Kitabı oku: «An Isle of Surrey: A Novel», sayfa 15

CHAPTER XXVI.
A BRIDGE OF SIGHS

When Bramwell entered Crawford's House the first sight that met his eyes was the form of Hetty Layard lying prone on the floor of the passage.

With a cry of dismay he sprang to her and raised her. He looked round for help and called out, but there was no succour in sight; no response came to his cry. He took her up and carried her into the sitting-room, and laid her on the couch.

"I might have guessed she would faint," he moaned; "and now what am I to do?"

There was water on the table laid for dinner. He sprinkled some on her face. "What am I to do? Shall I run for help?" he cried, looking frantically round the room.

At that moment there was the sound of a latch-key in the door. Bramwell rushed out eagerly into the passage, saying to himself, "This must be either her brother or Mr. Crawford; Philip told me there are only two keys."

If instead of going up the river in the steamboat Crawford had come back to Welford, he would have arrived at about this time.

The front door opened, and a man with a remarkably long beard entered, and for an instant stood looking in speechless amazement at the other man.

"My name is Bramwell. Your sister has fainted. She is in the front room."

"Fainted!" cried Alfred Layard in alarm, as he dashed past the other.

At that moment Hetty opened her eyes and sighed.

"Hetty, Hetty, dear Hetty! what is this. What is the matter?"

Bramwell remained in the passage. He walked up and down in great agitation.

"I don't know what happened," said the girl, in a weak, tremulous voice.

Her brother got some wine, and made her drink a little.

"Try and remember, dear," said Layard with passionate tenderness. "Did any accident occur? Drink just a little more. Did you get a fright, dear? Has anything happened to the boy?"

"No, Alfred. O, I am better now. I remember it all. A dreadful man terrified me, and Mr. Bramwell came to my assistance, and I ran into the house; and I can remember no more."

Bramwell, hearing voices, knew that Hetty had recovered, and that he could be of no further use; so he stole quietly out of the house, and returned to his own island domain.

He did not seek the boys, who were playing in the timber-yard that the old barrow was a Punch-and-Judy show. He took the canal side of the wharf, and began pacing up and down hurriedly.

His condition was one of extreme exultation; he knew not, inquired not, at what. He trod the clouds, and surveyed below his feet a subjugated and golden world. The air was intoxication, and life a dream of jocund day. He did not pause to ask a reason for these feelings and sensations; they were his; that was enough.

Of late the hideous gloom in which he had lived for two years, a solitary upon that lonely and unlovely islet, had been leaving him as darkness leaves a hill at the approach of day. Now from the summit to the base, his nature seemed bathed in an extraordinary midday splendour. His soul was shining among the stars. He was a blessed spirit amid the angels. He was the theme to which all the rest of the world answered in harmonious parts.

It was not passion or love, but a spiritual effulgence. It was like the elation induced by a subtle perfume. He would have been satisfied to be, and only to be, if he might be thus. He was in clear air at a stupendous height of happiness, and yet did not feel giddy. He could think of no higher earthly joy than he experienced. It was a joy the very essence of which seemed of the rapture of heaven. It was a kind of ecstatic and boundless worship from a self-conscious and self-centred soul. It idealised the world, and restored Paradise to earth.

In his mind was no thought, no defined thought, of love for his beautiful neighbour, Hetty Layard. He was in the delicious spiritual experiences of that hour merely celebrating his emancipation from bondage. The note from Kate which had come with Frank and the subsequent announcement of Kate's death in the newspapers had left him no room to doubt that he was free. That day he had struck a man an angry blow for the first time in all his life. And he had struck that blow in defence of this beautiful girl, who was so good and so devoted to the little orphan boy, the son of her brother. He had an orphan boy too, and she was very gentle to his son. He had known for some time that he was a free man, free to look upon the face of woman with a view to choosing another wife; but until this day, until this hour, he had not realised what this freedom meant.

The notion that he might take another companion for life had not taken concrete form since Frank's coming, and now the only way in which it presented itself to him was that he might smile back to Hetty's smile, and glory in her beauty.

He was startled by hearing a voice saying behind him, "Mr. Bramwell, I have taken the liberty of coming over uninvited to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your timely and much-needed aid to my sister."

Bramwell coloured, and became confused. He was unaccustomed to new faces, unaccustomed to thanks, unaccustomed to pleasant thoughts of woman.

