When George Dallas had dined, he left the coffee-room, and retired to the bed-room which he had ordered, and which looked refreshingly clean and comfortable, when mentally contrasted with the dingy quarters on which he had turned his back in the morning. It was yet early in the evening, but he was tired; tired by the excitement and the various emotions of the day, and also by the long hours passed in the fresh balmy country air, which had a strange soporific effect on a man whose lungs and limbs were of the town, towny. The evening air was still a little sharp, and George assented readily to the waiter's proposition, made when he perceived that no more orders for drink were to be elicited from the silent and preoccupied young man, that "a bit of fire" should be kindled in his room. Over that "bit of fire" he sat long, his arms folded on his breast, his head bent, his brow lowering, his eyes fixed on the glowing embers. Was he looking at faces in the fire--his parents' faces, the faces of friends whom he had treated as enemies, of enemies whom he had taken for friends? Were reproachful eyes looking at him from out the past; were threatening glances in the present flashed on him? He sat there, black and moody, a long while, but at length his fixed gaze relaxed, the muscles of his mouth softened, broke into a slow smile, and a light came into his dull gloomy eyes. Then he rose, took his pocketbook from his breast-pocket, made some memoranda at the back of the sketch taken that day in Sir Thomas Boldero's park, put back the book, and, once more settling himself near the fire, lighted his pipe and began to smoke.
The musing look remained upon his face, but it was no longer painful, and, as he smoked, he fell to building castles in the air, as baseless, maybe, as the vapour which curled in fantastic wreaths about his face, but tenanted by hope, and inspired by higher and better resolves than had animated George Dallas for many a day. The twin angels, love and gratitude, were near him; invisibly their soft white wings were fluttering about him, refreshing the jaded heart and the stained brow. His mother, and the girl whom he had that day seen for the second time, and recognized with feelings full of a bitter and evil impulse at first, but who had soon exercised over him a nameless fascination full of a pure and thrilling delight, such as no pleasure of all his sin-stained life had ever previously brought him--of these two he was thinking. If George Dallas could have seen his mother at the moment, when he, having laid his exhausted pipe upon the little wooden chimneypiece, and hastily undressed, lay down in his bed, with his hands clasped over the top of his head, in his favourite attitude when he had anything particular to think of, he would have found her not only thinking but talking of him. Mr. Carruthers was absent, so was Clare; she had the grand stately house all to herself, and she improved the occasion by having tea in her dressing-room, having dismissed her maid, affianced to a thriving miller in the village, to a tête-à-tête with her lover, and summoning her trusty friend Mrs. Brookes to a confidential conference with her. The two women had no greater pleasure or pain in their lives than talking of George. There had been many seasons before and since her second marriage when Mrs. Carruthers had been obliged to abstain from mentioning him, so keen and terrible was her suffering on his account, and at such seasons Ellen Brookes had suffered keenly too, though she had only vaguely known wherefore, and had always waited until the thickest and darkest of the cloud had passed, and her mistress had once more summoned courage to broach the subject never absent from the mind of either.
There was no reticence on this occasion; the mother had taken a dangerous step, and one whose necessity she indeed deeply deplored, but she had gotten over the first great effort and the apprehension connected with it, and now she thought only of her son, she dwelt only upon the hope, the confidence, the instinctive belief within her, that this was really the turning-point, that her prayers had been heard, that the rock of a hard and stubborn heart had been struck and had yielded, that her son would turn from the old evil paths, would consider his ways and be wise for the future. So she sat and talked to the humble friend who knew her and loved her better than any one else in the world knew or loved her; and when she at length dismissed her and lay down to rest, there was more peace at her heart than had dwelt there for a long time past.
So one of the women of whom the prodigal son had thought gently and gratefully that night, was thinking of him with love that no unworthiness could kill or lessen, with hope which no experience could exhaust. And the other? Well, the other was playing and singing to her uncle and aunt in the green drawing-room at the Sycamores, and if she had said little to Sir Thomas and Lady Boldero concerning the young artist who was so delighted with the picture-gallery, and who had despaired of doing justice to the grand old trees in the park, it is presumable that, like the parrot of old renown, she thought the more.
George Dallas slept well that night in the little country inn, and awoke to a pleasant consciousness of rest, leisure, and expectation. As he dressed himself slowly, listening to the queer mixture of town and country sounds which arose inside and outside the house, he took up a similar train of thought to that in which sleep had interrupted him on the previous night, and began to form resolutions and to dream dreams. After he had breakfasted, and perused all the daily intelligence which found its way to Amherst, where the population were not remarkably eager for general information, and the Illustrated London News was represented by one copy, taken in by the clergyman's wife, and circulated among her special friends and favourites, he went out, and once more took the direction of the Sycamores.
