CHAPTER IX
Twenty-one years and six months do not pass without setting a mark
even upon durable stone and triple brass; upon humanity such a
period works nothing less than transformation. In Barnet's old
birthplace vivacious young children with bones like india-rubber had
grown up to be stable men and women, men and women had dried in the
skin, stiffened, withered, and sunk into decrepitude; while
selections from every class had been consigned to the outlying
cemetery. Of inorganic differences the greatest was that a railway
had invaded the town, tying it on to a main line at a junction a
dozen miles off. Barnet's house on the harbour-road, once so
insistently new, had acquired a respectable mellowness, with ivy,
Virginia creepers, lichens, damp patches, and even constitutional
infirmities of its own like its elder fellows. Its architecture,
once so very improved and modern, had already become stale in style,
without having reached the dignity of being old-fashioned. Trees
about the harbour-road had increased in circumference or disappeared
under the saw; while the church had had such a tremendous practical
joke played upon it by some facetious restorer or other as to be
scarce recognizable by its dearest old friends.
During this long interval George Barnet had never once been seen or
heard of in the town of his fathers.
It was the evening of a market-day, and some half-dozen middle-aged
farmers and dairymen were lounging round the bar of the Black-Bull
Hotel, occasionally dropping a remark to each other, and less
frequently to the two barmaids who stood within the pewter-topped
counter in a perfunctory attitude of attention, these latter sighing
and making a private observation to one another at odd intervals, on
more interesting experiences than the present.
'Days get shorter,' said one of the dairymen, as he looked towards
the street, and noticed that the lamp-lighter was passing by.
The farmers merely acknowledged by their countenances the propriety
of this remark, and finding that nobody else spoke, one of the
barmaids said 'yes,' in a tone of painful duty.
'Come fair-day we shall have to light up before we start for home-
along.'
'That's true,' his neighbour conceded, with a gaze of blankness.
'And after that we shan't see much further difference all's winter.'
The rest were not unwilling to go even so far as this.
The barmaid sighed again, and raised one of her hands from the
counter on which they rested to scratch the smallest surface of her
face with the smallest of her fingers. She looked towards the door,
and presently remarked, 'I think I hear the 'bus coming in from
station.'
The eyes of the dairymen and farmers turned to the glass door
dividing the hall from the porch, and in a minute or two the omnibus
drew up outside. Then there was a lumbering down of luggage, and
then a man came into the hall, followed by a porter with a
portmanteau on his poll, which he deposited on a bench.
The stranger was an elderly person, with curly ashen white hair, a
deeply-creviced outer corner to each eyelid, and a countenance baked
by innumerable suns to the colour of terra-cotta, its hue and that
of his hair contrasting like heat and cold respectively. He walked
meditatively and gently, like one who was fearful of disturbing his
own mental equilibrium. But whatever lay at the bottom of his
breast had evidently made him so accustomed to its situation there
that it caused him little practical inconvenience.
He paused in silence while, with his dubious eyes fixed on the
barmaids, he seemed to consider himself. In a moment or two he
addressed them, and asked to be accommodated for the night. As he
waited he looked curiously round the hall, but said nothing. As
soon as invited he disappeared up the staircase, preceded by a
chambermaid and candle, and followed by a lad with his trunk. Not a
soul had recognized him.
A quarter of an hour later, when the farmers and dairymen had driven
off to their homesteads in the country, he came downstairs, took a
biscuit and one glass of wine, and walked out into the town, where
the radiance from the shop-windows had grown so in volume of late
years as to flood with cheerfulness every standing cart, barrow,
stall, and idler that occupied the wayside, whether shabby or
genteel. His chief interest at present seemed to lie in the names
painted over the shop-fronts and on door-ways, as far as they were
visible; these now differed to an ominous extent from what they had
been one-and-twenty years before.
The traveller passed on till he came to the bookseller's, where he
looked in through the glass door. A fresh-faced young man was
standing behind the counter, otherwise the shop was empty. The
gray-haired observer entered, asked for some periodical by way of
paying for admission, and with his elbow on the counter began to
turn over the pages he had bought, though that he read nothing was
obvious.
At length he said, 'Is old Mr. Watkins still alive?' in a voice
which had a curious youthful cadence in it even now.
'My father is dead, sir,' said the young man.
'Ah, I am sorry to hear it,' said the stranger. 'But it is so many
years since I last visited this town that I could hardly expect it
should be otherwise.' After a short silence he continued--'And is
the firm of Barnet, Browse, and Company still in existence?--they
used to be large flax-merchants and twine-spinners here?'
