Chapter IV: On the Threshold of a Discovery

Alexis goes back to Cheswold Grange, and resumes the even tenor of his life, a prosperous country gentleman, with very little to occupy him, and plenty of leisure in which to muse upon destiny, and dream of the things that might have been. The hunting season has long been over. It is the time of roses, and he has no temptation to endanger his neck upon Bayard again just yet awhile. He rides his steady little brown mare in the shady roads and lanes round Cheswold, while Bayard stretches his noble limbs in the home paddock, and gathers strength for the crisp, clear days of October and the chill mists of November.

It is a pleasant life, but an idle one, and a thought too lonely. True that there is plenty of society in the neighbourhood, and Mr. Secretan, of Cheswold, is popular; but life cannot be a succession of dinner parties, and Alexis has little inclination for croquet and garden parties, archery, fancy fairs, or any of those small amusements which beguile the long days of a country summer.

The two young men have scarcely returned to the Grange when Richard Plowden declares that he must go home.

‘I’ve been with you nearly a year, Alexis,’ he says. ‘I am sure you must be sick of my society.’

‘When I am, be sure I’ll let you know it, Dick,’ answers the other, laughing. ‘You’re the best company in the world to me, for you’re a kind of second self. I can talk to you as I talk to no one else. You know all my secrets.’

‘All of them?’ asks Dick, gravely.

‘Yes, Dick, all--or if there is a vague, undeveloped thought or dream I have not shared with you, it has not been for want of confidence in your fidelity.’

‘I believe that,’ replies Dick, deeply moved. ‘But I must go home all the same. This kind of life is all very well for a short time, but it can’t go on--it would spoil me for the rough work-a-day world.’

‘Let it spoil you, Dick. Why should you ever go back to the work-a-day world? You are my adopted brother, as dear to me as if we had slept in the same cradle, or lain in the same mother’s arms. My home is yours, my income yours, and if Fate cuts me off untimely you will not find yourself unprovided for. Your mother is happy with her lodgers and her housekeeping, to say nothing of the fernery, which she tells you has flourished under her care. Why talk of leaving me, Dick?’

‘You are too good; and I am more grateful than any words of mine can tell. But I must go all the same.’

‘You are not happy with me, Dick?’

‘I have been most happy with you.’

‘Have been. That means you are not happy now. It is you who are tired of my company. That long illness of mine wore you out. You had too much of me at Dorley Mill.’

At the name of Dorley Mill a spasm of pain passes across Richard Plowden’s face--so faint that it might have escaped a less watchful observer than Alexis. But Alexis is sorely puzzled by Dick’s desire to leave him, and is watchful of his friend’s countenance.

‘Too much of your company--no, Alexis. You know that your company is like the wine of life for me.’

‘And yet you persist in leaving me. There must be some reason.’

‘There is a reason--one that I can never tell you. A foolish reason. But strong enough to send me away from Cheswold.’

‘And the roses, and the ferns, and all those bright things of summer you love so well--you to whom the hills and woods and wandering streams are new. You would exchange all the pleasures of the country for the Brompton Road and the ever-flowing stream of many-coloured omnibuses, the cry of the hawker, the reek of the ham and beef shop, the glare of the gin-palace? The reason must be a strong one, Dick.’

‘It is as strong as Fate.’

‘And you will not trust me with it?’

‘I cannot tell you my reasons. You would laugh at me, despise me.’

‘Try me, Dick. Suppose I can guess your secret.’

‘Oh no, no!’ cries Dick, with alarm.

‘Those days at Dorley Mill, when my broken ribs were slowly knitting themselves together again--peaceful, happy days, were they not, Dick? That quaint Elizabethan homestead seemed more like home to both of us than this good old house of mine. It had the atmosphere of home, which this has not. There is no such thing as home without the presence of a woman. We were very happy--in a tranquil, sleepy fashion--at Dorley, weren’t we, Dick?’

‘Very happy,’ answers Dick, looking down at an open book, the leaves of which he turns over restlessly, as if looking for some particular passage.

‘And now I begin to fear that Dorley Mill was an unlucky place for both of us. Neither of us came away heart-whole.’

‘Alex,’ cries Dick, looking up.

‘No half-confidences, old friend. You see I am not afraid to trust _you_. Such a confession comes amiss from me, you think--from me who am bound fast by an old tie--which, if the marriage tie could be broken by a wife’s unkindness, might well have been cancelled for me last December, when I stood before that mercenary wife of mine and pleaded the cause of love against money. Do not be alarmed, Dick, I am not going to sophisticate. The old tie is binding, and the old bond shall be honoured, though it should keep me a lonely man for the rest of my days. But I may be forgiven if I have had my dream of what might have been--if I have thought how fair and perfect my life might be made in this good old home of mine, were I but free to seek Linda Challice for my wife.’

