Читать книгу Wayfaring Men - Lyall Edna - Страница 4

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“Ill is that angel which erst fell from heaven,

But not more ill than he, nor in worse case,

Who hides a traitorous mind with smiling face,

And with a dove’s white feather masks a raven,

Each sin some colour hath it to adorn.

Hypocrisy, Almighty God doth scorn.”

Wm. Drummond, 1616.

Dinner proved a trying meal that evening, although Sir Matthew and Mr. Marriott exerted themselves to talk, and were both of them very kind to their small companion. Afterwards they adjourned once more to the study where for the sake of the old lawyer a fire had been lighted.

“The nights are still cold,” he said drawing a chair towards the hearth, and warming his thin white hands; “May is but a treacherous month in spite of the good things the poets say of it. I understand that your father’s illness was caused by a chill,” he added, glancing kindly at Ralph.

“He caught cold one night when they sent for him down in the village,” said Ralph, tears starting to his eyes. “He was called up at two o’clock to see a man who was dying: there was an east wind, he said it seemed to go right through him. But then you know he had been very much troubled because of his losses; for the last ten days he had scarcely eaten anything, and had slept badly.”

Sir Matthew paced the room restlessly, but when he spoke his voice was bland and calm.

“A noble end!” he said, “dying in harness like that; carrying comfort to the dying and then lying down upon his own death-bed; a very noble end.”

Something in the tone of this speech grated on Ralph, he shrank a little closer to the lawyer.

“Why do I hate him?” thought the boy. “He’s going to send me to Winchester with his own money, I ought to like him, but I can’t—I can’t!”

At that moment old Mrs. Grice appeared at the door asking to speak with Mr. Marriott. He followed her into the hall returning in a minute or two and approaching Ralph.

“My boy,” he said, laying a kindly hand on his shoulder, “if you want to see your father’s face again it must be now.”

Together they went up the dimly lighted staircase to the room overhead, Sir Matthew following slowly and with reluctance, a strange expression lurking about the corners of his mouth. Many thoughts passed through his mind as he stood looking down upon the still features of his dead friend; if the pale lips could have spoken he well knew they might have reproached him; and yet it was less painful to him to look at the stern face of the dead, than to watch the grief of the little lad as, through fast falling tears he gazed for the last time on his father’s face. It was a relief to him when the old lawyer drew the boy gently away, and persuaded him to return to the study fire.

“I will be good to his son,” thought Sir Matthew as he looked once more at the silent form. “I will make it up to Ralph. He shall have the education his father would have given him. And then he must shift for himself, I shall have done my duty, and he must sink or swim. The very sight of him annoys me, but it will be only for a few years, and, meantime, I must put up with it.”

So Ralph for the last time slept in the only home he had ever known, and woke the next day to endure as best he might all the last painful ceremonies through which it was necessary that he should bear his part. When the funeral was over he left Sir John Tresidder to talk with the lawyer and Sir Matthew, and drew Mab away into a sheltered nook of the walled kitchen garden where stood a rabbit-hutch.

“These are the only things left,” he said, mournfully. “Should you care to have them, Mab? I should like them to be at Westbrook for I know you would be good to them. Rabbi Ben Ezra is the best rabbit that ever lived, and he’ll soon get to care for you. Sarah Jane is rather dull, but I suppose he likes her, and she doesn’t eat her little ones or do anything horrid of that sort like some rabbits.”

“I will take no end of care of them,” said Mab; “but it seems a pity that you should leave them. Could you not take them with you?”

“If I were going to live with Mr. Marriott I wouldn’t mind asking leave,” said Ralph, “but there’s something about Sir Matthew—I don’t know what it is—but one can’t ask a favour of him. I’d far rather give up the rabbits.”

“Perhaps you are right,” said Mab. “And by the bye Ralph, let me have your new address, you are to live with your guardian are you not?”

“They say Sir Matthew is not exactly my guardian. But father’s will was made many years ago and he was named as sole executor, and father wrote to him the day before he died asking him to see to me. Here comes the man to say your carriage is ready.”

“Very well,” said Mab. “And tell Mrs. Grice I will send over for the rabbits. Good-bye, dear old boy. Don’t forget us all.”

