Part 84 (1/2)
He himself strolled in the opposite direction, not to seem to be watching her.
He was in good spirits: felt like a general, who, after repulsing many desperate attacks successfully, orders an advance, and sees the tide of battle roll away from his bayonets. His very body seemed elastic, indomitable; he walked l.u.s.tily out into the country, sniffed the perfumed hedges, and relished life. To be sure he could not walk away from all traces of his misdeeds; he fell in with objects that to an ordinary sinner might have spoiled the walk, and even marred the spring-time. He found his creditor Maxley with grizzly beard and bloodshot eyes, belabouring a milestone; and two small boys quizzing him, and pelting him with mud: and soon after he met his creditor, old Dr. Phillips, in a cart, coming back to Barkington to end his days there, at the almshouse. But to our triumphant Bankrupt and Machiavel these things were literally nothing: he paced complacently on, and cared no more for either of those his wrecks than the smiling sea itself seems to care for the dead s.h.i.+ps and men it washed ash.o.r.e a week ago.
He came home before luncheon for his gossip with Jane; but she had not returned. All the better; her budget would be the larger.
To while the time he got his file of the _Times,_ and amused himself noting down the fluctuations in Peruvian bonds.
While thus employed he heard a loud knock at his door, and soon after Peggy's voice and a man's in swift collision. Hasty feet came along the pa.s.sage, the parlour door opened, and a young man rushed in pale as ashes, and stared at him; he was breathless, and his lips moved, but no sound came.
It was Edward Dodd.
Mr. Hardie rose like a tower and manned himself to repulse this fresh a.s.sault.
The strange visitor gasped out, ”You are wanted at our house.”
CHAPTER x.x.xVII
JANE HARDIE had found Albion Villa in the miserable state that precedes an auction: the house raw, its contents higgledy-piggledy. The stair carpets, and drawing-room carpets, were up, and in rolls in the dining-room; the bulk of the furniture was there too; the auction was to be in that room. The hall was clogged with great packages, and littered with small, all awaiting the railway carts; and Edward, dusty and deliquescent, was cording, strapping, and nailing them at the gallop, in his s.h.i.+rt sleeves.
Jane's heart sank at the visible signs of his departure. She sighed; and then, partly to divert his attention, told him hastily there was a letter from Alfred. On this he ran upstairs and told Mrs. Dodd; and she came downstairs, and after a conversation took Jane up softly to her friend's room.
They opened the door gently, and Jane saw the grief she was come to console--or to embitter.
Such a change! instead of the bright, elastic, impetuous young beauty, there sat a pale, languid girl, with ”weary of the world” written on every part of her eloquent body; her right hand dangled by her side, and on the ground beneath it lay a piece of work she had been attempting; but it had escaped from those listless fingers: her left arm was stretched at full length on the table with an unspeakable abandon, and her brow laid wearily on it above the elbow. So lies the wounded bird, so droops the broken lily.
She did not move for Jane's light foot. She often sat thus, a drooping statue, and let the people come and go unheeded.
Jane's heart yearned for her. She came softly and laid a little hand lightly on her shoulder, and true to her creed that we must look upward for consolation, said in her ear, and in solemn silvery tones, ”Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.”
Julia turned at this and flung her arms round Jane's neck, and panted heavily.
Jane kissed her, and with tears in her eyes, proceeded to pour out, from a memory richly stored with Scripture, those blessed words it is full of, words that in our hours of ease or biblical criticism pa.s.s over the mind like some drowsy chime but in the bitter day of anguish and bereavement, when the body is racked, the soul darkened, s.h.i.+ne out like stars to the mariner; seem then first to swell to their real size and meaning, and come to writhing mortals like pitying seraphim, divinity on their faces and healing on their wings.
Julia sighed heavily: ”Ah,” she said, ”these are sweet words. But I am not ripe for them. You show me the true path of happiness: but I don't _want_ to be happy; it's _him_ I want to be happy. If the angels came for me and took me to heaven this moment, I should be miserable there, if I thought _he_ was in eternal torment. Ay, I should be as miserable there as I am here. Oh, Jane, when G.o.d means to comfort me, He will show me _he_ is alive; till then words are wasted on me, even Bible words.”
”Tell her your news, my dear,” said Mrs. Dodd quietly. She was one of those who take human nature as it is, and make the best of it.
”Julia dear,” said Jane, ”your fears are extravagant; indeed: Alfred is alive, we know.”
Julia trembled, but said nothing.
”He has written to-day.”
”Ah! To you?”
”No, to papa.”
”I don't believe it. Why to him?”