‘Yes,’ murmurs Dick, ‘I thought so.’

‘You thought that I was human, Dick, and that it was not easy for me to feel all the sweetness of Linda’s society--to be sheltered and cherished by her kindness--to know that I owed my life to her patient tenderness, and withhold my heart from her altogether. My heart went out to her, Dick, unawares, but by not so much as a word or look did I ever betray my secret. I woke one day to a full knowledge of my peril, and the next day I left Dorley Mill.’

‘You acted nobly,’ cries Dick, clasping his friend’s hand. ‘Yes, I suspected the truth, and it made my own thoughts all the more bitter. How could she think of me? What a worm I must seem to her beside you!’

‘She shall think of you, Dick. She shall learn to know your noble heart--your talents--your love of all that is lofty and lovely in life. She shall learn to understand you and appreciate you as I do. Trust to time, Dick, and me. It shall be my task to win her for you.’

‘Impossible,’ sighs Dick. ‘She is won already, and not by me.’

‘Silence, Dick. There is treason against her in such an insinuation. She knew that I was married.’

‘She must have known it at the last, but I am not quite sure that she knew it at first, unless anything you said when you awoke from your delirium may have enlightened her. I don’t think, somehow, that she did know it. Remember, you were a perfect stranger to her. You came to Dorley Mill as if you had dropped from the clouds. How should she know anything of your domestic history, which has only been whispered amongst your neighbours?’

‘You might have told her my painful story, Dick.’

‘It was not my business. It would have been an impertinence in me to gabble about your affairs. I felt assured that you would tell her.’

‘Why should I do so, Dick? I am not a coxcomb. I foresaw no peril to myself in my association with that sweet girl, still less did I imagine danger to her. I accepted all her bounties as if she had been verily a ministering angel lent to this lower world for a little while to be my comfort. Upon my word, Dick, I think there is a spice of folly--or unconscious jealousy, perhaps--in your notion that I am any more to Miss Challice than the traveller who fell by the wayside.’

‘I can read her face,’ answers Dick, sorrowfully, ‘and it has told me her secret.’

Alexis is moved by this conviction of Richard Plowden’s. For so little he could be glad. He sees the fair young face, the bended brow, the soft eyes which have so often avoided his own. Dare he interpret those signs--those little looks which he remembers so well--as the tokens of a hidden passion? Dare he suffer himself to believe that while Linda Challice ministered to him pity grew to love in her heart, as gratitude widened into love in his? The thought that it is so can bring him nothing but sorrow; yet he finds himself encouraging the fancy notwithstanding.

‘I am a weak fool, Dick,’ he cries at last, after pacing the firelit library for some time; ‘and you ought not to say these things to me. Linda Challice does know that I have a wife. She learned it directly from my own lips; but only on the morning before I left Dorley. But she shall know all my wretched story. She shall know that I deserve her pity, though I dare not ask for her love. I am bound to pay one more visit to Dorley Mill, if it is only to repeat my thanks for all her goodness to me. I will go to-morrow. I have ordered a little present for her from London which I think she will like.’

‘She is not a girl to care for presents,’ says Dick.

‘You sulky old bear! women love souvenirs and keepsakes.’

‘Yes, when they love the giver.’

‘You know that shabby silver watch she wears.’

‘It was her father’s,’ growls Dick; ‘he wore it to the day of his death, or had it under his pillow on his death-bed. He died in Rome, you know, in something like impoverished circumstances. I dare say he had a fine gold hunter when his pictures were the fashion.’

‘Poor fellow! it was his watch, was it? Then I’m afraid Lin----Miss Challice won’t care for the one I’ve bought her.’

Alexis takes a neat little morocco case out of a drawer in the library table, a dainty case lined with white velvet, on which reposes the most fascinating of watches--about the size of a florin. The case is dark purple enamel, with Linda’s monogram in pearls, and round the watch is coiled a slender gold chain set with pearls.

‘Rather too pretty for a miller’s granddaughter,’ says Dick. ‘But I’ve no doubt she’ll be pleased. Did you buy anything for Mr. Benfield?’

‘Yes, Dick, I didn’t forget the miller;’ and from another drawer Alexis produces a splendid meerschaum pipe. ‘The old gentleman can smoke his tobacco in that when he sits by the fire after supper.’

‘I don’t suppose it will draw as well as his clay,’ murmurs Dick.

The drawing-room at the Grange seems more than usually empty that evening when the two young men leave the dining-table. It is a wet night, and they lack the amusement which the gardens and stable yard afford them in fine weather. Alexis has read all the magazines and newspapers, and is hardly in the humour for serious literature, although all his favourite authors, newly bound and newly arranged upon the shelves in the library, invite him to study. His mind is disturbed, he knows not why. He takes up a volume of Tennyson from the table and turns the leaves idly till he comes to that exquisite poem called ‘Love and Duty.’ This he reads aloud, Richard Plowden listening intently.