'The firm is still going on, sir, but they have dropped the name of
Barnet. I believe that was a sort of fancy name--at least, I never
knew of any living Barnet. 'Tis now Browse and Co.'
'And does Andrew Jones still keep on as architect?'
'He's dead, sir.'
'And the Vicar of St. Mary's--Mr. Melrose?'
'He's been dead a great many years.'
'Dear me!' He paused yet longer, and cleared his voice. 'Is Mr.
Downe, the solicitor, still in practice?'
'No, sir, he's dead. He died about seven years ago.'
Here it was a longer silence still; and an attentive observer would
have noticed that the paper in the stranger's hand increased its
imperceptible tremor to a visible shake. That gray-haired gentleman
noticed it himself, and rested the paper on the counter. 'Is MRS.
Downe still alive?' he asked, closing his lips firmly as soon as the
words were out of his mouth, and dropping his eyes.
'Yes, sir, she's alive and well. She's living at the old place.'
'In East Street?'
'O no; at Chateau Ringdale. I believe it has been in the family for
some generations.'
'She lives with her children, perhaps?'
'No; she has no children of her own. There were some Miss Downes; I
think they were Mr. Downe's daughters by a former wife; but they are
married and living in other parts of the town. Mrs. Downe lives
alone.'
'Quite alone?'
'Yes, sir; quite alone.'
The newly-arrived gentleman went back to the hotel and dined; after
which he made some change in his dress, shaved back his beard to the
fashion that had prevailed twenty years earlier, when he was young
and interesting, and once more emerging, bent his steps in the
direction of the harbour-road. Just before getting to the point
where the pavement ceased and the houses isolated themselves, he
overtook a shambling, stooping, unshaven man, who at first sight
appeared like a professional tramp, his shoulders having a
perceptible greasiness as they passed under the gaslight. Each
pedestrian momentarily turned and regarded the other, and the tramp-
like gentleman started back.
'Good--why--is that Mr. Barnet? 'Tis Mr. Barnet, surely!'
'Yes; and you are Charlson?'
'Yes--ah--you notice my appearance. The Fates have rather ill-used
me. By-the-bye, that fifty pounds. I never paid it, did I? . . .
But I was not ungrateful!' Here the stooping man laid one hand
emphatically on the palm of the other. 'I gave you a chance, Mr.
George Barnet, which many men would have thought full value
received--the chance to marry your Lucy. As far as the world was
concerned, your wife was a DROWNED WOMAN, hey?'
'Heaven forbid all that, Charlson!'
'Well, well, 'twas a wrong way of showing gratitude, I suppose. And
now a drop of something to drink for old acquaintance' sake! And
Mr. Barnet, she's again free--there's a chance now if you care for
it--ha, ha!' And the speaker pushed his tongue into his hollow
cheek and slanted his eye in the old fashion.
'I know all,' said Barnet quickly; and slipping a small present into
the hands of the needy, saddening man, he stepped ahead and was soon
in the outskirts of the town.
He reached the harbour-road, and paused before the entrance to a
well-known house. It was so highly bosomed in trees and shrubs
planted since the erection of the building that one would scarcely
have recognized the spot as that which had been a mere neglected
slope till chosen as a site for a dwelling. He opened the swing-
gate, closed it noiselessly, and gently moved into the semicircular
drive, which remained exactly as it had been marked out by Barnet on
the morning when Lucy Savile ran in to thank him for procuring her
the post of governess to Downe's children. But the growth of trees
and bushes which revealed itself at every step was beyond all
expectation; sun-proof and moon-proof bowers vaulted the walks, and
the walls of the house were uniformly bearded with creeping plants
as high as the first-floor windows.
After lingering for a few minutes in the dusk of the bending boughs,
the visitor rang the door-bell, and on the servant appearing, he
announced himself as 'an old friend of Mrs. Downe's.'
The hall was lighted, but not brightly, the gas being turned low, as
if visitors were rare. There was a stagnation in the dwelling; it
seemed to be waiting. Could it really be waiting for him? The
partitions which had been probed by Barnet's walking-stick when the
mortar was green, were now quite brown with the antiquity of their
varnish, and the ornamental woodwork of the staircase, which had
glistened with a pale yellow newness when first erected, was now of
a rich wine-colour. During the servant's absence the following
colloquy could be dimly heard through the nearly closed door of the
drawing-room.
'He didn't give his name?'
'He only said "an old friend," ma'am.'
'What kind of gentleman is he?'
'A staidish gentleman, with gray hair.'
