Chapter V: An Old Love Story

The next morning saw the three at breakfast in a little room adjoining the drawing-room. The sky was overcast, and before the meal was over Barbara turned her head quickly as the rain lashed the window in sudden fury. She arched her brows, and looked at Mr. Harding with anxious commiseration.

"It's going to be a wet day," she said.

He raised his eyes to the blurred prospect.

"It looks like it, certainly."

Her expression was comically aghast.

"I never thought of its being wet!"

"Yet such a thing does happen occasionally."

"Yes, but it needn't have happened to-day. I thought you would want to go out. What _will_ you do?"

"Stay indoors, if you have no objection."

"But there is nothing to amuse you. You will be so dull."

"Less so than usual, I imagine," said Reynold. "Do you find it so difficult to amuse yourself on a wet day?"

"No, but I have a great deal to do. Besides, it is different. Don't men always want to be amused more than women?"

"Poor men!" said he.

Mr. Hayes read his letters and seemed to take no heed of his niece's trouble. But it appeared, when breakfast was finished, that he had arranged how the morning should be spent. He announced his intention of taking young Harding over the Place, and he carried it out with a thoroughness which would have done honour to a professional guide, showing all the pictures, mentioning the size of the rooms, and relating the few family traditions--none of which, by the way, reflected any especial credit on the Rothwells. He stopped with bright-eyed appreciation before a cracked and discoloured map, where the Mitchelhurst estate was shown in its widest extent. Reynold looked silently at it, and then stalked after his host through all the chilly faded splendour of the house, shivering sometimes, sneering sometimes, but taking it all in with eager eyes, and glancing over the little man's white head at the sombre shelves of the library or the portraits on the walls. Mr. Hayes was fluent, precise, and cold. Only once did he hesitate. They had come to a small sitting-room on the ground floor, which, in spite of long disuse, still somehow conveyed the impression that it had belonged to a young man.

"This was John Rothwell's favourite room," he said. He looked round. "I remember, yes, I remember, as if it were yesterday, how he used----"

Harding waited, but he stood staring at the rusty grate, and left the sentence unfinished.

"And to think that now he should be living from hand to mouth on the Continent!" he said at last, and compressed his lips significantly.

He took the young man to the servants' hall, across which the giggling voices of two or three maids echoed shrilly, till they were suddenly silenced by the master's approach. Reynold followed him down long stone passages, and thought, as he went, how icy and desolate they must be on a black winter night. He was oppressed by the size and dreariness of the place, and bewildered by the multiplicity of turnings.

"I think," said Mr. Hayes suddenly, "that I have shown you all there is to see indoors."

And, as Reynold replied that he was much obliged, he pushed a door, and motioned to his guest to precede him. Reynold stepped forward, and discovered that he was in the entrance hall, facing Barbara, who had just come down the broad white stairs, and still had her hand upon the balustrade. It seemed to him as if he had come through the windings of that stony labyrinth, the hollow rooms and pale corridors, to find a richly-coloured blossom at the heart of all.

"Oh, Barbara, I'll leave Mr. Harding to you now," said the old gentleman. "I'm going to my study--I must write some letters."

He crossed the black and white pavement with brisk, short steps, and vanished through a doorway.

"Has uncle shown you everything?" she asked.

"I should think so."

"It's a fine place, isn't it?"

"Very fine, and very big," said Harding slowly. "Very empty, and ghostly, and dead."

"Oh, you don't like it! I thought it would be different to you. I thought it would seem like home, since it belonged to your own people."

"Home, sweet home!" he answered with a queer smile. "Well, it is a fine place, as you say. And what have you been doing all the morning?"

"Housekeeping," said Barbara. "And now"--she set down a small basket of keys on the hall table, as if she were preparing for action--"now I am going to set the clock right."

"I'll stay for that if you'll allow me," said Reynold. "I remember what you told me last night. It is _the_ time, and the world stands still when it stops."

"For me, not for you," the girl replied. "You have your watch--you don't believe in the big clock."