‘That was written by a MAN, Dick,’ he says when he has finished. ‘Byron-worshipper as I am, I confess that there is more stamina in that than in all Childe Harold’s wailing against destiny. But then Byron died in the flower of his manhood. We know not what noble fruit the tree might have borne had it grown to maturity. Byron never came to the age at which Scott began to be a poet, or at which Goethe wrote his masterpiece. What would have been the aftermath of Byron and Shelley had inexorable death spared so much genius?’

After this Alexis and his friend talk of their favourite poets, and both brighten a little as their thoughts drift away from their own individual sorrows.

Soon after breakfast next morning, Alexis mounts Titmouse and rides down to Dorley, through the perfumed lanes where the dog-roses and woodbine make a tangle of flowers among the young oak saplings and the sturdy hawthorn bushes. Dorley Mill is looking its prettiest as he rides along the winding track that leads to it. Trot is sitting in the porch playing with a very fat black and white puppy with a round stupid-looking head, a puppy that has not long been added to the population of Dorley.

At the sight of Alexis, Trot lets fall his pinafore, and gives the puppy a sudden drop in the world. It is the youthful animal’s first experience of the uncertainty of friendship, and he yelps out his remonstrance against life’s delusions.

‘Mammie!’ yells Trot, ‘mammie, come out, it’s the genlamum.’ In spite of their familiarity, Trot has never learnt to call Alexis anything but the ‘genlamum.’

Linda is not forthcoming, and Trot remembers presently that mammie has gone down to the village.

‘She not be long,’ says Trot. ‘I’ll show oo my noo puppy;’ and he introduces that animal, held firmly by the tail.

‘Daddie says he grow big--ever so big--bigger than Trot,’ says the boy, opening his eyes tremendously wide. They are hazel eyes, with lashes of gold, which time will darken to brown.

‘I’ll come in and wait, Trot,’ says Alexis, dismounting, and tying Titmouse to the gatepost. She is a lazy animal, and has no objection to stand there nibbling the grass by the wayside.

He goes in at the familiar porch, beneath which he was carried unconscious on the day of his accident, and seats himself by Linda’s work-table. How pleasant the room is to his sight! how homelike! There are the books Linda read to him--the books that seemed to breathe a deeper pathos and holier tenderness when she read. There is her drawing-board with an unfinished landscape, a wind of the river overshadowed by willows. There are the flowers her hand has arranged; there the sofa on which he passed so many reposeful hours of unthinking happiness.

‘Why did I permit myself to be so happy?’ he thinks, in self-reproach. ‘It was a pleasant dream, but the return to life’s dull reality is a little hard to bear.’

He rouses himself from his musing mood, and begins to talk to Trot, taking Trot and the puppy on his knee together. Trot stops tolerably quiet; but the puppy begins a perambulation--a voyage of discovery up and down Mr. Secretan’s coat sleeves and collar, and even on to his head, which is more familiar than agreeable.

‘Well, Trot, you haven’t forgotten me, I hope?’

‘I not forgotten oo, but I don’t love oo no more,’ replies Trot, decisively.

‘Not love me any more? Oh, Trot, that is cruel. Why not?’

‘Why oo go ’way and make mammie cry?’ demands Trot, facing the accused with magisterial severity.

Alexis crimsons at the interrogation.

‘I never made mammie cry,’ he falters.

‘That’s a tory. Oo did. She cried the day oo went,--she cried a little every day, she said it was a headache,--Trot knows better, she not such a coward as to cry for a headache. Trot doesn’t cry when his head aches, he’s a man!’

‘Yes, but mammie’s only a woman, Trot, and a headache might make her cry if it was a very bad one. Mammie wouldn’t tell a story.’

‘She says _I_ mustn’t,’ responds Trot, ‘but I think she did. Grown-up people may do anything. Mayn’t they tell tories?’

‘No, Trot, not good people. Only wicked people tell stories.’

A shadow flits across the threshold, and the subject of their conversation enters. Trot scrambles off Mr. Secretan’s knee and runs to his adopted mother.

‘I told him he was naughty to go away and make oo cry,’ says Trot, ‘and he says he didn’t.’

‘Foolish Trot. What silly notions you get into your head!’ says Linda, bending over the child and blushing deeply.

Alexis sees the blush, and he sees something more than that. He sees that Linda has changed within the ten days that have gone by since he left Dorley Mill. A settled pallor succeeds that fleeting red. Her eyes are sunken, and there is a dark line beneath them, which deepens their colour, and gives a pathetic expression that touches him to the heart. She has cared for him, she has been sorry for him, and he, poor fettered wretch, dare say no word of his care or his sorrow for her. She must drink the cup of humiliation to the dregs, and know that the man to whom her innocent heart has gone forth is the property of another.