She stooped down, and for the first time in her life kissed him, and Ralph having watched at the gate till the carriage was out of sight, suddenly felt a horrible wave of desolation sweep over him, and knew that he could not keep up one minute longer. Running down the road he fled through the churchyard never stopping till he found himself in a lovely sheltered fir grove—his favourite nook in the whole park; and here, while the nightingales, and the cuckoos, and the thrushes sang joyously overhead, he threw himself down at full length on the slippery pine needles that covered the warm dry ground, and sobbed as though his heart would break. They had always called this particular nook the “Goodly Heritage,” because whenever friends had been brought to see it they had always said to the Rector: “Ah, Denmead, your lines are fallen in pleasant places.” Poor Ralph felt that this saying was no longer true, he thought that the pleasantness had forever vanished from his life, and the prospect of going forth into the world dependent for every penny upon a man whom he vaguely disliked was almost more than he could endure. The boy had a keenly sensitive artistic temperament, but luckily his father’s strenuous endeavours had taught him self-control; he did not long abandon himself to that passion of grief but pulled himself together and began to pace slowly through the grove crushing into his hand as he walked a rough hard fir-cone. And then gradually as he breathed the soft pine scented air, and watched the sunbeams streaking with light the dark fir trunks, and glorifying the silvery birch trees in a distant glade which sloped steeply down to a little murmuring brook, he realised that the past was his goodly heritage, his possession of which no man could rob him, and in thankfulness for the home which had been so happy for thirteen years he set his face bravely towards the dark future.

“Waterloo, first single, a child’s ticket,” said Sir Matthew Mactavish entering the booking-office an hour or two later.

“But I am thirteen,” said Ralph quickly.

“Then he must have a whole ticket,” said the official, and Sir Matthew frowned but was obliged to comply.

“You are so absurdly small,” he said glancing with annoyance at his charge as they passed out on to the platform, “you might very well have passed for under twelve.”

Ralph felt hot all over, partly because no boy likes to be told that he is small, partly because he was angry at being reproved for not standing calmly by to see the railway company cheated. How could it be that a man as wealthy as Sir Matthew could stoop to do a thing which his father in spite of narrow means would never have thought of doing? He could as soon have imagined him stealing goods from a shop as attempting to defraud in this meaner, because less risky, fashion. However, Mr. Marriott happily diverted his thoughts just then.

“Are you fond of Dickens?” he said kindly. “Have you read his ‘Tale of Two Cities,’ or his ‘Christmas Tales?’”

Ralph had read neither, and was soon leaning back in his corner of the railway carriage, forgetful of all his wretchedness, cheered and fascinated, amused and filled with kind thoughts by the story of Scrooge, and Marley’s ghost, and Tiny Tim, and the Christmas turkey.

It was with a pang of regret that he bade old Mr. Marriott farewell when they reached London, and illogically yet naturally enough he felt far more grateful for the parting sovereign and the kindly glance which the lawyer bestowed on him, than for his adoption by Sir Matthew. A sense of utter desolation stole over him as Mr. Marriott disappeared, and he followed his guardian into a hansom and found himself for the first time in the heart of London. To his country eyes the crowded thoroughfares, the grim houses, the bustle and confusion, and the sordid misery seemed absolutely hateful; it was not until they happened to pass a theatre, and he caught sight of the name of a well known actor that his face brightened and his tongue was unloosed.

“Oh!” he exclaimed, “does Washington act there? Is that his own theatre?”

“Yes, to be sure,” said Sir Matthew; “you shall go some night and see him.”

“Oh, thank you!” said Ralph rapturously; “how awfully good of you. Father took me once to hear him at Southampton, he was playing in ‘The Bells’ one Saturday afternoon. It was splendid; there was the dream you know, you saw it all before you. He dreamt of the court of justice, and all the time it was his own conscience that was killing him, and his remorse for having murdered the traveller in the sleigh. I thought I should have choked at the end when he believed they were hanging him; he just says, you know, in a sort of gasp, ‘Take the rope off my neck!’ and then he falls back dead, and the play ends. It felt so jolly to get out of the dark theatre into the street, and to find the sun shining, and everything as jolly as usual, and to know that all that dreadful misery wasn’t really true.”

“Not true?” said Sir Matthew reflectively. “H’m!” He looked with a sort of envy at the boy’s clear innocent eyes, then he turned away; whether he were absorbed in his own thoughts or in the observation of the dingy crowd, it would have been hard to say.