"Yes, I do. Here, in Mitchelhurst, what does one want with any but Mitchelhurst time? What have I to do with Greenwich? But as for Mitchelhurst, your uncle has talked to me till I feel as if I were all the Rothwells who ever lived here. Why, what's this? Sunshine!"

"Yes," said Barbara. "It's going to clear up."

It could hardly be called actual sunlight, but there certainly was a touch of pale autumn gold growing brighter about them as they stood.

Harding was listening to the monotonous tick--tick--tick--tick.

"I remember a man in some book," he said, "who didn't like to hear a clock going--always counting out time in small change."

"Oh, but that's a worrying idea! I should hate to think of my life doled out to me like that!"

"I'm afraid you must," he answered, with his little rough-edged laugh. "It would be very delightful to take one's life in a lump, but how are you going to have more than a moment in a moment? There are plenty of us always trying to do it. If you could find out the way----"

"How, trying?" said Barbara.

"Trying to keep the past and grasp the future," Harding replied. "Working and waiting for some moment which is to hold at least half a lifetime--when it comes! Oh, I quite agree with you; I should like a feast, and I am fed by spoonfuls!"

She looked up at him a little doubtfully, and the clock went on ticking. "I always thought it was like a heart beating," she said, swerving from the idea he had presented as if it were distasteful. "Now!"

There was silence in the empty hall, as if, in very truth, she had laid her brown young hand upon Time's flying pulse, and stilled it.

"Talk of killing time!" said Harding.

"No," Barbara answered, without turning her head. "Time's asleep--that's all--asleep and dreaming. He'll soon wake up again."

She had so played with the idle fancy that, quite unconsciously, she spoke in a hushed voice, which deepened the impression of stillness. Harding said no more, he simply watched her. His imagination had been quickened by the sight of the Place; its traditional memories, its pride, and its decay had touched him more deeply than he knew. Life, with its hardness and its haste, its obscure and ugly miseries and needs, had relaxed its grasp, and left him to himself for a little space in the midst of that curious loneliness. He felt as if the wide, living, wind-swept world beyond its walls were something altogether alien and apart. Everything about him was pale and dim; the very sunlight was faded, as if it were the faint reflection of a glory that was gone; everything rested as if in the peace of something that was neither life nor death. Everything was faded and dim, except the girl who stood, softly breathing, a couple of steps away, and even she seemed to be held by the enchantment of the place, and to wait in passive acquiescence. Reynold's grey eyes dilated and deepened.

But as she stood there, unconscious of his gaze, Barbara smiled. It was just the slightest possible smile, as if she answered some smiling memory; a curve of the lip, hardly more than hinted, which might betoken nothing deeper than the recollection of some melodious scrap of rhyme or music. Yet Reynold drew back as if it stung him. "That's not for me!" he said to himself.

The movement startled Barbara from her reverie. "Oh, how like you are to that picture in the drawing-room!" she exclaimed, impulsively.

He knew what she meant, and the innocent utterance was a second sting. But he laughed. "What, the good-looking one?"

It seemed to her that she could have found a light answer but for his eyes upon her. As it was, he had the gratification of seeing her colour and hesitate. "I--I wasn't thinking--I didn't mean--" she stammered, shyly. "Oh, of course!" And then, angry with herself for her unreadiness, she stepped forward, and, with a gesture of impatience, set the pendulum swinging.

"Time is to go on again?" said he.

"Yes," Barbara replied, decidedly. "It would be tiresome if it stood still long. It had better go on. Besides, I'm cold," and she turned away with a pretty little shiver. "I want to go to the fire; I can't stay to attend to it any longer."

Harding lingered, and after an instant of irresolution she left him to a world which had resumed its ordinary course.

At luncheon there was the inevitable mention of the weather, and Mr. Hayes, with his eyes fixed upon his plate, said, "Yes, it has cleared up nicely. I suppose you are going into the village?"

The young people hesitated, not knowing to whom the question was addressed. Miss Strange waited for Mr. Harding, and Mr. Harding for Miss Strange. Then they said "Yes" at the same moment, and felt themselves pledged to go together.

