Chapter V: Part X: Chap. XLVII

“You seem so much better to-day,” said Mr Payne next morning to Mr Levitt, “that I think I shall leave you alone with the Captain, and go down to Larches, where I have not paid my customary visit for a couple of weeks past.”

“By all means,” said the invalid; “I should like to go with you if I could. I’ve a little curiosity to see that young lady of yours” (which Mr Payne knew to signify that his friend felt a warm interest in Orelia, though he had never seen her since she was a child). “She’s handsome, you say?”

“Really,” said Mr Payne, “making due deduction for a parent’s partiality, I should say you wouldn’t often see a finer young woman.”

“And accomplished too!--and high spirited. Payne, do you know, I wish you’d take Durham down with you. I’m quite well enough to do without anybody now.”

“To be sure,” said Mr Payne; “if you think you can spare him, I shall be delighted. ’Twill do Orelia good, too, for she, and a friend of hers, who is staying with her, seem to me to be falling into a sort of religious melancholy; and, to tell you the truth, it has caused me a good deal of anxiety.”

“And if--if the two should take a fancy to each other--Payne, I needn’t say that my heir would lose nothing in my estimation with your daughter for a wife. I once indulged in some little castle-building of that kind, of which Durham was not the hero.”

“Ah, we won’t speak of that now, my dear friend,” said Mr Payne hastily. “I’ll go at once, and ask the Captain to join me.”

Accordingly, he went off to propose the visit to Durham.

“It needn’t be dull for you,” said Mr Payne, “even if you shouldn’t succeed in finding Langley. Besides my daughter there’s a friend of hers, a very charming person, whom I think you must know--Lady Lee.”

Fane answered shortly and stiffly that he had that pleasure.

“Come,” said Mr Payne, “this is fortunate. We’ll start after lunch, and get down to Larches by dinner-time. Frewenham is just fifty miles from here.”

Fane agreed. Since finding out that Orelia lived near Frewenham, he divined at once why Langley’s steps should be drawn in that direction, and made sure of finding him there. Accordingly, after lunch, they set off, and repaired in Mr Levitt’s carriage to the railway, which took them the greater part of their journey.

Fane was but a silent companion. He was about, then, to see Lady Lee again--to be under the same roof with her; that was the text on which his thoughts discoursed. Was it not foolhardy to run into the dangerous proximity?--to expose himself to the influence of charms which could never be his? On the other hand, would it not be mere weakness to avoid it? Why should he permit his movements to be governed, his feelings played upon, by a woman who had preferred another to him?--who was probably awaiting but the expiration of her period of mourning to be the wife of another--of a man he despised. Besides, he had some curiosity to see how she would receive and treat him. Yes, that was it! Curiosity was the feeling that made him wish to see her again.

And Fane, though as sensible a fellow as you would be likely to meet, and by no means given to self-deception, really persuaded himself that his anxiety once more to behold Lady Lee proceeded entirely from curiosity. If he had a lurking doubt about that, there were plenty of other plausible reasons to satisfy his conscience; for, even admitting curiosity to be too trivial a feeling to cause him to accept Mr Payne’s invitation, yet how could he help accompanying him? Mr Payne was such an old friend of his uncle’s--and his uncle wished it too; and then he should be glad to see Orelia again--he had a great regard for Orelia! Above all, there was the prospect of securing his cousin Langley--oh, there were reasons enough why he should be anxious and eager for the termination of the journey, quite independent of the prospect of seeing Lady Lee. Moreover, there was nothing he despised so much as a man who would give a second thought to a woman after he had ascertained that she didn’t care for him.

Didn’t care for him!--here he left arguing, and branched off into recollections--such as he had a thousand times before banished, and resolved to have done with for ever. Was her treatment of him, at one time, that of a woman who didn’t care for him? Was she a likely person to be guilty of setting traps for a man just to feed her vanity? Wasn’t she the reverse of everything hollow, trifling, and insincere? These questions resulted in the satisfactory and novel general axiom that women were unaccountable beings, and as changeable as the moon.

