Old Kensington Part 26

'Good-by,' said Frank Raban, walking away very quickly.

He had meant to keep away, but he came just as usual to Church House, and was there even more constantly. Lady Sarah was glad of his companions.h.i.+p for George, who seemed in a very strange and excited state of mind.

The summer of '54 was an eventful summer; and while Dolly was living in her own youthful world, concentrated in the overwhelming interests that had come of late, in old and the new ties, so hard to grasp, so hard to loose, armies were marching, fleets were sailing, politicians and emperors were pondering upon the great catastrophe that seemed imminent.

War had been declared; with it the great fleets had come speeding across the sea from one horizon to another. The events of the day only reached Dolly in echoes from a long way off, brought by Robert and by George, printed in the paper. Robert was no keen politician. He was too full of his own new plans and new career. George was far more excited, and of a more fiery temper. Frank Raban and George and he used to have long and angry arguments Raban maintained that the whole thing was a mistake, a surrender to popular outcry. George and Robert were for fighting at any price: for once they agreed.

'I don't see,' said George, 'what there is in life to make it so preferable to anything else, to every sense of honour and of consideration, of liberty of action. Life, to be worth anything, is only a combination of all these things; and for one or any of them I think a man should be willing to play his stake.'

'Of course, of course, if it were necessary,' said Henley, 'one would do what was expected of one. There is my cousin, Jonah Henley, joining his regiment next week. I confess it is on different grounds from you that I approve of this war. I do not like to see England falling in the--a--estimation of Europe: we can afford to go to war. Russia's pretensions are intolerable; and, with France to a.s.sist us, I believe the Government is thoroughly justified in the course it is pursuing.'

'I don't think we are ready,' said Raban, in his odd, constrained voice.

'I don't think we _are_ justified. We sit at home and write heroic newspaper articles, and we send out poor fellows by rank and by file to be pounded at and cut to mincemeat, for what? Suppose we put things back a hundred years, what good shall we have done?'

'But think of our Overland Route,' said Henley; 'suppose the future should interfere with the P. and O.'

There were green lanes in those days leading from the far end of that lane in which Church House was built to others that crossed a wide and spreading country: it is not even yet quite overflooded by the waves of brick--that tide that flows out in long, strange furrows, and never ebbs away. Dolly and Henley went wandering along these lanes one fine afternoon; they were going they knew not where; into a land of Canaan, so Dolly thought it: green cabbages, a long, gleaming ca.n.a.l, hawthorn hedges, and a great overarched sky that began to turn red when the sun set. Now and then they came to some old house that had outstood storms and years, fluttering signals of distress in the shape of old s.h.i.+rts and clothes hung out to dry; in the distance rose Kensington spires and steeples; now and then a workman trudged by on his way home; distant bells rang in this wide, desolate country. Women come tramping home from their long day's work in the fields, and look hard at the handsome young couple, Dolly with cast-down eyes, Robert with his nose up in the air.

The women trudge wearily home; the young folks walk step by step into life. The birds cross the sky in a sudden flight; the cabbages grow where they are planted.

They missed the Chelsea Lane. Dolly should have known the way, but she was absorbed and un.o.bservant, and those cross-ways were a labyrinth except for those who were well used to them. They found themselves presently in the Old Brompton Road, with its elm-trees and old gable roofs darkening against the sunset. How sweet it was, with red lights burning, people slowly straggling like themselves, and enjoying the gentle ease of the twilight and of the soft west wind. Dolly led Henley back by the old winding road, with its bends and fancies; its cottages, within close-built walls; and stately old houses, with iron scroll-work on their garden gates, and gardens not yet destroyed. Then they came to a rueful row of bricks and staring windows. A young couple stood side by side against the low rail in front of their home. Dolly remembered this afterwards; for the sky was very splendid just then, and the young woman's violet dress seemed to blaze with the beautiful light, as she stood in her quaint little garden, looking out across the road to the well-remembered pond and some fields beyond. Along the distant line of the plains great soft s.h.i.+ps of vapour were floating; the windows of the distant houses flashed; the pond looked all splendid and sombre in its shady corner. The evening seemed vast and sweet, and Dolly's heart was full.

'Are you tired?' said Robert, seeing that she lingered.

'Tired? no,' said Dorothea. 'I was looking at the sky, and wondering how it would have been if you had gone away and never----?' She stopped.

'Why think about it?' said Robert. 'You would have married somebody else, I suppose.'

He said it in a matter-of-fact sort of way, and for a moment Dolly's eyebrows seemed to darken over her eyes. It was a mere nothing, the pa.s.sing shadow of a thought.

'You are right,' said Dolly, wistfully. 'It is no use thinking how unhappy one might have been. Have you ever been very unhappy, Robert?'

Now that she was so happy, Dolly seemed, for the first time, to realise what sorrow might be.