"I thought so," said Mr. Hayes, and began to remind his niece of this thing and that which she was to be sure and show their visitor. "And the sooner you go the better," he added when the meal was over. "The days grow short."

Barbara looked questioningly at Mr. Harding. "If you like to go----"

"I shall be delighted, if you will allow me," said the young man, and a few minutes later they went together down the avenue.

"The days grow short," Mr. Hayes had said, and everything about them seemed set to that sad autumnal burden. The boughs above their heads, the ground under foot, were heavy with moisture, the bracken was withered and brown, there were no more butterflies, but at every breath the yellowing leaves took their uncertain flight to the wet earth. The young people, each with a neatly furled umbrella, walked with something of ceremonious self-consciousness, making little remarks about the scenery, and Mr. Hayes, from his window, followed them with his eyes.

"Rothwell, every inch of him," he said to himself, as Reynold turned and looked backward at the Place. "I never knew one of the lot yet who didn't think that particular family had a right to despise all the rest of the world. The only difference I can see is that this fellow despises the family too. Well, _let_ him! Why not? But, good Lord! what an end of all his mother's hopes!" And Mr. Hayes went back to his fireside--_his_, while John Rothwell was dodging his creditors on the Continent! There was unutterable dreariness in the thought of such a destiny, but the little old man regretted it with a complacent rubbing of his hands and a remembrance of Rothwell's arrogance. There is a belief, engendered by the moral stories of our childhood, that it is good for a man that his unreasonable pride should be broken--a belief which takes no heed of the chance that its downfall may hurl the whole fabric of life and conduct into the foulness of the gutter. Mr. Hayes naturally took the moral story view of a pride by which he had once been personally wounded; yet he wore a deprecating air, as if Fate, in too amply avenging him, had paid a compliment to his importance which was almost overpowering.

It was more than a quarter of a century since Rothwell and he had been antagonists, though they had not avowed the fact in so many words, and Rothwell, with no honour or profit to himself, had baffled him. Herbert Hayes was then over forty and unmarried. The Mitchelhurst gossips had made up their minds that he would live and die a bachelor. But one November Sunday he came, dapper, bright-eyed, and self-satisfied, to Mitchelhurst church, gazed with the utmost propriety into his glossy hat, stood up when the parson's dreary voice broke the silence with "When the wicked man----" and, looking across at the Rothwells' great pew, met his fate in a moment.

The pew held its usual occupants--the old squire, grey, angular, and scornful; young Rothwell, darker, taller, paler, less politely contemptuous, and more lowering; Kate, erect and proud, sulkily conscious of a beauty which the rustic congregation could not understand. These three Hayes had often seen. But there was a fourth, a frail, colourless girl, burdened rather than clothed with sombre draperies of crape, pale to the very lips, and swaying languidly as she stood, who unconsciously caught his glance and held it. She suffered her head, with the little black bonnet set on the abundance of her pale hair, to droop over her Prayer-book, and she slid downward when the exhortation was ended as if she could stand no longer. The time seemed interminable to him until she rose again.

His instantaneous certainty that there was no drop of Rothwell blood in her veins was confirmed by later inquiry. He learnt that she was distantly related to the squire's wife, and had recently lost her parents. Though she had not been left absolutely penniless, her little pittance was not enough to keep her in idleness, and she was staying at Mitchelhurst while the question of her future was debated. It was difficult to see what Minnie Newton was to do in a hardworking world. She could sink into helplessly graceful attitudes, she could watch you with a softly troubled gaze, anxious to learn what she ought to think or say; she was delicate, gentle, and very slightly educated. She had not a thought of her own, and she was pure with the kind of purity which cannot grasp the idea of evil, and fails to recognise it, unless indeed vice is going in rags and dirt to the police-station, and using shocking language by the way. Her simplicity was touching. She thought nothing of herself; she would cling to the first hand that happened to be held out to her. She might be saved by good luck, but nature had obviously designed her for a victim.