Should he go into the park, he asked himself, or would that be too intrusive a proceeding? Sir Thomas, on his fair niece's showing, was evidently an elderly gentleman of kindly impulses, and who could say but that he might send a message to Mr. Page the landlord, inviting him to inform the stranger within his gates that he might have another look at the picture-gallery at the Sycamores? Was this a very wild idea? He did not know. It seemed to him as likely as not that a jolly kindly man, disposed to let his fellow-creatures enjoy a taste of the very abundant good things which providence had lavished on himself, might do a thing of the kind. A pompous, purse-proud, egotistical old fellow, who would regard every man unpossessed of landed property as a wretched creature, beneath his notice in all respects, except that of being made to admire and envy him as deeply as possible, might also think of sending such an invitation, but George Dallas felt quite sure Sir Thomas Boldero was not a man of that description. Suppose such a message should come? He had not given any name at the inn; he wished now he had done so; he would only take a short walk, and return to correct the inadvertence. At so early an hour there would be no likelihood of his seeing Miss Carruthers. It was in the afternoon she had ridden out yesterday, perhaps she would do the same to-day. At all events, he would return to the Sycamores on the chance, at the same hour as that at which he had seen her yesterday, and try his luck.
The road on which he was walking was one of the beautiful roads common in the scenery of England, a road which dipped and undulated, and wound about and about, making the most of the natural features of the landscape without any real sacrifice of the public convenience, a road shadowed frequently by tall stately trees, and along one side of which the low park paling, with a broad belt of plantation beyond, which formed the boundary of the Sycamores, stretched for three miles. On the other side, a well-kept raised pathway ran alongside a hedge, never wanting in the successive beauties of wild flowers and "tangle," and which furnished shelter to numerous birds. The day was bright and cheerful, and a light breeze was stirring the budding branches and lending a sense of exhilaration to the young man who so rarely looked on the fair face of nature, and who had unhappily had all his purer tastes and sympathies so early deadened. They revived under the influence of the scene and the softening effect of the adventure which had befallen him the day before. He stopped opposite the oaken gates, which had lain open yesterday, but were closed to-day, and he rambled on, further away from the town, and crossing the road, took his way along the park paling, where the fragrant odour from the shrubberies added a fresh pleasure to his walk.
He had passed a bend of the road which swept away from the large gates of the park, and was peering in at the mossy tufts, studded with violets and bluebells clustering round the stems of the young trees in the plantation, when his eyes lighted on a small gate, a kind of wicket in the paling, imperfectly secured by a very loose latch, and from which a straight narrow path, bordered with trimly-kept rows of ground ivy, led into a broader road dividing the plantation from the park.
"A side entrance, of course," said Dallas to himself, and then, looking across the road, he saw that just opposite the little gate there was a wooden stile, by which a path through the fields, leading, no doubt, into the town of Amherst, could be attained from the raised footpath.
"I suppose the land on both sides belongs to Sir Thomas," thought Dallas, and as he made a momentary pause, a large black Newfoundland dog, carrying a basket in his mouth, came down the narrow path, bumped himself against the loosely fastened gate, swung it open, and stopped in the aperture, with a droll air of having done something particularly clever. Dallas looked admiringly at the beautiful creature, who was young, awkward, and supremely happy, and the next instant he heard a voice speaking from the top of the straight walk.
"Here, C?sar," it said; "come here, sir; who told you I was going that way?"
C?sar tossed up his head, somewhat to the detriment of the basket, and lolloped about with his big black legs, but did not retrace his steps, and the next moment Miss Carruthers appeared. A few yards only divided her from George, who stood outside the gate, his face turned full towards her as she came down the path, and who promptly took off his hat. She returned his salutation with embarrassment, but with undisguisable pleasure, and blushed most becomingly.
"I suppose I ought to walk on and leave her; but I won't," said George to himself, in the momentary silence which followed their mutual salutation, and then, in a kind of desperation, he said:
"I am fortunate to meet you again, by a lucky accident, Miss Carruthers. You are out earlier to-day, and this is C?sar's turn."
He patted the shiny black head of the Newfoundland, who still obstructed the entrance to the path, as he spoke, and C?sar received the attention tolerably graciously.