"I-I did nothing," he said. "It was merely by accident I knew about it."

To be thanked made him feel as though he had done something shameful.

"However it happened," said Layard, taking his hand in both his own and shaking it cordially, "you have placed me under a deep debt of gratitude to you."

"If you do not wish to make me very uncomfortable, you will not say another word about it. I hope Miss Layard is nothing the worse of the affair?"

"My sister is all right. Of course it gave her an ugly turn. It isn't a nice place to encounter a bullying rowdy alone. Since you ask me to say no more about your share in the business, I shall be dumb."

The two men were now walking up and down side by side along the tiny quay of the tiny islet.

A thin film of cloud dulled the glare of the afternoon sun. The whole expanse of heaven was radiant with diaphanous white clouds; a barge laded with wood indolently glided by to the clank-clank of the horse's hoofs on the tow-path; the sounds from Welford Bridge, which in the mornings came sharp and clear, were now dulled by the muffled hum of larger noises from afar. There was an air of silence and solitude over Boland's Ait. Notwithstanding the griminess of the surroundings and the dilapidations of the buildings on the holm, there was an aspect of peace and retirement in the place.

Hetty had not told her brother anything of Crawford's visit save as much as was necessary to explain the admission of Red Jim to the house and quay.

After a few sentences, Layard said, "You must know, Mr. Bramwell, I don't think I shall stay in this house a minute longer that I can possibly help."

"Indeed!" said Bramwell, feeling as though the sunlight from the sky had been suddenly dulled, and the things upon which his eyes fell had grown more squalid.

"To be candid with you, I don't care about my landlord. He is, to say the least of it, eccentric; and after the affair of to-day I shall never be easy. You see, the house is quite isolated, and no one ever by any chance passes the door."

"It must be very lonely for Miss Layard," Bramwell said, forgetting in his sympathy for the girl his own two years of absolute seclusion.

"She says, and I believe her, that she does not feel the want of company; but after to-day she will, I am afraid, dread the place. Of course, I must get some person to stay with her all the time I am out of the house. Could any one have been more helpless than she was to-day?"

"What you say has a great deal of force in it; but," said he, trying to restore the full complement of sunlight to the sky, "don't you think with a second person in the house all would be safe?"

"Well, I should imagine so; but one does not like to be continually saying, 'all is safe.' One likes to take it for granted, as one takes the sufficiency of air or the coming of daylight with the sun."

They walked for a few seconds in silence, and then Bramwell said, "No barge ever comes through the Bay now, but, owing to my habit with the floating-stage on the canal, I moor the second stage to the Ait every afternoon when Freddie has gone home, and haul it across in the morning. For the future I shall leave it across permanently, so that Miss Layard may feel I am as near to her as some one living next door. I hope and trust, and believe, she will never have any need of my help, but it may give her a little confidence to know that I can be with her instantly in case of need."

"It is extremely kind of you to think of that. It seems you are determined to place me under obligations I can never discharge. The worst of it is that when I came over here I had it in my mind to ask you a favour, and now you have offered to do one unasked."

"If what you came to ask is anything in the world I can do, you may count on me, Mr. Layard. For, remember, that although this is the first time we have met, I am quite well acquainted with you through Philip Ray."

"And I with you, through him also, or I should not speak so freely."

"Isn't Ray a fine fellow?" asked Bramwell enthusiastically.

"The finest fellow I know," answered Layard cordially.

"He is a little enthusiastic, or hot-headed, or fierce, I know, but he will calm down in years. Indeed, I find that of late he is calming down a good deal. As I said before, I treat you as an old friend. I suppose I have been so long an eremite that once I come forth and open my mouth I shall never stop talking. What I have in my mind about Philip, who was the only friend of my solitude, is that if he got a good sensible wife it would be the making of him."

"I have no doubt it would."

"But the worst of it is that I don't think he ever once regarded one woman with more favour than another. In fact, I have always put him down as a man who will never marry."

"Indeed!" said Layard. "I wonder does Ray himself share that notion. If he does, he is treating Hetty badly," he thought.

"And the pity of it is, that if he would only marry he would make the best husband in England."

