Part 9 (1/2)

He looked so odd and angry that she stopped quite frightened. Dark fierce lines used to come under his heavy eyes at the smallest attempt to revive what was still so recent and vivid. If it was rude he could not help it.

He never spoke of himself. Strangers used to think Raban odd and abrupt when he sometimes left them in the middle of a sentence, or started away and did not answer. His old friends thought him changed, but after a great crisis we are used to see people harder. And this one talks, and you think he has told you all; and that one is silent, and he thinks he has told you nothing. And feelings come and go, the very power to understand them comes and goes, gifts and emotions pa.s.s, our inmost feelings change as we go on wandering through the narrow worlds that lie along the commonest common-places and ways of life. Into what worlds had poor Frank been wandering as he stood watching the red lights dull into white ashes by the blue tiles of the hearth!

Presently a lantern and two dark heads pa.s.sed the window.

'Where is he?' said a voice in the hall. 'Dolly, did you say Mr. Raban was here? What! all in the dark?'

The voice had reached the door by this time, and some one came and stood there for an instant. How well he remembered the kindly croaking tones!

When he heard them again, it seemed to him as if they had only finished speaking a minute before.

Some one came and stood for an instant at the doorway. No blooming young girl with a bright face and golden head, but a grey-haired woman, stooping a little as she walked. She came forward slowly, set her light upon the table, and then looked at him with a pair of kind s.h.a.ggy eyes, and put out her long hand as of old.

Raban felt his heart warm towards the shabby face, the thick kindly brows. Once that woman's face had seemed to him like an angel's in his sorest need. Who says angels must be all young and splendid; will there not be some comforting ones, shabby and tender, whose radiance does not dazzle nor bewilder; whose faces are worn, perhaps, while their stars s.h.i.+ne with a gentle tremulous light, more soothing to our aching, earth-bound hearts than the glorious radiance of brighter spirits? Raban turned very red when he saw his old friend. 'How could you know I was here? You have not forgotten me?' he said; not in his usual reluctant way, but speaking out with a gentle tone in his voice. 'I should have come before, but I----' Here he began to stammer and to feel in his pocket. 'Here it is,' and he pulled out a packet. 'If it hadn't been for you I should never have had the heart to set to work again. I don't know what I should have done,' he repeated, 'but for you.' And then he looked at her for an instant, and then, with a sudden impulse, Raban stooped--as he did so she saw his eyes were glistening--he stooped and kissed her cheek.

'Why, my dear?' said Lady Sarah, blus.h.i.+ng up. She had not had many kisses in her life. Some people would as soon have thought of kissing the poker and tongs.

Frank blushed up too and looked a little foolish; but he quickly sobered down again. 'You will find it all right,' said Raban, folding her long thin hand over the little parcel, 'and good-night, and thank you.'

Still Lady Sarah hesitated. She could not bear to take it. She felt as though he had paid her twice over; that she ought to give it back to him, and say, 'Here, keep it. I don't want your money, only your kiss and your friends.h.i.+p. I was glad to help you.' She looked up in his pale face in a strange wistful way, scanning it with her grey eyes. They almost seemed to speak, and to say, 'You don't know how I want it, or I would not take it from you.'

'How changed you are!' she said at last, speaking very slowly. 'I am afraid you have been working too hard to pay me. I oughtn't to----' He was almost annoyed by this wistful persistency. Why did she stand hesitating? Why did she not take it, and put it in her pocket, and have done with it? Now again she was looking at the money with a pathetic look. And meanwhile Raban was wondering, Could it be that this woman cared for money--this woman, who had forced her help upon him so generously? He hated himself for the thought. This was the penalty, he told himself, for his own past life. This fatal suspicion and mistrust of others: even his benefactress was not to be spared.

'I must be going,' he said, starting away in his old stiff manner. 'You will let me come again, won't you?'

'Come again! Of course you will come again,' Lady Sarah said, laying her thin fingers on his arm. 'I shall not let you go now until you have seen my Dolly.' And so saying, she led him back into the hall. 'Go in, you will find her there. I will come back,' said Lady Sarah, abruptly, with her hand on the door-handle. She looked quite old and feeble as she leant against the oak. Then again she seemed to remember herself.

