Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  “Thanks, no,” seating himself near the window, “this will do very nicely. That’s your own particular chair, I know.”

  “You are right,” sighed the old man, sinking into its cushioned depths. “This chair was Hettie’s present on my last birthday. It was a shabby old chair when I first saw it at a broker’s in the King’s Road — but I was caught by the comfortable shape — and I told my poor girl I’d seen a second-hand chair that looked the picture of comfort. She didn’t seem to take much notice of what I said, and the next time I passed the dealer’s yard — where the chair used to stand in the open air amongst a lot of other things — it was gone. I told Hettie it had disappeared. ‘Sold, I suppose,’ said she, ‘what a pity!’ And nearly a year afterwards, on my birthday, the chair was brought in, freshly covered, as you see it. My poor girl had been paying for it by instalments, a shilling or two at a time, ever since I mentioned it to her. How proud and happy we both were that clay, in spite of our poverty! I remember when I was at the University my brothers and sisters and I clubbed together to buy a silver tea-kettle for my mother on her silver-wedding day — and it only resulted in general mortification. She was sorry we had spent our money — and she didn’t like the shape of the kettle. It was half covered with a long inscription, so we couldn’t change it, and I know two of my sisters were in tears about it before the day was over. But I must make you that lemon squash. Nunc est bibendum! Perhaps though, you’d prefer a John Collins?” — with a curiously interrogative look. “There isn’t any gin in the house, but I could send for a bottle.”

  “I much prefer the unsophisticated lemon; though I envy a city waiter the facility with which he made his name a part of the convivial vocabulary. Falstaff could not have done more.”

  Mr. Davenport opened one of the dwarf cupboards, and produced tumblers, lemons, and pounded sugar. Then he went out of the room, and reappeared in a few minutes with a jug of fresh water. His narrow means did not permit the luxury of a syphon. He concocted the two glasses of lemonade carefully and deliberately, Gerard Hillersdon watching him all the time in a melancholy reverie; but the image that filled his mind was that of the absent daughter, not the form of the father bodily present to his eye.

  He was thinking of yonder easy-chair, paid for in solitary shillings, the narrow surplus left from the necessities of daily life. He thought of that refined and delicate face, that fragile form, far too finely made for life’s common uses — thought of her daily deprivations, her toilsome walks, her weary monotony of task-work.

  Yes, there was the modern wheel upon which feminine poverty is racked — the sewing-machine. It stood in front of the window by which he was sitting. She had covered it with a piece of art muslin, giving an air of prettiness even to the instrument of her toil. A pair of delf candlesticks stood on a little table near the machine, with the candles burnt low in the sockets. She had been working late last night, perhaps. It maddened him to think that out of all his wealth he could do nothing to help her — she would take nothing out of his superabundance. If he were to heed the appeals of all the strangers who wrote to him — pouring out their domestic secrets, their needs and troubles, in eight-page letters, he might give away every penny of his income — but this one woman, whom he yearned to help, would take nothing. This was Fate’s sharpest irony. Full of these thoughts, he sipped his lemonade and discussed the political situation with Mr. Davenport, whose chief occupation was to read the papers at the Free Library, and who was an ardent politician. He lingered in the hope of seeing Hester before he left.

  It was nearly four o’clock, and the June afternoon had a drowsy warmth which was fast beguiling old Nicholas Davenport into slumber. His words were coming very slowly, and he gradually sank] into a blissful silence, and was off upon that rapid dream-journey which takes the sleeper into a new world in an instant — plunges him into the midst of a dramatis personæ that moment invented whom he seems to have known all his life.

  A bee was humming amongst the sweet-scented stocks, and a town butterfly was fluttering about the mignonette. A hawker’s cry in the next street came with a musical sound, as if the hawker had been some monotonous bird with a song of only three notes. Still Gerard lingered, hoping that the old man would wake presently and resume the conversation. He was in despair at the idea of leaving without seeing Hester.