'A certain young lady made me very unhappy one day not long ago,' said Robert, 'when she tried to freeze me up with a s...o...b..ll.'

This was not what Dolly meant: she was in earnest, and he answered her with a joke; she wanted a sign, and no sign was given to her.

They had just reached home, when Robert said, with his hand on the bell: 'This has not been unhappy, has it, Dolly? We shall have a great many more walks together when I can spare the time. But you must talk to me more, and not be so shy, dearest.'

Something flew by as he spoke, and went fluttering into the ivy.

'That was a bat,' said Dolly, shrinking, while Robert stood shaking his umbrella-stick among the ivy leaves; but it was too dark to see anything distinctly.

'I hope,' said Robert, sentimentally, 'to come and see you constantly when this term is over. Then we shall know more of each other, Dora.'

'Don't we know each other?' asked Dolly, with one of her quick glances; 'I think I know you quite well, Robert--better than I know myself almost,' she added, with a sigh.

When they came into the drawing-room the lamp was alight, and George and Rhoda were there with Lady Sarah. George was talking at the very pitch of his melancholy voice, Lady Sarah was listening with a pale, fixed face, like a person who has made up her mind.

Rhoda was twirling her work round and round her fingers. She had broken the wool, and dropped the st.i.tches. It was by a strong effort that she sat so still.

'Here is George announcing his intentions,' said Lady Sarah, as they came in. 'Perhaps you, Robert, will be able to preach good sense to him.'

'Oh, Aunt Sarah!' Dolly cried, springing forward, 'at last he has told you.... Has Rhoda?' Dolly's two hands were clasped in excitement. Lady Sarah looked at her in some surprise.

There was a crash, a scream from Rhoda. The flower-gla.s.s had gone over on the table beside her, and all the water was running about over the carpet.

'My dress--my Sunday best!' cried Rhoda. 'Lady Sarah, I am so sorry.'

Dolly bent over to pick up the table, and, as she did so, Rhoda whispered, 'Be silent, or you will ruin George.'

'Ruined?' said Robert. 'Your dress is not ruined, Rhoda. I speak from experience, for I wear a silk gown myself.'

'George says he will not take my living,' said Lady Sarah. 'He wishes to be----What do you wish to be, George?'

George, somewhat confused, said he wished to be a soldier--anything but a clergyman.

'You don't mean to say you are going to be such a--that you refuse seven hundred a year?' said Henley, stopping short.

'Confound it!' cried George, 'can't you all leave a poor fellow in peace?' And he burst out of the room.

'Come here, Dolly,' said Mrs. Palmer, from a distant corner of the room; 'make this foolish darling do as his aunt wishes. I am sure the Admiral would quite feel as I do.'

'Seven hundred a year,' said Lady Sarah. 'Wretched boy! I shall sell the presentation.'

'Oh, Robert!' said Dolly, 'he is right if he can't make up his mind. I know Aunt Sarah thinks so.'

Dolly could not help being vexed with Robert. He shrugged his shoulders, said that George would regret his decision, and went on to talk of various plans that he himself had at heart, just as if George had never existed.

'I want you to trust Dolly to me for a few days,' said he. 'I want to take her down to Smokethwaite with my aunt. She must see Jonah before he leaves. They all write, and urge her coming.'

Lady Sarah agreed, with a sigh, and her eyes filled with tears. She turned away abruptly to hide them.

Many and many were the tears she wiped away, for fear Dolly should see them. George's whole body was not so dear to her as Dolly's little finger. She blamed herself in vain afterwards, when it was too late.

Sometimes she could hardly bear to see her niece come into the room with her smiling face, and she scarcely answered when the sweet girl's voice came echoing and calling about the house. Could it be true that it was going, that sweet voice? Laughing, scolding, chattering, hour by hour--were the many footsteps going, too, and the rustle of her dress, and the look of her happy eyes? was the time already come for Dolly to fly away from the old nest that had sheltered her for so short a time?

She seemed scarcely to have come--scarcely to have begun her sweet home song--and already she was eager to go!

But Rhoda had come up, looking very pale, to say good-night. As she said good-by, Dolly followed her out, and tried to put in some little word for George. 'Rhoda, he has been true to himself,' she whispered; 'that is best of all--is not it?'

'Let him be true to himself, by all means,' said Rhoda.

She was thoroughly out of temper. Dolly had not improved matters by talking about them. George came out of the oak room prepared to walk back with her. 'No, thank you,' said Rhoda, trembling very much. 'I won't trouble you to come home with me.'

She was tying her bonnet and pinning on her shawl in an agitated way.

George watched her in silence. When she was ready to go, he held out his hand. 'Good-night,' he said.

'Good-night,' said Rhoda, hurrying off without looking up, and pa.s.sing out into the street.