Kitabı oku: «The Argosy. Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891», sayfa 9
II
I must pass over a long period now—I suppose I should have said I was writing of a great many years ago, and come to the time, twenty years later, when Paul came home from abroad. He had not been home all these years, and neither had I been once in the south.
Janet, my poor Janet, was long since dead. She had died before she was quite two years married. It was an additional pang to my grief that I had never said good-bye to her at all; but no good-bye was better than that awful one I had witnessed of Paul.
What was the precise explanation of it I never knew. It was easy to divine that Janet had indeed been engaged to marry Paul, and had given him up; but whether this was the result of some quarrel, or whether she had deliberately done it, dazzled by the prospect of a union with an earl's son, I cannot say. Anyhow, I am sure she quickly regretted her determination. I am certain she loved only Paul. But the word had been spoken, and whatever Vandeleur may have been, Paul was not a man to give any woman a chance of trifling with him twice. So my poor Janet had to reap what her folly had sown, as best she might.
Janet left one little child, a daughter, called Janet, after her; and this child, becoming an orphan at an early age by the death, next, of Stephen Vandeleur, was brought up with his family in Ireland.
She was in Scotland once when she was about fourteen, and I saw her, and was not favourably impressed. She was quiet and prim and proper, as cold as an icicle: a very pretty little girl, I owned that; but then I had thought to find something of my Janet, and was disappointed. Her eyes were indeed blue, but looked one in the face calmly as though they had belonged to a woman of forty; and her hair and long eye-lashes were as dark as night. She had just this of my Janet, her pink and snow wild-rose complexion. She seemed to me, in all else, a Vandeleur to her finger-tips.
She occasionally paid Duncan long visits; and as she grew up, I heard that Duncan tried to make these visits as frequent and as lengthy as possible. She was immensely admired, it seemed, and Duncan liked her to stay with him because of the people she attracted to his house. I was sure this was true. It was so like one of Duncan's horrid ways. He still lived in that white brick edifice, and was richer then ever. A good deal of gossip drifted to me, in the far north as I was. I was told that Janet had a Manchester millionaire, an American railway king, and a real live lord, all madly in love with her—and she not yet quite nineteen!
Just then Paul returned home, and Duncan wrote inviting me to come down and see them. Paul was to stay with them—and Duncan was quite proud about it. His predictions had turned out all wrong; for Paul had come home a personage of importance, and a very rich man indeed. I was almost sorry that Janet's child happened to be at Duncan's just then, thinking her presence would revive old memories better forgotten. And then, if Paul were at all like what he used to be, I was sure her calmly superior, supercilious little ways would irritate him intensely. I had never seen her at Duncan's, but I could fancy how she would look there.
When I saw Paul, just for the first minute or so I felt quite startled. He seemed so marvellously little changed. He was forty-one, and would have looked young for thirty. Of course by-and-by I saw there were lines in his face which had not before been there. I could not say, not talking of appearance but of character, that I thought him improved. He no longer spoke scornfully to or of Duncan, but was always coldly courteous; yet often I would see a sneer on his curving lips that was more biting and bitter than any words, and made them look evil. He was not dictatorial all round to everybody as he used to be, but I thought him harsh in particular instances. His smiles to myself were more rare; his eyes colder: he seemed to me cynical of all on earth; I feared, too, with keen sorrow, of all in Heaven.
Others spoke of the changes the wear and tear of life abroad had made on Paul, but I had seen his face as it looked—for the last time on earth—upon Janet that day, and had my own sad thoughts.
But although I speak of these changes, I do not mean to say that Paul was not as gentle and loving to me as he had ever been, and that I was not exquisitely happy to be with him again. Many a pleasant walk had we about Duncan's garden, I leaning on Paul's strong arm, a support which I felt the need of now. Twenty years had not come and gone without leaving plenty of traces on me. We neither of us ever mentioned Janet, my Janet, that is to say. Janet's daughter (Janet II., as I used to mentally designate her for convenience' sake) was here as I expected, and for a while, just as before, I did not take to her. I left her alone and she left me alone; that was her way.
She was lovely, certainly; ethereally lovely; almost too lovely for one's senses to grasp the fact that she was but common flesh and blood like all the rest of the world: a poem in human form if there ever was one. Gossip had spoken truly for once; there were the three distinguished lovers, and goodness knows how many more besides.
