Part 10 (1/2)

The young man was moved.

'I ought indeed to remember you,' he said, with some emotion.

And as he spoke, he saw a diamond flash in the firelight. This, then, was the child who had wandered down that terrible night, to whom he had given his poor wife's diamond cross.

Rhoda saw with some alarm that his eyes were fixed upon the cross.

'I sometimes think I ought to send this back to you,' she faltered on, blus.h.i.+ng faintly, and still holding it tightly clasped in her hand.

'Keep it,' said Raban, gravely; 'no one has more right to it than you.'

Then they were all silent.

Dolly wondered why Rhoda had a right to the cross, but she did not ask.

Raban turned still more hard and more sad as the old memories a.s.sailed him suddenly from every side. Here was the past living over again.

Though he might have softened to Lady Sarah, he now hardened to himself; and, as it often happens, the self-inflicted pain he felt seemed reflected in his manner towards the girls.

'I know you both now,' he said, gravely, standing up. 'Good-night; will you say good-by to your aunt for me?'

He did not offer to shake hands; it was Dolly who put out hers. He was very stiff, and yet there was a humble look in his pale face and dark eyes that Dolly could not forget. She seemed to remember it after he was gone.

Lady Sarah came in only a minute after Frank had left. She looked disappointed.

'I have just met him in the hall,' she said.

'Is he gone?' said Dolly. 'Aunt Sarah, he is still very unhappy.'

A few minutes afterwards Rhoda said what a pity that Mr. Raban was gone, when she saw how smartly the tea-table was set out, how the silver candlesticks were lighted, and some of the good old wine that George liked sparkling in the decanter. Dolly felt as if Mr. Raban was more disagreeable than ever for giving so much trouble for nothing. Rhoda was very much interested in Lady Sarah's visitor, and asked Dolly many more questions when they were alone upstairs. She had been ill, and was staying at Church House to get well in quiet and away from the schoolboys.

'Of course one can't ever like him,' Dolly said, 'but one is very sorry for him. Good-night, Rhoda.'

'No, I don't like her,' said Raban to himself; and he thought of Dolly all the way home. Her face haunted him. He dined at his club, and drove to the shabby station in Bishopsgate. He seemed to see her still as he waited for his train, stamping by the station fire, and by degrees that bitter vision of the past vanished away and the present remained.

Dolly's face seemed to float along before him all the way back as the second-cla.s.s carriage shook and jolted through the night, out beyond London fog into a region of starlit plains and distant glimmering lights. Vision and visionary travelled on together, until at last the train slackened its thunder and stopped. A few late Cambridge lights shone in the distance. It was past midnight. When Raban, walking through the familiar byways, reached his college-gates, he found them closed and barred; one gas-lamp flared--a garish light of to-day s.h.i.+ning on the ancient carved stones and mullions of the past. A sleepy porter let him in, and as he walked across the dark court he looked up and saw here and there a light burning in a window, and then some far-away college-clock clanged the half-hour, then another, and another, and then their own clock overhead, loud and stunning. He reached his own staircase at last and opened the oak door. Before going in, Raban looked up through the staircase-window at George Vanborough's rooms, which happened to be opposite his own. They were brilliantly illuminated, and the rays streamed out and lighted up many a deep lintel and sleeping-window.

CHAPTER XIII.

LITTLE BROTHER AND LITTLE SISTER.

Go; when the instinct is stilled, and when the deed is accomplished, What thou hast done, and shalt do, shall be declared to thee then; Go with the sun and the stars, and yet evermore in thy spirit Say to thyself: 'It is good, yet is there better than it; This that I see is not all, and this that I do is but little, Nevertheless it is good, though there is better than it.'

--A. Clough.

As the actors pa.s.s across the stage of life and play their parts in its great drama, it is not difficult at the outset to docket them for the most part 'a lawyer,' 'a speculator,' 'an amiable person,' 'an intelligent, prosy man,' 'a parson,' &c.; but after watching the piece a little (on this all-the-world stage it is not the play that ends, but the actors and speculators that come and go), we begin to see, that although some of the performers may be suited to their parts, there are others whose characters are not so well cast to the piece--Robert Henley, for instance, who is not quite in his element as a very young man. But every one is in earnest in a certain fas.h.i.+on upon this life-stage, and that is why we find the actors presently beginning to play their own characters, instead of those which they are supposed to represent--to the great confusion, very often, of the drama itself. We have all read of a locksmith who had to act the part of a king; of a nephew who tried to wear his uncle's c.o.c.ked hat, of a king who proclaimed himself a G.o.d; and of the confusion that ensued; and it is the same in private as in public life, where people are set to work experiments in love, money, sermon, hay, or law-making, with more or less apt.i.tude for the exercise--what a strange jumble it is! Here is the lawyer making love to his client, instead of writing her will; the lover playing on the piano while his mistress is expecting him; the farmer, while his crops are spoiling, pondering on the theory of original sin.

Among women, too, we find wives, mothers, daughters, and even professed aunts and nieces, all with their parts reversed by the unkind freaks of fate. Some get on pretty well, some break down utterly. The higher natures, acting from a wider conception of life, will do their best to do justice to the character, uncongenial though it may be, which happens to be a.s.signed to them. Perhaps they may flag now and then, specially towards the middle of the performance; but by degrees they come to hear the music of 'duty done.' And duty is music, though it may be a hard sort of fugue, and difficult to practise--one too hard, alas, for our poor George as yet to master. Henley, to be sure, accomplished his ambitions; but then it was only a one-fingered scale that he attempted.

Dolly's was easy music in those early days of her life: at home or in Old Street the girl herself and her surroundings were in a perfect harmony. Dolly's life was a melody played to an accompaniment of loving tones and tender words among the tranquil traditions of the old house and the old ivy-grown suburb in which it stood. Rhoda used to wonder why people cared so much for Dolly, who was so happy, who never sacrificed herself, but did as she liked, and won all hearts to her, even Robert Henley's, thought Rhoda, with a sigh. As for Dolly, she never thought about her happiness, though Rhoda did. The girl's life sped on peacefully among the people who loved her. She knew she meant so well that it had not yet occurred to her that she might make mistakes in life and fail, and be sorry some day as other folks. Rhoda, comparing her own little back-garret life in the noisy Morgan household with her friend's, used to think that everybody and everything united to spoil her. Dolly was undoubtedly Dorothea Regina--ruler of the household--a benevolent tyrant. The province of the teapot was hers--the fortress of the store-room. She had her latch-key. Old Marker and George were the only people who ever ventured to oppose her. When they did so, Dolly gave in instantly with a smile and a sweet grace that was specially her own. She was a somewhat impetuous and self-diffident person in reality, though as yet she did not know what she was. In looks she could see a tall and stately maiden, with a sweet, round, sleepy face, reflected in the gla.s.s, and she took herself for granted at the loving valuation of those about her, as people, both old and young, are apt to do.