  He wanted to see that delicately-modelled face — the face in the Sposalizio — in the daylight. He wanted to be her friend, if she would let him. What harm could there be in such a friendship? They were too completely severed by the iron wall of circumstances ever to become lovers. But friends they might be — friends for mutual help and comfort. He could share with her the good things of this life. She could spiritualise his lower nature by the influence of that child-like purity which set her apart from the common world.

  He heard a light footstep, and then the click of a latch. She was at the gate, she was coming in, a slim and graceful figure in a light cambric gown and a sailor hat, such a neat little white straw hat, which cast pearly shadows on the exquisite cheek and chin, and darkened the violet eyes.

  She started and blushed crimson on seeing him, and darted a despairingly reproachful look at her father, who had risen confusedly in the midst of a dream. Gerard, too, had risen as she entered, and stood facing her.

  “Don’t be angry with your father or with me, Miss Davenport. We happened to meet each other an hour ago on the Embankment, and I walked home with him. And now that I am admitted to your home you will let me bring my sister, I hope. She will be glad to renew her old friendship with you. Do not hold her at arm’s length, even if you shut your door against me. You know how sympathetic she is.”

  Hester did not answer him for a minute or so. She sank into a chair, and took off the neat little hat, and passed her hand across her brow, smoothing the soft pale brown hair which shadowed her forehead. She looked tired and harassed, almost too weary for speech, and at last, when speech came, there was a languor in her tone, an accent as of one who submits to fate.

  Yes, I remember,” she said, “your sister was always good and sweet. She was very kind to me; some of my happiest hours were spent with her. But that is all past and done with. It is hardly kind of you to ask me to remember—”

  “I don’t want you to remember the old life. I only want you to open your heart to an old friend, who will help to make your present life happier. Lilian may come, may she not? I can see you mean yes.”

  “How can I say no, when you are so eager to do me a kindness?” and then she glanced at the old man piteously. “If father does not mind a face that will recall his residence at Helmsleigh, and all he suffered there.”

  “No, no, Hettie, I don’t mind. I have suffered too much, and in too many places, since the Pain-devil stuck his claws into me. If the people who blame me — who talk of me as a drunken old dotard — could suffer an hour of the agony I have suffered off and on for months at a stretch, they would be a little more charitable in their judgments. I am not blaming your father, Mr. Hillersdon; he was very good to me. He bore with me as long as he could,’ till at last I disgraced myself. It was a terrible scandal; no man could bear up against it. I felt after that night all was over.”

  “Don’t, father, don’t speak of it.”

  “I must, Hettie. I want to tell Mr. Hillersdon all that you have been to me — what a heroine, what a martyr!”

  “Nonsense, father! I have only done what other daughters are doing all the world over. And, thank God, you are better now! You have had very little of the old pain for the last two years. You are stronger and better, living as you do now, than when — when you were less careful. Your neuralgia will never come back, I hope.”

  “If Miss Hillersdon doesn’t mind visiting us in this shabby lodging, we shall be very pleased to see her,” said Davenport, brushing away a remorseful tear. “It cuts me to the heart that my poor girl has not a friend in the world except that best of women, Lady Jane Blenheim.”

  His request be
ing granted, Gerard had no excuse for delaying his departure. He offered his hand to Hester as he said good-bye, and when her slender fingers touched his own, his cheek and brow flushed as if a wave of fire had passed over his face, and his eyes grew dim; only for a moment, but that fiery wave had never clouded his vision at the touch of any other woman — not even Edith Champion, to whom he had given the devotion of years. His heart was beating violently as he walked along the shabby street, past gardens that were full of summer flowers, and forecourts that were no better than rubbish heaps, past squalid indigence and industrious poverty. It was not till he pulled up under the shadow of the trees in Cheyne Walk that the sense of a great joy or a great trouble began to abate, and he was able to think calmly.

  He seated himself on a bench near the river, and waited till his pulses beat a more tranquil measure.