The voice of the second speaker seemed to affect the listener
greatly. After a pause, the lady said, 'Very well, I will see him.'
And the stranger was shown in face to face with the Lucy who had
once been Lucy Savile. The round cheek of that formerly young lady
had, of course, alarmingly flattened its curve in her modern
representative; a pervasive grayness overspread her once dark brown
hair, like morning rime on heather. The parting down the middle was
wide and jagged; once it had been a thin white line, a narrow
crevice between two high banks of shade. But there was still enough
left to form a handsome knob behind, and some curls beneath
inwrought with a few hairs like silver wires were very becoming. In
her eyes the only modification was that their originally mild
rectitude of expression had become a little more stringent than
heretofore. Yet she was still girlish--a girl who had been
gratuitously weighted by destiny with a burden of five-and-forty
years instead of her proper twenty.
'Lucy, don't you know me?' he said, when the servant had closed the
door.
'I knew you the instant I saw you!' she returned cheerfully. 'I
don't know why, but I always thought you would come back to your old
town again.'
She gave him her hand, and then they sat down. 'They said you were
dead,' continued Lucy, 'but I never thought so. We should have
heard of it for certain if you had been.'
'It is a very long time since we met.'
'Yes; what you must have seen, Mr. Barnet, in all these roving
years, in comparison with what I have seen in this quiet place!'
Her face grew more serious. 'You know my husband has been dead a
long time? I am a lonely old woman now, considering what I have
been; though Mr. Downe's daughters--all married--manage to keep me
pretty cheerful.'
'And I am a lonely old man, and have been any time these twenty
years.'
'But where have you kept yourself? And why did you go off so
mysteriously?'
'Well, Lucy, I have kept myself a little in America, and a little in
Australia, a little in India, a little at the Cape, and so on; I
have not stayed in any place for a long time, as it seems to me, and
yet more than twenty years have flown. But when people get to my
age two years go like one!--Your second question, why did I go away
so mysteriously, is surely not necessary. You guessed why, didn't
you?'
'No, I never once guessed,' she said simply; 'nor did Charles, nor
did anybody as far as I know.'
'Well, indeed! Now think it over again, and then look at me, and
say if you can't guess?'
She looked him in the face with an inquiring smile. 'Surely not
because of me?' she said, pausing at the commencement of surprise.
Barnet nodded, and smiled again; but his smile was sadder than hers.
'Because I married Charles?' she asked.
'Yes; solely because you married him on the day I was free to ask
you to marry me. My wife died four-and-twenty hours before you went
to church with Downe. The fixing of my journey at that particular
moment was because of her funeral; but once away I knew I should
have no inducement to come back, and took my steps accordingly.'
Her face assumed an aspect of gentle reflection, and she looked up
and down his form with great interest in her eyes. 'I never thought
of it!' she said. 'I knew, of course, that you had once implied
some warmth of feeling towards me, but I concluded that it passed
off. And I have always been under the impression that your wife was
alive at the time of my marriage. Was it not stupid of me!--But you
will have some tea or something? I have never dined late, you know,
since my husband's death. I have got into the way of making a
regular meal of tea. You will have some tea with me, will you not?'
The travelled man assented quite readily, and tea was brought in.
They sat and chatted over the meal, regardless of the flying hour.
'Well, well!' said Barnet presently, as for the first time he
leisurely surveyed the room; 'how like it all is, and yet how
different! Just where your piano stands was a board on a couple of
trestles, bearing the patterns of wall-papers, when I was last here.
I was choosing them--standing in this way, as it might be. Then my
servant came in at the door, and handed me a note, so. It was from
Downe, and announced that you were just going to be married to him.
I chose no more wall-papers--tore up all those I had selected, and
left the house. I never entered it again till now.'
'Ah, at last I understand it all,' she murmured.
They had both risen and gone to the fireplace. The mantel came
almost on a level with her shoulder, which gently rested against it,
and Barnet laid his hand upon the shelf close beside her shoulder.
'Lucy,' he said, 'better late than never. Will you marry me now?'
She started back, and the surprise which was so obvious in her
wrought even greater surprise in him that it should be so. It was
difficult to believe that she had been quite blind to the situation,
and yet all reason and common sense went to prove that she was not
acting.
'You take me quite unawares by such a question!' she said, with a
forced laugh of uneasiness. It was the first time she had shown any
embarrassment at all. 'Why,' she added, 'I couldn't marry you for
the world.'
'Not after all this! Why not?'