They paused at a house in Bow Street where he had to make some inquiry, and Ralph fell into a happy dream about his latest hero the great actor, returning with a pang to the uncomfortable present when the hansom at length drew up at a house in Queen Anne’s Gate.

Feeling very small and desolate he followed his guardian up the broad steps and into the imposing entrance hall.

“Wipe your shoes,” said Sir Matthew, in his brisk authoritative tone.

Ralph obediently complied, and saw somewhat to his amusement that the same command was printed in large black letters on the mat.

“When I have a house of my own,” he reflected, “there shall be a doormat with SALVE on it. Then the chaps will know I’m awfully glad to see them, and that I’m not thinking first of my carpets.”

Sir Matthew, meantime, had been talking to a greyheaded butler; Ralph only caught the closing remark: “And let someone show Master Denmead up to the school-room.”

The butler looked at the small lonely boy in his black suit. “Fraulein and Miss Evereld are out, sir,” he replied unwilling to send this sad-faced little lad into the utter solitude of the upper regions.

“Oh, very well, then you had better come with me, Ralph,” said Sir Matthew, and he led the way upstairs. The boy glanced nervously round as they entered. This was not one of the homelike, comfortable, used drawing-rooms such as he had grown to love at Westbrook Hall, but a great saloon upholstered in the best style of a well-known firm, and as lacking in soul and individuality as a Parisian doll.

There were several people present. Lady Mactavish a peevish-looking woman with small suspicious blue eyes and a nervous manner, shook hands with him and looked him over in a dissatisfied way as though mentally reflecting what in the world she was to do with him.

“Janet,” she called turning to her elder daughter, “this is poor Mr. Denmead’s son.”

Janet, a somewhat sharp-featured clever-looking girl of four-and-twenty, came up and shook hands with him, but her cold light eyes beneath the fringe of red hair, looked to him unfriendly. She just passed him on to her younger sister who was enjoying a comfortable little flirtation at the other side of the room with a middle-aged officer.

“This is Ralph Denmead, Minnie,” she said, returning to her former place, and resuming the interrupted conversation with a lady caller.

Minnie, who was also redhaired, had a more friendly expression, she smiled at him as she shook hands.

“Fraulein has taken Evereld to her French class, but they will soon be home, and then they will look after you,” she said, motioning him to a chair at some little distance from herself and the Major. It was a modern imitation of an antique chair, very hard in the seat, very high from the ground, and with rich carving all over the back which made any sort of comfort impossible. As he sat on it with his legs uncomfortably dangling, he saw the lady who was talking to Janet put up her long-handled eye-glass, and inspect him critically as if he had been some strange animal at the Zoological Gardens. However small schoolboys were not interesting, she soon put down the eye-glass and turned to Miss Mactavish with a question which arrested Ralph’s attention.

“By the bye, have you read ‘The Marriage of Melissa’? It is the book of the season, you must get it my dear at once, everyone is talking of it, and it is an open secret that Sir Algernon Wyte and Mrs. Hereward Lyne wrote it, though of course it appeared anonymously.”

“What is it? A society novel?”

“Yes, and such a plot! There’s a tremendous run upon it they say, and wherever you go you hear people discussing it.”

Then followed a graphic account of the chief characters, and the most difficult situations; it was a plot which made the boy’s ears tingle. He wriggled round in his chair and tried to become interested in the vapid talk of Major Gillot and Minnie, it was doubtless very interesting to them, but to him it seemed the most insane interchange of bantering compliments and teasing replies that he had ever heard. Was this love making? he wondered. If so, they did it much better in books. It was not in this fashion that Frank Osbaldistone wooed Di Vernon, or that John Kidd made love to Lorna Doone.

He looked wearily across to the hearthrug where Sir Matthew was shouting unintelligible jargon about the money market into the ear of a deaf old Scotsman; then in desperation tried to listen to Lady Mactavish’s grumbling voice as she related her difficulties to a soothing and sympathetic friend.

“You are always burdening yourself with other people’s affairs,” said the purring voice of the adept in flattery.

“Well,” said Lady Mactavish, “you see my husband is one of those men who inspire confidence. They all turn to him naturally. And I do assure you he has a perfect passion for adopting children. There’s this boy to-day. To-morrow it will be some other sad case. A little while ago it was Evereld Ewart, poor Sir Richard Ewart’s little girl. You must see her by and bye. Yes, we have taken her in and her nurse and her German governess. It’s been a very great anxiety to me, a great responsibility, though I make no complaint of the child. Still one likes to have one’s house to oneself.”