They had quitted the railway at Frewenham, and Fane stood at the door of the principal hotel awaiting the harnessing of a horse to the gig which was to convey them to Larches (which operation Mr Payne was superintending), when he felt a hand laid gently on his arm, and a voice said, “Bless me, Captain Fane, is that you? Who’d have thought it!”

Fane turned and beheld Miss Fillett. Kitty was dressed in sober-coloured and sober-cut garments, very different from the coquettish array in which she had been accustomed, when Fane last saw her, to go flirting about the precincts of the Heronry. Her very face seemed to have lost its pert expression; at least, if not quite lost, it was driven to lurk in the corners of her mouth and eyes. Beside her walked a youth of about fourteen, in whose features might be traced a strong family likeness to Kitty.

“How d’ye do, Kitty? You’ve come here with your lady, have you?” said Fane.

“This is my nittive place,” answered Miss Fillett. “I’m living with my own femily, though I do see my lady and Miss Payne from time to time. My lady took me from here when she married. This is my brother, Captain,” looking at the youth at her side. “Go on, Thomas,” she said to this relative, “and wait for me at the meeting-house door; and mind you have nothink to say to them depraved boys that’s always playing marbles there.”

Thomas departed. “Why, goodness gracious, Captain, what bekim of you that time you left us so suddin?” said Kitty, coming close up to Fane, and speaking in a low earnest tone. “There was certain persons fretted after you, I can tell you.”

Fane felt his colour rise in spite of himself. “I suspect you’re mistaken, Kitty,” he said, affecting to laugh.

“To go off in that hasty way, without so much as saying good-by,” Kitty went on, “and when there was persins, perhaps, wishing to see you, if ’twas only to bid farewell--’twasn’t quite the thing, Captain.”

“Perhaps not, Kitty,” said the Captain, “but we can’t always do what we wish, you know.”

“No,” said Kitty, “Hevin knows we can’t--in particular, when our wish is to do what is right. I’ve wanted to see you this long time, Captain Fane, about a matter in which I’ve took blame to myself. Ever since the loss of dear Master Juley, which my lady never will forgive me, though I’d have laid down my life for him, Hevin knows, Captain, my conscience have pricked me”--

Kitty stopt suddenly as she looked up the street. Fane’s eyes following the direction of hers, he beheld a man in black advancing on the opposite side of the way. His face hung down over his white neckcloth; so that, in order to look round him, his eyes, which were of a leaden colour, were forced to peer in a stealthy stare from under his thick black eyebrows. His depressed nose, and his advancing lips, rounding smugly and smilingly over the teeth, gave him some resemblance to a sheep or goat.

“’Tis the Rev. Mr Fallalove,” said Kitty, “the minister of our chapel. O, what will he think of me talking to you, sir! I’ll meet you, sir,” added Kitty, in a rapid under-tone, “outside the town, on the road to Larches, at ten o’clock to-morrow morning. I’ve really got something to tell you, sir--something you’d give a good deal, perhaps, to know.” Fane promised to come--and Kitty, dropping a demure curtsey, walked away to greet the Rev. Mr Fallalove; while Mr Payne appearing with the gig, he and Fane drove off to Larches.

“Go on and announce yourself, while I take my coat off,” said Mr Payne to Fane, standing in the lobby at Larches--“through the drawing-room’s your way.”

Fane advanced--the door of the dining-room was open, and he paused, looking at its occupants, who, taking his step for that of a servant, did not look towards him.

Orelia, the queenly Orelia, seated at the head of the table, was eating her soup with her usual lofty composure. She was worth more attention than Fane bestowed on her, for his gaze never rested on her, nor on the martyr Priscilla, whose face was swathed up like a mummy’s, but who smiled, nevertheless, in spite of her teeth. He was altogether absorbed in the contemplation of Lady Lee, who sat at the foot of the table, her soup untouched, her cheek resting on her hand, her look turned aside towards a small foot which peeped from beneath her black dress.