Miss Newton was polite to Mr. Hayes as to everybody else, but she was the last person at Mitchelhurst Place to suspect the little gentleman's passion. The very servants found it out, and wondered at her innocence. John Rothwell laughed.

"What a fool she is!" he said to his sister, as he stood by the window one day, and saw Hayes coming up the avenue.

"That's an undoubted fact," said the magnificent Kate.

"And what a fool he is!" John continued.

"Well, we won't quarrel about that either," she replied liberally. "They will be all the better matched."

"Matched?" said Rothwell. "No."

She looked up hastily.

"Eh?" she said. "Not matched? And why not?"

Instead of answering, he deliberately lighted a cigarette and smoked, gazing darkly at her.

Kate shrugged her shoulders.

"What difference can it possibly make to you?"

He took his cigarette from his lips and looked at it.

"It will make a difference to him," he said at last.

The bell rang, and the knocker added its emphatic summons. One of Rothwell's dogs began to bark. Kate had risen, and stood with her eyes fixed on her brother's face.

"It would be a very good thing for the girl," she remarked meditatively. "I don't see what is to become of her, poor thing, unless she marries."

"Damn him!" said Rothwell.

The answer was not so irrelevant as it appeared. His gaze was as steady as Kate's own, and seemed to prolong his words as a singer prolongs a note. She drew her brows together, as if perplexed.

"Well," she said, turning away, "I must go and look after our lovers!"

"And I," he said.

The dapper, contented little man had done Rothwell no harm, but the young fellow cherished a black hatred, born of the dulness of his vacant life. Hayes, without being rich, was very comfortably off, and he was apt to betray the fact with innocent ostentation. A sovereign was less to him than a shilling to John Rothwell, and it seemed to the latter that he could always hear the gold chinking when Hayes talked. One could do so much with a sovereign, and so little with a shilling. Rothwell was hungry, with a hunger which only just fell short of being a literal fact, and he had to stand by, with his hands in his empty pockets, while Hayes could have good dinners, good wine, good clothes, good horses, whatever he liked in the way of pleasure--and was "such a contemptible little cad with it all," the young man snarled. His own poverty would have been more bearable had it not been for his neighbour's ease and security. And now, heaven be praised!--heaven?--the prosperous man had set his heart on this whitefaced, fair-haired, foolish girl who was under the roof of Mitchelhurst Place, and for once he should be baffled.

Rothwell set to work with evil ingenuity--it seemed almost fiendish, but, really, he had nothing else to do--to ruin Hayes's chance of success. But for him it must have been almost a certainty. Kate was inclined to favour the suitor. The old squire disliked him, perhaps with a little of his son's feeling, but would have been very well satisfied to see the girl provided for. And Minnie Newton was there for any man, who had a will of his own, and was not absolutely repulsive, to take if he pleased. The course of true love seemed about to run with perfect smoothness till young Rothwell stepped in and troubled it.

Mockery, not slander, was his weapon. As Miss Newton idled over her embroidery he would lounge near her and make little jests about Hayes's age, size, and manners. She listened with a troubled face. Of course Mr. Rothwell was talking very cleverly, and she tried not to remember that she had found Mr. Hayes very kind and pleasant when he called the day before. Of course it was absurd that a man of that age should want to be taken for five-and-twenty--yes, and he had a _very_ ridiculous way of putting his head on one side like a bird--when Mr. Rothwell had insisted on having her opinion, she had said, "Yes, it was _very_ ridiculous"--and a gentleman, a real gentleman, would not talk so much about his money, and what he could do with it--Mr. Rothwell said so, and he certainly knew. And as she had agreed to it she supposed it was quite right that he should repeat this at dinner-time, as if it were her own remark, though she wished he wouldn't, because his father turned sharply and looked at her. But, no doubt, Mr. Hayes did look absurdly small by the side of John Rothwell, and there was something common in his manners. Many people might think they were all very well, but a lady would feel that there was something wanting. And so on, and so on, till she began to ask herself what John Rothwell would say of her if, after all this, she showed more than the coldest civility to Mr. Hayes.