  “I am a fool,” he muttered. “Why should her beauty agitate me like this? I have seen beautiful women before to-day — women in the zenith of their charms, not pallid and worn like this heroic girl. The woman who is to be my wife is handsomer, and in a grander style of beauty. And yet, because I must not care for this one, every nerve is strained, every pulse is racing. I am a fool, and the worst of fools, remembering what old Dr. South told me. Is this sparing myself? is this husbanding my resources? To be so moved by such a trivial cause — not to be able to admire a beautiful face without being shaken as if by an earthquake.”

  He remembered the book upon his writing-table, the “Peau de Chagrin,” that story which had an irresistible fascination for him, every page of which he had hung over many a night in his hours of lonely thought. How vain had been Valentin’s endeavour to lead that passionless life in which the oil in the lamp burns slowly! But he hoped to prove himself wiser than Balzac’s ill-fated hero. He, too, had planned an existence free from all strong emotions. In his life of millionaire and man of fashion there were to be no agitations. He looked forward to a future union with Edith as a haven of rest. Married to a woman whom he had loved long enough to take love for granted, a woman whose fidelity had been tested by time, whose constancy he need never doubt, for him the years would glide onward with easy pace to sober middle life, and even to the grey dignity of honoured age. But he, like Valentin, had been warned against the drama and passion of life. He was to be, not to act or to suffer.

  And for a mere transient fancy, the charm of a pensive countenance, the romance of patient poverty, he had let his veins run liquid fire, his heart beat furiously. He was ashamed of his own inconsistency; and presently, seeing a hansom sauntering along under the trees with a horse that looked a good mover, he hailed the man, and asked if his horse were fresh enough to drive as far as Finchley. Naturally the reply was yes, and in the next minute he was being carried swiftly through the summer dust with his face to the north.

  He had often meditated this drive to the northern suburb with his own horses, and then it had seemed to him that to approach the house in which Mr. Champion was lengthening out the lees of life would be an error in taste, although he and the dying man had been upon the friendliest terms ever since Edith’s marriage. This afternoon he felt a curious eagerness to be with the woman to whom he had bound himself, a feverish anxiety which subjugated all scruples.

  He drove to the house Mrs. Champion had hired for herself — a small villa, in a well-kept garden. It was past eight when he rang the bell, and the lawn and flower-beds were golden in the sunset. He expected to find Edith Champion at dinner, and had made up his mind to dine with her, tête-à-tête perhaps, for the first time in their lives.

  Dinner was out of the question, for the present, at any rate. One of the match footmen, whose faces he knew in Hertford Street, came strolling in a leisurely way across the lawn, pipe in mouth, to answer the bell, suddenly pocketed his pipe and changed his bearing on recognising Mr. Hillersdon, and informed him that Mrs. Champion was at Kendal House, and that Mr. Champion was very bad.

  “Worse than usual, do you suppose?” asked Gerard.

  “I’m afraid so, sir. Mrs. Champion came home at half-past seven, but a messenger came for her while she was dressing for dinner, and she just put on her cloak, and ran across the road without even a hat. I’m afraid it’s the bend.”

  “Which is Kendal House?”

  “I’ll show you, sir.”

  The footman stalked out into the road with that slow and solemn stalk which is taught to footmen, and which is perhaps an element in the trade-unionism of domestic service — a studied slowness of movement in all things, lest perchance one footman should at any time do the work of two. Mrs. Champion’s footman was a person of highest quality, and was even now oppressed with a sense of resentment at having to perform his duties single-handed at Finchley, while his comrade was leading a life of luxurious idleness in Hertford Street.

  He pointed out a carriage entrance in a wall a little further up the road, and on the opposite side of the way, and to this gate Gerard hurried, and entered a highly respectable enclosure, a circular lawn girt with gravel drive, shrubberies hiding the walls, and in front of him a stately square stone house with classic portico, and two wings, suggesting drawing-room and billiard-room.

  The first glance at those numerous windows gave him a shock. All the blinds were down. It was over, he thought. Edith Champion was a widow.