How long he might have so stood is uncertain; but Mr Payne’s advancing step and voice now caused them all to look up, and they saw Fane standing in the doorway. Lady Lee visibly started; her bosom and shoulders gave one quick heave, and her colour flushed up for a moment. Orelia’s spoon stopped on its way to her mouth--she calmly laid it down, and rose to receive her visitors.

Fane, acting up to his principle that it would be mere weakness to allow himself to show any feeling beyond strict civility towards her ladyship, rather, as is customary in such cases, overdid his part, and threw such an extreme amount of indifference into his salutation, that the warmth with which she came forward to meet him was dissipated in a moment. Chilled and hurt, she resumed her seat in silence.

Fane, supporting his character of chance and uninterested visitor with great success, conversed fluently on a variety of topics, though it would have puzzled him to remember his own remarks half an hour after. It was one of the few occasions in his life when he had acted a part, and he, of course, overacted it. He was pointedly amusing to Orelia; he listened with great attention to the inanities of Priscilla, lending the most courteous ear to a protracted account of her toothache; but when Lady Lee spoke, which only happened once or twice, though her voice made his heart beat, he manifested no consciousness of her presence. Once or twice, addressing some trivial remark to her, he caught her eyes fixed on him with a look of sorrowful surprise, but they were immediately averted.

Mr Payne did not find Fane more sociable, when the ladies left them to their wine, than he had on the journey. At tea with the ladies he resumed his former demeanour; and afterwards Orelia, thinking to do him and Hester a kindness, set her father and Priscilla down to double dummy, in a remote corner, and sat by the card-table herself.

Fane felt rather awkward, and glanced at Lady Lee, who was reading. Presently he found himself approaching her--not that he would have owned himself impelled to take that course--not at all; he set it all down to civility--he couldn’t leave her sitting there by herself, you know. But he would be very guarded; he would try to hit the line between the confidence of friends and the reserve of new acquaintances, so that his present demeanour might blend harmoniously into their ancient intimacy on the one hand, and the distant civility that was to exist between them in future, on the other.

Lady Lee did not seem so absorbed in her book as not to notice his approach; for though she did not look round, she coloured a little, and tremulously turned over two leaves at once, without discovering the gap thus left in the narrative. She laid the volume down when he took a seat near and addressed her.

“This must be a pleasant place of your friend’s when the flowers are in bloom,” said Fane.

“Very.”

“No doubt you feel quite at home here.”

“Certainly; the happiest years of my life were spent here.”

“I trust,” said Fane, “they may soon lose the distinction of being the happiest.”

“That is very unlikely,”--(with a sigh.)

A pause. Strange to say, the thought that Lady Lee had no happiness immediately in store for her, did not altogether displease Fane.

“Happiness often takes us unawares,” said Fane; “and,” he added, “another of its peculiarities, as we all know, is to slip from us as we prepare to close our grasp on it. Most of us experience much oftener its elusive power than its pleasant surprises.”

“Yours used to be a more cheerful philosophy,” said Lady Lee. “I remember, in one of our last conversations, you denounced those views of life which are tinged with complaint or despondency, as unmanly and untrue.”

“I suspect our philosophy comes more from without than within,” he said; “and we preach hope or cynicism as we happen to be prosperous or disappointed.”

“I should regret,” said Lady Lee, in a low tone, “to hear that you had any real cause for such a change.”

“Our opinions as to what might or might not be a real cause would possibly differ,” returned Fane. “Of course, if one has bound up one’s happiness in some ideal which turns out to be a delusion, there is perhaps no one to blame but one’s-self. I say perhaps, because the deception may have been so complete as to excuse the credulity; but, at any rate, one must not then find fault with views of life which others, more fortunate, are justified in adhering to.”

“It must be a weaker belief in good than I had fancied Captain Fane’s to be, which a single error can shake,” said Lady Lee.