Kate perfectly understood the position of affairs, but did not choose openly to oppose her brother. If Hayes would have come and carried Minnie off, young Lochinvar fashion, she would have been secretly pleased. As it was, she was contemptuously kind to the girl, and if the little suitor met the two young women in the village, Miss Rothwell shook hands and looked away. Once she found herself some business to do at the Mitchelhurst shop, and sent Minnie home, lest she should be out too long in the December cold. She had spied Herbert Hayes coming along the street, and had rightly guessed that he would see and pursue the slim, black-clothed figure. And, indeed, he used his walk with Miss Newton to such good purpose that he might have won her promise then and there if a tall young man had not suddenly sprung over a stile and confronted them. Minnie fairly cowered in embarrassment as she met Rothwell's meaning glance, which assumed that she would be delighted to be rid of a bore, and she suffered him to give her his arm and to take her home, leaving poor Hayes to feel very small indeed as he stood in the middle of the road. He tried a letter, but it only called forth a little feebly-penned word of refusal as faint as an echo.

Hayes never suspected the young man's deliberate malice. He fancied the old squire, if anybody, was his enemy; but he was more inclined to set the difficulty down to the Rothwells' notorious pride than to any special ill-will to himself.

"No one is good enough for them, curse them!" he said over the little note. "They won't give me a chance of winning her. I'm not beaten yet though!"

But he was. Early in January Minnie Newton took cold, drooped in the chilly dreariness of the old house, and died before the spring came in.

One day Kate Rothwell came upon Hayes as he lingered, a melancholy little figure, by the girl's grave.

"Ah, Miss Rothwell," he said, looking up at her, "I wanted to have had the right to care for her and mourn her, but it was not to be!"

"No," said Kate. "I'm sorry," she added, after a moment. It was just at the time when she herself was about to defy all the barren traditions of the Rothwells to marry Sidney Harding with his brilliant prospects of wealth. Harding's half-brother, who had made the great business, was pleased with the match, and promised Sidney a partnership in a couple of years. Everything was bright for Kate, and she could afford a regretful thought to poor Hayes. "I'm sorry," she said.

Her voice was hard, but the slightest proffer of sympathy was enough. "Ah! I knew you wished me well--God bless you!" said the little man, "and help you as you would have helped me!"

Perhaps Kate Rothwell felt that at that rate Providence would not take any very active interest in her affairs. She turned aside impatiently. "Pray keep your thanks for some one who deserves them, Mr. Hayes. I don't."

"You could not do anything, but I know you were good to _her_. She told me, that afternoon----" He spoke in just the proper tone of emotion.

"Nonsense!" Kate answered, sharply. "How could she? there was nothing to tell." Mr. Hayes might well say, even a quarter of a century later, that Miss Rothwell had an unpleasant manner.

Nevertheless she held a place in that idealised picture of his love which in his old age served him for a memory. In Sidney Harding's death, within a year of the marriage, he saw a kindred stroke to that which had robbed him of his own hope, and he never thought of Kate without a touch of sentimental loyalty. When he met Kate's son that October afternoon, with the familiar face and voice, on his way to Mitchelhurst, he had felt that, Rothwell though he was, he must be welcomed for his mother's sake. And yet it had almost seemed as if it were John Rothwell himself come back to sneer in a new fashion.

How came he to be so evidently poor while old Harding was rolling in wealth? Mr. Hayes, sitting over the fire, wondered at this failure of Kate's hopes. People had called it a fair exchange, her old name for the Hardings' abundance of newly-coined gold. But where was the gold? Plainly not in this young Harding's pockets. What did he do for a living? Why was he not in his uncle's office, a man of business with the world before him? There was no stamp of success about this listless, long-legged fellow, who had come, as hopeless as any Rothwell, to linger about that scene of slow decay. "He'll do no good," said Mr. Hayes to himself, stirring up a cheerful blaze.