'You--you will not say anything of this,' she added, with a sudden imploring look; and she opened her thin fingers, still clutching the packet of bank-notes and gold, and closed them again.

Then he saw her take the lantern from the chimney and hurriedly toil up the stairs, and he felt somehow that she was going to hide it away.

What would he have thought if he could have seen her safe in her own room, with the sovereigns spread out upon the bed and the bank-notes, while the poor soul stood eagerly counting over her store. Yes, she loved money, but there were things she loved still more. Sarah Francis, alone in the world, might have been a miser if she had not loved Dolly so dearly--Dolly, who was Stan's daughter. There was always just this difference between Lady Sarah and open-handed people. With them money means little--a moment's weakness, a pa.s.sing interest. With Lady Sarah to give was doubt, not pleasure; it meant disorder in her balanced schemes; it meant truest self-denial: to give was to bestow on others what she meant for Dolly's future ease and happiness; and yet she gave.

CHAPTER XII.

DOROTHEA BY FIRELIGHT.

The waunut logs shot sparkles out Towards the pootiest, bless her, An' leetle fires danced all about The chiny on the dresser; The very room, coz she was in, Looked warm from floor to ceilin'.

--Lowell.

Lady Sarah had left Raban to go into the drawing-room alone. It was all very strange, he thought, and more and more like a crazy dream. He found himself in a long room of the colour of firelight, with faded hangings, sweeping mysteriously from the narrow windows, with some old chandeliers swinging from the shadows. It seemed to him, though he could not clearly see them, that there were ghosts sitting on the chairs, denizens of the kingdom of mystery, and that there was a vague flit and consternation in the darkness at the farther end of the room, when through the opening door the gleam of the lantern, which by this time was travelling upstairs, sped on with a long slanting flash. For a moment he thought the place was empty; the atmosphere was very warm and still; the firelight blazed comfortably; a coal started from the grate, then came a breath, a long, low, sleepy breath from a far-away corner. Was this a ghost? And then, as his eyes got accustomed, he saw that the girl who had let him in sat crouching by the fire. Her face was turned away; the light fell upon her throat and the harmonious lines of her figure.

Raban, looking at her, thought of one of Lionardo's figures in the Louvre. But this was finer than a Lionardo. What is it in some att.i.tudes that is so still, and yet that thrills with a coming movement of life and action? It is life, not inanimately resting, but suspended from motion as we see it in the old Greek art. That flying change from the now to the future is a wonder sometimes written in stone; it belongs to the greatest creations of genius as well as to the living statues and pictures among which we live.

So Dolly, unconscious, was a work of art, as she warmed her hands at the fire: her long draperies were heaped round about her, her hair caught the light and burnt like gold. If Miss Vanborough had been a conscious work of art she might have remained in her pretty att.i.tude, but being a girl of sixteen, simple and somewhat brusque in manners, utterly ignoring the opinions of others, she started up and came to meet Raban, advancing quick through the dimness and the familiar labyrinth of chairs.

'Hush--s.h.!.+' she said, pointing to a white heap in a further corner, 'Rhoda is asleep; she has been ill, and we have brought her here to nurse.' Then she went back in the same quick silence, brought a light from the table, and beckoning to him to follow her, led the way to the very darkest and shadiest end of the long drawing-room, where the ghosts had been flitting before them. There was a tall oak chair, in which she established herself. There was an old cabinet and a sofa, and a faded Italian s.h.i.+eld of looking-gla.s.s, reflecting waves of brown and reddish light. Again Dolly motioned. Raban was to sit down there on the sofa opposite.

Since he had come into the house he had done little but obey the orders he had received. He was amused and not a little mystified by this young heroine's silent imperious manners. He did not admire them, and yet he could not help watching her, half in wonder, half in admiration of her beauty. She, as I have said, did not think of speculating upon the impression she had created: she had other business on hand.