  Yes, it was over. The sober, elderly manservant who opened the door informed him that Mr. Champion had breathed his last at five minutes to eight. Mrs. Champion was just in time to be present at his last moments. The end had been peaceful and painless.

  Edith Champion came downstairs, accompanied by the doctor, while the servant was talking, her eyes streaming. She saw Gerard, and went across the hall to him.

  “It is all over,” she said agitatedly. “He knew me at the last — knew me and spoke my name, just as I thought he would. Thank God, I was there; I was not too late for that last word. I did not think I could feel it so much, after those long days and weeks of anticipation.”

  “Let me take you to your own house,” Gerard said gently.

  She was in a black lace dinner-dress, with a light summer cloak flung loosely about her, her white throat rising out of the gauzy blackness like a Parian pillar, her dark eyes drowned in tears, and tears still wet on her pale cheeks. All that was tender and womanly in her nature had been shaken by that final parting. If she had sold herself to the rich man as slaves are sold in an Eastern market he had been a most indulgent master, and her slavery had been of the lightest.

  The doctor attended her to the threshold, and she went out leaning on Gerard’s arm. Even in the midst of her natural regret there was sweetness in the thought that henceforth she belonged to him. It was his privilege and his duty to protect her, to think for her in all things.

  “You will telegraph to my husband’s solicitor,” she said to the doctor falteringly, as she dried her tears. “He will be the proper person to arrange everything with you, I suppose. I shall not leave the Laurels till after—”

  “I understand,” interrupted the doctor, saving her the pain of that final word. “All shall be arranged without troubling you more than is absolutely necessary.”

  “Good night,” she said, offering her hand. “I shall not forget how kind and thoughtful you always wore. He could not have been better cared for.”

  Gerard led her out of the formal enclosure where the conifers and evergreens were darkening under the shadows of night. The gate was open at the Laurels, and the stately footman was on the watch for his mistress’s return, his powdered head bared to the evening breeze. Within there were lights and the brightness of flowers, dinner ready to be served.

  “You will take something, I hope?” said Gerard, when the butler announced dinner.

  They had gone into the drawing-room, and she was sitting with her face hidden in her hands.

  “No, no, I could not eat anything,” and then to the butler, “Mr. Hillersdon will dine. You can serve dinner for him, and tell George to bring me some tea her
e.”

  “Then let me have a cup of tea with you,” said Gerard. “I am no more in the mood for dining than you are.”

  This gratified her, even in the midst of her sorrows. “Women have an exaggerated idea of the value which men set upon dinner, and no sacrifice propitiates them more surely than the surrender of that meal.

  Edith Champion did not argue the point. She only gave a little sigh, and dried her tears, and became more composed.

  I think I did my duty to him,” she said presently.

  “Most thoroughly. You made him happy, which is more than many a wife can say about a husband she has adored,” answered Gerard.

  The footman brought in the tea-table, and lighted the candles on the mantelpiece and piano, and drew the curtains, with an air of wishing to dispel any funereal gloom which the shadow of that dark event at Kendal House had spread over the room. He and the other servants had been talking about the funeral and their mourning already, speculating as to whether Mr. Champion had left legacies to such of his servants as had been with him “say a year,” concluded George, footman, who had been in the service fourteen months.

  Mrs. Champion made a little motion of her hand towards the teapot, and George poured out the tea. She felt that the etiquette of grief would not allow her to perform that accustomed office. She sat still, and allowed herself to be waited upon, and sipped and sighed, while Gerard also sipped in pensive silence.

  He was thinking that this was the second time within a very few hours that he was taking tea with Edith Champion, and yet what a gap those few hours had cloven across his life. The woman he had loved so long, and to whom he had irrevocably pledged himself, was free from her bondage. There could be no longer doubt or hesitancy in their relations. A certain interval must be conceded to the prejudices of society; and then, at the end of that conventional widowhood this woman, whom he had loved so long, would lay aside her weeds, and put on her wedding-gown, ready to stand beside him at the altar. For months he had known that Mr. Champion’s end was imminent; and yet to-night it seemed to him as if he had never expected the man to die.