequal,
hesitating, almost convulsive; and the slight changes of colour
which went on in his face seemed refracted from some inward flame.
In the churchyard he became pale as a summer cloud, and finding it
not easy to proceed he sat down on one of the tombstones and
supported his head with his hand.
Hard by was a sexton filling up a grave which he had not found time
to finish on the previous evening. Observing Barnet, he went up to
him, and recognizing him, said, 'Shall I help you home, sir?'
'O no, thank you,' said Barnet, rousing himself and standing up.
The sexton returned to his grave, followed by Barnet, who, after
watching him awhile, stepped into the grave, now nearly filled, and
helped to tread in the earth.
The sexton apparently thought his conduct a little singular, but he
made no observation, and when the grave was full, Barnet suddenly
stopped, looked far away, and with a decided step proceeded to the
gate and vanished. The sexton rested on his shovel and looked after
him for a few moments, and then began banking up the mound.
In those short minutes of treading in the dead man Barnet had formed
a design, but what it was the inhabitants of that town did not for
some long time imagine. He went home, wrote several letters of
business, called on his lawyer, an old man of the same place who had
been the legal adviser of Barnet's father before him, and during the
evening overhauled a large quantity of letters and other documents
in his possession. By eleven o'clock the heap of papers in and
before Barnet's grate had reached formidable dimensions, and he
began to burn them. This, owing to their quantity, it was not so
easy to do as he had expected, and he sat long into the night to
complete the task.
The next morning Barnet departed for London, leaving a note for
Downe to inform him of Mrs. Barnet's sudden death, and that he was
gone to bury her; but when a thrice-sufficient time for that purpose
had elapsed, he was not seen again in his accustomed walks, or in
his new house, or in his old one. He was gone for good, nobody knew
whither. It was soon discovered that he had empowered his lawyer to
dispose of all his property, real and personal, in the borough, and
pay in the proceeds to the account of an unknown person at one of
the large London banks. The person was by some supposed to be
himself under an assumed name; but few, if any, had certain
knowledge of that fact.
The elegant new residence was sold with the rest of his possessions;
and its purchaser was no other than Downe, now a thriving man in the
borough, and one whose growing family and new wife required more
roomy accommodation than was afforded by the little house up the
narrow side street. Barnet's old habitation was bought by the
trustees of the Congregational Baptist body in that town, who pulled
down the time-honoured dwelling and built a new chapel on its site.
By the time the last hour of that, to Barnet, eventful year had
chimed, every vestige of him had disappeared from the precincts of
his native place, and the name became extinct in the borough of
Port-Bredy, after having been a living force therein for more than
two hundred years.