“And dear Sir Matthew,” remarked the friend, “is fast turning it into an orphan asylum. But there it’s just like him! so noble-minded! So ready to give and glad to distribute!”

There came a little interlude with the tea. Ralph handed about cups and hot scones which looked very tempting he thought. But there was no cup for him; evidently boys of his age were not supposed to feed in the drawing-room. He returned to the mock antique chair with its bony back and thought wistfully of the drawing-room at Westbrook Hall, and wondered whether Mab was at this very moment finishing that particularly good Buzzard cake to which she had so lavishly helped him yesterday. At lunch he had been too miserable to eat, but now he was ravenous, and to be at once hungry and lonely and unhappy was a sensation he had never before experienced. How was he to bear this detestable new life? How was he to take root in this uncongenial soil?

His dismal reverie was interrupted by Lady Mactavish’s voice: “Just ring the bell, Ralph. By this time she must surely be in.” Then as the butler appeared, the welcome news came that Miss Evereld was at that moment on the stairs. Orders were given that she should come in at once.

Ralph looked eagerly towards the open door, and watched the entrance of a little girl who was apparently about a year or two younger than himself. She was dressed in a short black frock trimmed with crape, but nothing else about her was mournful, her nut-brown hair seemed full of golden sunbeams, her rosy face was dimpled and smiling; she seemed neither shy nor forward, but stood patiently listening to the remarks of Lady Mactavish, and old Lady Mountpleasant, as long as was necessary, then having received a warm greeting from Sir Matthew, who appeared to be genuinely fond of her, she caught sight of Ralph and crossing the room shook hands with him in an eager friendly way. The tide of general conversation rolled on, but the two children stood silently looking at each other for a minute or two. At last Evereld had a happy intuition.

“Are you not hungry?” she said.

“Yes, starving,” said Ralph, with a pathetic glance at the scones.

“It’s no good,” said Evereld, noting the look. “We never have anything down here, but we’ll try and slip away quietly. No one really wants us you see. And I’ll beg Bridget to make us some hot buttered toast. She is the dearest old thing in the world.”

“Does she live here?” said Ralph, as though he doubted whether anything superlatively good would be found beneath Sir Matthew’s roof.

“She is my nurse,” said Evereld. “We came from India you know last February. Her husband was a soldier but he died, and then she came to be our servant. Look, some more callers are coming in, now is our time to slip out.”

Ralph gladly followed the little girl as she glided dexterously from the room, and it was with a sense of mingled triumph and relief that they found themselves outside on the staircase.

“Fraulein Ellerbeck and I have been talking all day about your coming,” said Evereld, as they toiled up to the top of the house. “The telegram only came at breakfast.”

“They must all have thought it an awful bore to have me,” said Ralph, remembering Lady Mactavish’s preference for having her house to herself.

“We schoolroom people didn’t think it a bore,” said Evereld, gaily. “You can’t think how dull it is to have no one to play with. I could hardly do my French this afternoon for wondering about you, and once when the master asked me something about the difference between connaître and savoir, I said, by mistake, ‘Ralph Denmead.’ It was dreadful! Everyone laughed.” She laughed herself at the remembrance. “But, you see, I had been thinking how well we should get to know each other.”

A comforting sense of comradeship crept into Ralph’s sore heart; he forgot his troubles for a while as he looked at the merry face beside him. It was what he would have called an “awfully jolly” little face, with soft curves and a dainty little mouth and chin, a rounded forehead from which the hair was unfashionably thrown back, and a pair of clear blue eyes that made him think of speedwell blossoms.

Evereld led him in triumph to the schoolroom to introduce him to her governess, and Miss Ellerbeck’s warm German greeting, so unlike the chilly reception he had met with in the drawing-room, at once set him at his ease. Bridget, too, accorded him a hearty welcome, and brought in enough toast even to satisfy a hungry schoolboy. She was a motherly person, with one of those rather melancholy dark faces of almost Spanish outline which one meets with among the Mayo peasants. But not all her wanderings or her troubles as a soldier’s wife and widow had robbed her of that delicious quaint humour which brightens many a desolate Irish cabin, and which brightened some parts of this great desolate London house.