'It is--I would--I really think I may say it--I would upon the whole
rather marry you, Mr. Barnet, than any other man I have ever met, if
I ever dreamed of marriage again. But I don't dream of it--it is
quite out of my thoughts; I have not the least intention of marrying
again.'
'But--on my account--couldn't you alter your plans a little? Come!'
'Dear Mr. Barnet,' she said with a little flutter, 'I would on your
account if on anybody's in existence. But you don't know in the
least what it is you are asking--such an impracticable thing--I
won't say ridiculous, of course, because I see that you are really
in earnest, and earnestness is never ridiculous to my mind.'
'Well, yes,' said Barnet more slowly, dropping her hand, which he
had taken at the moment of pleading, 'I am in earnest. The resolve,
two months ago, at the Cape, to come back once more was, it is true,
rather sudden, and as I see now, not well considered. But I am in
earnest in asking.'
'And I in declining. With all good feeling and all kindness, let me
say that I am quite opposed to the idea of marrying a second time.'
'Well, no harm has been done,' he answered, with the same subdued
and tender humorousness that he had shown on such occasions in early
life. 'If you really won't accept me, I must put up with it, I
suppose.' His eye fell on the clock as he spoke. 'Had you any
notion that it was so late?' he asked. 'How absorbed I have been!'
She accompanied him to the hall, helped him to put on his overcoat,
and let him out of the house herself.
'Good-night,' said Barnet, on the doorstep, as the lamp shone in his
face. 'You are not offended with me?'
'Certainly not. Nor you with me?'
'I'll consider whether I am or not,' he pleasantly replied. 'Good-
night.'
She watched him safely through the gate; and when his footsteps had
died away upon the road, closed the door softly and returned to the
room. Here the modest widow long pondered his speeches, with eyes
dropped to an unusually low level. Barnet's urbanity under the blow
of her refusal greatly impressed her. After having his long period
of probation rendered useless by her decision, he had shown no
anger, and had philosophically taken her words as if he deserved no
better ones. It was very gentlemanly of him, certainly; it was more
than gentlemanly; it was heroic and grand. The more she meditated,
the more she questioned the virtue of her conduct in checking him so
peremptorily; and went to her bedroom in a mood of dissatisfaction.
On looking in the glass she was reminded that there was not so much
remaining of her former beauty as to make his frank declaration an
impulsive natural homage to her cheeks and eyes; it must undoubtedly
have arisen from an old staunch feeling of his, deserving tenderest
consideration. She recalled to her mind with much pleasure that he
had told her he was staying at the Black-Bull Hotel; so that if,
after waiting a day or two, he should not, in his modesty, call
again, she might then send him a nice little note. To alter her
views for the present was far from her intention; but she would
allow herself to be induced to reconsider the case, as any generous
woman ought to do.
The morrow came and passed, and Mr. Barnet did not drop in. At
every knock, light youthful hues flew across her cheek; and she was
abstracted in the presence of her other visitors. In the evening
she walked about the house, not knowing what to do with herself; the
conditions of existence seemed totally different from those which
ruled only four-and-twenty short hours ago. What had been at first
a tantalizing elusive sentiment was getting acclimatized within her
as a definite hope, and her person was so informed by that emotion
that she might almost have stood as its emblematical representative
by the time the clock struck ten. In short, an interest in Barnet
precisely resembling that of her early youth led her present heart
to belie her yesterday's words to him, and she longed to see him
again.
The next day she walked out early, thinking she might meet him in
the street. The growing beauty of her romance absorbed her, and she
went from the street to the fields, and from the fields to the
shore, without any consciousness of distance, till reminded by her
weariness that she could go no further. He had nowhere appeared.
In the evening she took a step which under the circumstances seemed
justifiable; she wrote a note to him at the hotel, inviting him to
tea with her at six precisely, and signing her note 'Lucy.'
In a quarter of an hour the messenger came back. Mr. Barnet had
left the hotel early in the morning of the day before, but he had
stated that he would probably return in the course of the week.
The note was sent back, to be given to him immediately on his
arrival.
There was no sign from the inn that this desired event had occurred,
either on the next day or the day following. On both nights she had
been restless, and had scarcely slept half-an-hour.
On the Saturday, putting off all diffidence, Lucy went herself to
the Black-Bull, and questioned the staff closely.
Mr. Barnet had cursorily remarked when leaving that he might return
on the Thursday or Friday, but they were directed not to reserve a
room for him unless he should write.
He had left no address.
Lucy sorrowfully took back her note went home, and resolved to wait.
She did wait--years and years--but Barnet never reappeared.
April 1880.