"It is indeed a pity," said Layard, but he did not say what constituted the pity. To himself, "I don't think anything has been said between them yet, but it seems to me Hetty or he will have some news for me very soon." He said aloud, "The little favour I told you I had to ask-"

"Of course; and I told you if it lay within my power I'd do it."

"Yes; and it does lie easily within your power, and I will take no excuse. Come over and spend an hour with us this evening."

"But I cannot!" cried Bramwell.

"But you must. We will take no excuse."

He wavered. His views of all things had greatly altered since he was first invited to Crawford's House. "Still the boy. I cannot leave him alone." He felt half inclined to go.

"The boy will not be alone. Why, now that you have decided to leave the stage across all night, your house and ours may be looked on as one."

What a pleasant fancy it was that Crawford's House, where she lived, and Boland's Ait, where he lived, might be looked on as one!

"If," went on Layard, "you are uneasy about your boy, at any moment you can run across and see him. You really have no excuse. Our sons have been friends some time, and now you have placed me under a great obligation to you, and you refuse to make the obligation greater. Is that generous of you?"

Bramwell smiled. "I am conquered, fairly conquered."

"Very well; and mind, not later than eight o'clock. Now, where's this young savage of mine? His aunt will imagine you have sold the two of us into slavery."

CHAPTER XXVII.
A LAST RESOLVE

"Good gracious, Mrs. Mellor, you don't mean to say you have been to the hospital and got back again since! But why do I say such a thing? If you had wings you couldn't do it," exclaimed kind-hearted Mrs. Pemberton as Kate Mellor walked into the greengrocer's shop in Leeham, hard by Welford, the same day William Crawford jumped aboard the moving steamboat after his immersion and scene with the invalid woman at the Mercantile Pier.

"No," answered Mrs. Mellor wearily. She did not remove her veil on entering the shop. "I hadn't the heart to go to-day. I got as far as the pier and then turned back." She did not care to enter into any further explanation.

"Hadn't the heart, dear child! And why hadn't you the heart?" said the sympathetic woman, raising her ponderous bulk with deliberation from the chair, and going quickly with outstretched hands to her unfortunate lodger.

"I didn't feel equal to it, and so I came back."

"Well, dear if you didn't go to the hospital I'm very glad you came back here straight, for the house seems queer and lonesome when you're not in it. You don't feel any worse, do you, dear?"

"No worse, thank you, Mrs. Pemberton, but I think the heat tired me a little, and that I'll go up and lie down awhile."

"The very best thing you could do, dear. There's nothing to freshen you up when you're hot and tired like a nice quiet rest in a cool room; and the sun is off your room now. I was just saying to Mrs. Pearse here, that I was sure you'd come in half-dead of the heat. Is there anything I could get you, dear, before you lie down?"

"No, thank you, Mrs. Pemberton," and Kate Mellor passed out of the shop and up to her bedroom on the first floor.

"That's just the way with her always," said Mrs. Pemberton to Mrs. Pearse. "She never complains of anything but being tired, and she never wants anything. If ever there was a broken heart in this world it's hers. She has said to me over and over again it was a mistake that she recovered. What makes me so uneasy about her is that I am afraid her money won't last her much longer, and that when it's gone she'll run away. Though, goodness knows, she's welcome to stay as long as she likes, for she's a real lady, and it's almost as easy to keep two as one, particularly as she isn't a bit particular about what she eats or drinks; and I don't want to let her room unless I could get some one as nice as she, and I'd go far before I could find her equal."

"The loss of the child is preying upon her mind," said Mrs. Pearse. "I remember when I lost my little Ted, I thought I should never be able to lift my head again."

"Ah, but you lost your little Ted in a natural though a sad way; but poor Mrs. Mellor lost her boy by an accident, as it were, and by her own act, too. You know, she is very close, and although she's as friendly as can be, she never says anything about the past. Whoever she sent the boy to will not give him back to her again."

"And you don't know to what person she sent the child?"

"He went first to Boland's Ait, but of course not to stop there. Why, there's no woman on the Ait to look after a child. The boy must be gone to some of his father's people. O, it's a sad, sad case! and I have a feeling-you can't help your feelings-that she's not long for this world, poor thing; and it breaks my heart to think of that, for I do love her as if she was my own child, though it was never given to me to know the feelings of a mother. I expect that private detective knew all about the case."