“But if the error is so important as to upset all calculation,” said Fane. “If I have been all my life----. But I will not talk of myself,” he said, breaking off, as he perceived how near dangerous ground he was treading. “What is the book you are reading?”

“It has a radical fault in your eyes,” said Lady Lee; “it is written by a woman.”

“Ah!” said Fane, “I remember I used to think it a kind of desecration for a woman to confide her sentiments to the world; and the finer the sentiments, the more it seemed to me a pity that they should ever be blown on by the rude breath of the public. If she must write them, let her write them in her journal, or her letters to a chosen few--perhaps a chosen one; but to trot her feelings out, to show the form and paces of her mind to cold-eyed critics and gaping fools, I would as soon see the woman I loved capering in the scantiest gauze at the opera. So I used to say.”

“Used to say!” said Lady Lee. “Are your opinions on this point changing too?”

“Yes,” said Fane, with a good deal of unconscious bitterness in his tone--“yes; I begin to think that if a woman’s sentiments do not influence her life in its chief actions, it is of no great consequence what becomes of them; let her trumpet them in the marketplace, if she likes, after the manner of a proclamation. I don’t mean to say they should be always manifesting themselves in every petty action, but they should colour her existence, and influence its main outlines. But if these sentiments and feelings would never have found expression at all if not in writing--if, by presenting them to the public, she is robbing her daily life of no delicate tint--then my objections to female authorship are gone; but with them is also gone some of my belief in the excellence of feminine nature.”

Can he have left Doddington on some love enterprise, and been disappointed? whispered Lady Lee’s heart; or can the sharpness of his tone be meant for me? A dim thought that he might be alluding to her marriage with Sir Joseph crossed her mind. Poor woman! no wonder she was puzzled; she could not see the handsome, self-complacent, coxcombical image of Sloperton, which to Fane’s fancy sat between them, like Banquo’s ghost, and seemed to push him from his stool.

“Perhaps,” she said presently--“perhaps you are on principle getting rid of some of the tenets of your former faith, stripping yourself, that you may be the lighter to run the race of ambition; for you never denied you were ambitious, you know.”

“I never did,” said Fane; “but I do now. For do but consider, Lady Lee, if my faith in my ideals has vanished, if the companionship and reflected interest which these give to a man’s efforts are no longer among his prospects, where is he to look for the stimulus and reward of ambition?”

“You show a dreary picture,” said Lady Lee, with an unconscious sigh; “but then ambition is a dreary thing, and does not seem, in general, to look for sympathy as its reward.”

“True,” said Fane; “and when I see men long past their youth joining in the contest for fame, I always ask myself where lies their inducement?--Not in love, for they have outlived it--not in friendship, for they reject it--not even in applause, for to that they seem not to listen. They seem actuated by an insane desire to climb to a barren eminence, and there die. For my own part, I could not value nor wish for fame, unless I could read it focussed and reflected in ----. But I will not trouble you with my abandoned aspirations and opinions; I leave them, with my other theories, to some one who has not yet discovered that he is a dreamer of dreams.”

Fane imagined that he had conducted the conversation so as to show perfect indifference and independence. It never occurred to him that he would not have talked thus, nor on such subjects, to a woman he did not care about.

When Lady Lee went to her room that night, Orelia followed her, and, sitting down by her side on the sofa at the foot of the bed, looked inquiringly into her eyes. Lady Lee knew what she meant, but, having nothing to say, said nothing. She only turned away and sighed; and Orelia, kissing her forehead, bid her good night.

Ah, if Fane could have afterwards seen Lady Lee whispering her sorrow to her pillow in the watches of the night, what a pebble he must have been had he not run to comfort her. But he couldn’t see her, for there was a solid wall separating her room from the one where he strode to and fro musingly.

If it is hard for two, who would gladly give up all and everything for each other, to find inseparable obstacles interposed between them, must it not be the devil’s spite for them to discover, perhaps in the next world, that they were divided in this one by some merely imaginary bar--some difference that a word would have dissipated?