‘I have been anxious to come and tell you once more how gratefully I shall ever remember your goodness to me,’ says Alexis, after they have talked about Trot and Trot’s puppy for a few minutes. The puppy is to grow up into a Newfoundland if it realizes the expectations of its friends, but there is an element of uncertainty in these things, and Alexis has a lurking conviction that this puppy will develop into the most mongrel of mongrels.

‘Believe me, neither my grandfather nor I consider our care of you a matter for gratitude, Mr. Secretan,’ replies Linda. ‘Providence brought you to our door. We should have been very unchristian-like if we had not cared for you. I think you must know that if you had been the poorest tramp that ever dropped down on the road-side we should have done the same.’

‘I am quite sure of that,’ replies Alexis, ‘and that is why I have never ventured to speak about the expense that my illness must have entailed upon you.’

‘Pray relieve your mind upon that score. Your housekeeper sent all the broths and jellies, hothouse fruits, poultry, game, and wines from the Grange. I think you only cost us a few new-laid eggs and a little milk. Mrs. Bodlow kept our larder almost too well supplied in her anxiety that you should have nourishing diet.’

‘Mrs. Bodlow only did her duty. But lightly as you regard the obligation, Miss Challice, it is one which I shall carry to my dying day. If ever I am inclined to make a bad use of this life of mine, I will remember how hard you strove to win it back from the grave. I have ventured to bring you something--a little gold watch, with your initials on the back, which I hope you will wear sometimes in remembrance of the many weary hours you spent by the stranger’s sick bed.’

‘I will wear it always,’ replies Linda, with tears in her eyes.

‘Oo can’t wear two wathes,’ exclaims Trot. ‘Oo wear oor fazer’s wath.’

‘I shall keep that among my treasures, Trot; but it is nearly worn out, poor old watch, and I am sure this will keep better time.’

‘Oo like this best ’cause the genlamum give it oo,’ cries the far-seeing Trot.

Alexis pretends not to hear this last observation, and produces the meerschaum pipe, which Linda admires amazingly, and which Trot wants to have in his mouth and to make believe to smoke, as he does sometimes with daddie’s homelier clay.

‘Dear little Trot,’ exclaims Alexis, ‘how your small voice would enliven us at Cheswold Grange. You cannot imagine how dull it is there, Miss Challice, in the long summer evenings.’

‘No? And yet I think I know how long the summer evenings can be. But Trot would not do much to enliven them. He is worn out by seven o’clock. Oh, by the way, talking of Trot, I have made one little discovery since you left us.’

‘What is that?’ cries Alexis, eagerly.

‘Don’t let me raise false expectations. It is such a trifle, scarcely worth mentioning, but you seemed anxious to find out our little darling’s parentage, and this seems a clue, however small.’

‘What is it? Pray tell me. I am most anxious, more anxious than I can explain.’

‘Pray do not excite yourself, Mr. Secretan. I was looking over some papers in my desk, the other day, when I came upon the blank sheet of note-paper which contained that last remittance for Trot,--I remember it on account of the peculiar way in which it was folded,--and I noticed for the first time that there was a name stamped upon it in the corner, the name of the stationer who supplied it, no doubt.’

‘Yes, of course.’

‘I have saved the sheet of paper to show you. The name is Morgan, Redcastle.’

Alexis starts from his chair and seizes Trot as if he would take possession of him on the instant. He is speechless with surprise.

‘You know the name of that place.’

‘Know it? yes. I have reason, bitter reason, to know it. A small town in Yorkshire. And that money, obviously sent by the child’s mother, was sent from Redcastle?’

‘One would suppose so.’

‘There can be no doubt of it. Tell me, Miss Challice, if I were to show you a photograph of the woman you sheltered, the mother of this boy, would you recognise her? The picture I shall show you was taken in the bloom of her beauty. You saw her--should it indeed be the same woman--faded, worn by care and deprivation. Should you know the face under such altered conditions?’

‘I should know it anywhere. But why should you be so agitated? Why should the mere name of this place excite you so much?’

‘Ask me no questions till I come back to you with the photograph,’ says Alexis. ‘I shall go and return as fast as my horse will carry me.’

‘Pray be careful. Remember----’

‘That I have been thrown! Trust me, dear Miss Challice. I will run no risks. I am too anxious to settle the question of Trot’s parentage.’

He takes the child in his arms, kisses him as he has never kissed him yet in all their friendly companionship, gives him back to Linda, and runs out at the gate.

He has mounted Titmouse and is out of sight before Linda has recovered from her astonishment at his agitation.

‘Genlamum’s in a hurry!’ exclaims Trot.