Paul and I never spoke of this girl, any more than we did of my Janet; but, at first, I often fancied I saw his gaze fastened on her; the same unpleasant sneer on his lips which disfigured them when he looked at Duncan. By and by I grew rather to like her. I believe I, at heart, resented Paul looking like that at my Janet's bairn. I began to fancy that, for all her apparent calmness, she was shy. If we met in the garden she would give me a swift glance to see if I were going to stop and speak to her, and, I thought, seemed pleased when I did. At last there came an odd little episode.
Paul was very fond of animals—that was always one of his good traits—and he one day found a little stray white kitten somewhere about the place, and brought it into the room where I sat alone at work. He began grimly to play with it. Just then Janet opened the door. She gave a delighted exclamation, and, coming eagerly forward, smilingly held out her arms for the kitten. She was dressed for the evening, and the little thing began clawing about her lovely gown, and in one instant had pulled to shreds a very expensive bit of trimming.
I started up in distress; but Janet, putting the kitten gently back on the table, burst into laughter. I am very sure I had never heard Janet laugh before, and I don't think Paul ever had. A prettier, happier, more silvery little peal could not be imagined; but it was not so much that which struck home to my heart as the fact that if I had shut my eyes I could have thought my Janet stood in the room. The girl had her mother's laugh.
I returned hastily to my work, and did not dare to lift my head until Janet was gone—then I looked stealthily at Paul.
The sun was just setting—the sky a rolling roseate glory from end to end. Paul—my Paul—my Paul, with the old beautiful light in his face, stood, with arms crossed, looking up into it. All at once something came into my throat which almost stifled me, so that I could not have sat where I was for any consideration whatever. I slipped quietly away and left him.
From this day I loved the girl. Whether it was her carelessness about the dress—so like her mother—or the laugh—or what—I loved her now almost as much as I had loved her mother.
It seemed to me that from this day, too, Paul became more like his old self: a very much toned-down and softened old self; no longer so much the hard, cynical Paul of later years as the boyish Paul of old. Of course, no sooner had my feelings changed in this way than I became greatly interested in Janet's lovers. I thought the cotton millionaire vulgar; and the American railway king I could not make this or that of; but the lord seemed a very nice, simple-mannered young man; so that I hoped—for although I am a bit of a Radical, I lay claim to having some common-sense too—if it were to be one of these three, it would be he.
But the calm indifference with which this slip of a girl treated three such lovers was truly appalling. I can't think how they stood it: I shouldn't.
I cannot remember exactly when it was that I made a discovery. Opposite to the library, of which I have already spoken, now a venerable old room, was my bed-room; and there was no other room until you had gone along a passage and crossed a hall. It was my custom to go to bed very early, and I did so here at Duncan's, long before the rest of the household. I suppose they thought I went fair off to sleep, too; for this part of the house was always deserted after I had gone into my room.
It was thus I made the discovery that every night, before retiring herself, Janet came to the library and stayed a few minutes; and I could hear her sometimes moving about books on the table.
For a considerable time I felt hopelessly puzzled. All at once it struck me—girls are the same all over the world and in all ages—that she must come there to look at the photograph of someone she cared for; to say good-night to it; perhaps to murmur a prayer over it. Girls are made so. Doubtless she would take it away with her altogether to some place more convenient for such oblations but that Duncan was much in the library, and had lynx-eyes.
I grew troubled, these nocturnal visits continuing, and wished that I could help her. I thought if I could only find out whose the photograph was, perhaps I might.
One night I could bear it no longer. I am aware that I must seem a most prying old woman; but somehow or other this library was fated to be mixed up with my life. I rose and just peeped round the library door to see what she was doing. She was standing in the clear moonlight—not, as I had expected, with an open photograph album, but holding a little miniature, taken from its place on the table. I went back to bed, my heart bounding. I knew now! I did not sleep much that night.
Perhaps I acted rashly—but I thought I should apply to Paul for help. I was sure, from various signs, that he did not hate my Janet's bairn now. I told him of these stolen visits to the library, and tried to persuade him to conceal himself and watch there—for the purpose of finding out whose the portrait was. I did not tell him, deceitful woman that I was, that I myself already knew. Old people like him and me, I said, should help the child out of her trouble. I must have startled him terribly: he grew, at first, so white. Then he looked at me long and intently; and by-and-by began to cross-examine me. We were canny Scots, both of us, and fenced.