Meanwhile Kate Mellor had taken off her bonnet and cloak, and lain down on her bed, to rest and think. Up to that day she had lived hour by hour, since the loss of her boy and her recovery, with no definite purpose. At first she had been too ill and weak to consider her position or determine upon any course of action. She had drifted down to this hour without any plan or purpose. She knew the law would not enable her to recover her child, and she felt certain that her husband would see the child dead rather than restored to her arms. She had inserted the announcement of her death partly that her husband might not be fettered in anything he might design for the welfare of their child by considerations of her, and partly out of a pathetic craving for pain and self-sacrifice. She had bought the paper, and had cried a score of times over the bald, cold intimation that the world was over for her: for her the once beautiful and beloved bride of Frank Mellor, now the deserted, marred outcast of shame. She had wept that she, Kate Ray, Kate Mellor, was dead and buried before thirty-when she was not twenty-five. She had wept that she was poor. She had wept that her voice, her only means of earning a living, had been destroyed. She had wept longest of all that her beauty was gone from her for ever. Her beauty had been her greatest gift, her greatest curse, and she wept for it as though it had been an unmixed blessing.

Lying on her bed here to-day, she had no tears to shed. The scene on the pier had in some mysterious way calmed her spirits. She had read the announcement of her death in the paper, and now she was dead in verity.

Why should she live? What had she to live for? Everything woman could hold dear was gone-husband, child, reputation, beauty. In material affairs her destitution could scarcely be greater than it was at this moment. She had a little money still left, but when that was gone where should she find more? He, the betrayer, had been overjoyed to get his life back from the jaws of death that day; she, the victim, would enter those awful jaws freely, But she must see her child, her little Frank, the sweet baby she had held at her breast and cherished with the warmth of her embraces.

She was afraid of only one person in the world, and that was Frank Mellor, who had changed his name to Francis Bramwell for shame of her. If he found her he would kill her, and she owned that at his hands she deserved death; she had robbed him of everything he held dear.

She had resolved upon death, but she could not take it at his hands. It was too awful to think of a meeting between them. That would be ten times worse than the most painful form of quitting life. That would be an agony of the spirit ten thousand times transcending any possible agony of the body.

Frank, her husband, had always been a man of strong feeling. At times this strong feeling had exhibited itself to her in profound taciturnity, at times in overwhelming ecstasy. If she should encounter him now, he would be possessed by the demon of insatiable revenge; he would strike her to the ground and murder her cruelly, and mangle her dead body. While he was beating the life out of her he would revile and curse her. He would heap coals of fire on her head, and crush out of her the last trace of self-respect. And in all this he would, perhaps, be justified-in much of it certainly.

How good and indulgent he had been to her! She had not understood him then. She had eyes for nothing then but admiration and finery. To-day she had nothing to call forth admiration-no finery; and yet, if she had not hearkened to that other man, could she believe that Frank would not love and shield and cherish her now as he had then? Frank was the very soul of honour. He would not hurt a brute or wrong any living being. She had not known, had not understood, him then as she did now, judged by the light of subsequent experience.

She must see the boy once more-just once more before she died. She would not look upon another day. By some means or other she would see her child, and then bid good-bye to the world. When she saw her child, there would be the canal close at hand. But that would not do. It would not do to pollute with the last crime of her life the presence of her child. No; the river of which that other man had stood in such terror would be the fitting ending place for such a wicked life as hers.

"O, how different would all have been if only that man had not tempted her with lies, and she had not listened through vanity! Frank would have been good and kind to her, and by this time she should have grown to love him as she had never loved the other; and her boy, her darling, her little Frank, her baby, would be with her, his arms round her neck, his soft, round, warm cheek against her own!

"But, there, there, there!" she moaned, putting her hand before her blotched, disfigured, worn face. "It is all over! I have lost everything, and no one is to blame but myself and the other. Only I must suffer all. Yet it will not be for long. I will see my boy to-night, even if I die there and then. I don't care about dying. Death has refused me once, but it shall not this time. O, my little Frank! my little innocent Frank! my baby that I warmed against my breast!"

She lay in a kind of torpor for a few hours; then having got up and made some small arrangements, she wrote a note for Mrs. Pemberton, placed it in her trunk, and, putting a lock of hair and an old worn glove of her boy's in her bosom, went down-stairs and slipped out by the private door beside the shop.