"You say it was a photograph you saw her with?"
"I did not say I saw her."
"You have heard her open an album?"
"I have heard her move books."
I have seen the time when I could have broken a lance with the best; but I was growing old, and he finished by getting me into rather a hobble—when he abruptly left me, a great flush sweeping over his face. He came back by-and-by, and took me out into the garden. If he never had been the real old Paul before—he was so now. He cut the pansies from my best cap, and decorated Duncan's coat-of-arms—which had broken out about the walls now-a-days—with them. But he might have cut the cap in two for all I cared just then.
That night—I hoped he had not forgotten—I hoped he would come. Presently I heard a quiet step which I knew to be his. Then I sat down and listened again. Swish, swish—here she was at last. I had listened too often to the soft rustle of her trailing gown to make any mistake now. In my excitement—you see I was an old habitué at prying and peering about the library by this time—I put one eye round the door, at her very back. She had gone a few steps into the room—and now stood, rooted to the spot, startled. There, with his face—and all that he would have it say—fair and bright in the moonlight, stood Paul. He opened his arms.
"Janet," he said.
With a little cry, and a sob, the girl rushed into them.
I went away back to my own room. I am sure it is superfluous to explain my little plot: that it was not a photograph, but an old miniature of Paul I had seen Janet with—an old miniature which I had painted on ivory myself in the far-distant days. I am sure Paul never had a photograph taken. Of course it was because I had recognised this that I wanted Paul to wait in the library; but he was a better fencer than I, and made me admit more than I intended. I sat down now, a world of old memories whirling through my brain. I mixed this that I had just seen—with something very like it in the long, long past—with the crash of pots, and another figure that had thrown itself into Paul's arms. There was the old room: Janet had been said there, too; and the lips through which the word had trembled were the same: and the voice was the same also. Only the figure that had darted forward—was different.
I did not go to bed at all that night; but sat looking out over the quiet, moon-lit garden and over the fields beyond, where the corn-crake was calling, calling; the river slipping like a silver thread at the far-away end of them; and patter, patter out and into the back-garden at Glasgow went the little feet again; and to and fro ran the fair-haired little lassie in the dirty pink cotton, tugging me this way and that by the hand; and such a singing and swinging went on about the stairs. Oh, how I wondered whether Paul would ever tell Janet her mother's story.
I was not going placidly away north this time, to wait to hear more about anything by-and-by. I did not leave that factory-like erection of Duncan's until I had seen them married.
THE CHURCH GARDEN
"We cannot," said the people, "stand these children,
Always round us with their racketing and play;
Yon Church-garden set right down among our houses
Is really quite a nuisance in its way!
"True, their homes are very dull, and bare, and dismal,
And the narrow courts they live in dark and small,
And we think they love that sparsely-planted acre—
But we do not want to think of them at all!
"There are surely parks enough to make a play-ground,
And we might be spared these noisy little feet;
But the parks, the Clergy say, are all too distant,
And so they planned this garden in the street!
"No doubt the seats are pleasanter than curb-stones,
While the trees make quite a shelter from the sun,
And the grass does nicely for the crawling babies—
But somebody must think of Number One!
"And the air the children get of course is purer;
But then the noise they make is very great,
With their laughter and their shouting to each other,
And the everlasting banging of the gate!
"And the wailing of the sickly, puny babies
Is enough to fret one's spirit through and through—
No doubt they cry as much in those dark alleys—
But then we never hear them if they do!
"Half the Parish talks to us of self-denial,
Of kindly duties lying at the door,
And of One who says the Poor are always with us;
But we can't be always thinking of the Poor!
"We are older, we are richer, we are wiser;
Why should we be vexed and troubled in our ease?
Just because the children like the Vicar's garden,
With its faded grass and smoky London trees!
"Still we feel sometimes a little self-convicted,
When we hear the hard-worked kindly Clergy say
That it helps them often in their weary labours,
Just to see the children happy at their play!
"Yet we think they try to make the thing too solemn,
When they put aside our protests with the plea:
'Whatsoe'er ye did to such as these, my brethren,
To the least—ye did it even unto Me.'"
Thus the people murmured, but the children's Angels
Smiled rejoicing, and a richer blessing falls
On the Church that made a shelter for the children
Underneath the holy shadow of her walls.
Christian Burke.