"Yes, I generally walk early, and ride in the afternoon."
"Escorted by your dumb friends only," said George, in a tone not quite of interrogation.
Miss Carruthers blushed again as she replied:
"Yes, my horse and my dog are my companions generally. My aunt never walks, and Sir Thomas never rides. Were you going into the park again, Mr. Ward?"
By this time C?sar had run out into the road, and was in a state of impatient perplexity, and evidently much inconvenienced by the basket, which he was too well trained to drop, but shook disconsolately as he glanced reproachfully at Clare, wondering how much longer she meant to keep him waiting.
"No, Miss Carruthers, I was merely walking past the Sycamores, and recalling yesterday's pleasure--half gladly, half sadly, as I fancy we recall all pleasures."
"I--I told my uncle of your visit yesterday, and he said he was sorry to have missed you, and hoped you would see as much of the park as you liked. Did--did you finish your sketch, Mr. Ward? Oh, that horrid C?sar, he will have the handle off my basket. Just see how he is knocking it against the stile."
She came hurriedly through the open gateway into the road, George following her.
"May I take it from him?" he said.
"Oh, pray do; there now, he is over the stile, and running through the field."
George rushed away in pursuit of C?sar, triumphant at his success in thus terminating a period of inaction for which he saw no reasonable excuse. Miss Carruthers mounted the stile in a more leisurely fashion, turned into the footpath which led through the field, and in a few moments met George returning, her basket in his hand, and C?sar slouching along beside him, sulky and discontented.
She thanked George, told him she was going nearly as far as Amherst by the "short cut," which lay through her uncle's land, and the two young people in another minute found themselves walking side by side, as if such an arrangement were quite a matter of course, to which Mrs. Grundy could not possibly make any objection. Of course it was highly imprudent, not to say improper, and one of the two was perfectly conscious alike of the imprudence and the impropriety; perfectly conscious, also, that both were increased by the fact that he was George Dallas, and the young lady was Clare Carruthers, the niece of his stepfather, the girl, on whose account mainly he had been shut out from the house called by courtesy his mother's. As for Clare Carruthers, she knew little or nothing of life and the world of observances and rules of behaviour. Sheltered from the touch, from the breath, from the very knowledge of ill, the girl had always been free with a frank innocent freedom, happy with a guileless happiness, and as unsophisticated as any girl could well be in this wide-awake realistic nineteenth century. She was highly imaginative, emphatically of the romantic temperament, and, in short, a Lydia Languish without the caricature. Her notions of literary men, artists, and the like, were derived from their works; and as the little glimpse which she had as yet had of society (she had only "come out" at the ball at Poynings in February) had not enabled her to correct her ideas by comparison with reality, she cherished her illusions with ardour proportioned to their fallaciousness. The young men of her acquaintance were of either of two species: sons of country gentlemen, with means and inclination to devote themselves to the kind of life their fathers led, or military magnificoes, of whom Clare, contrary to the fashion of young ladies in general, entertained a mean and contemptuous opinion. When Captain Marsh and Captain Clitheroe were home "on leave," they found it convenient and agreeable to pass a good deal of their leisure at Poynings; and as they happened to be ninnies of the first magnitude, whose insignificance in every sense worth mention was only equalled by their conceit, Miss Carruthers had conceived a prejudice against military men in general, founded upon her dislike of the two specimens with whom she was most familiar. Clergymen are not uncommonly heroes in the imagination of young girls, but the most determined curate-worshipper could not have invested the clergymen who cured the souls in and about Amherst with heroic qualities. They were three in number. One was fat, bald, and devoted to antiquarianism and port wine. Another was thin, pock-marked, ill-tempered, deaf, and a flute-player. The third was a magistrate, a fox-hunter, and a despiser of womankind. In conclusion, all three were married, and Miss Carruthers was so unsophisticated, that, if they had been all three as handsome and irresistible as Adonis, she would never have thought of them in the way of mundane admiration, such being the case. So Clare's imagination had no home pasture in which to feed, and roamed far afield.
It had taken its hue from her tastes, which were strongly pronounced, in the direction of literature. Clare had received a "good education;" that is to say, she had been placed by a fashionable mother under the care of a fashionable governess, who had superintended fashionable masters while they imparted a knowledge of music, drawing, dancing, and a couple of modern languages to her pretty, docile, intelligent pupil. The more solid branches of instruction Clare had climbed under Miss Pettigrew's personal care, and had "done credit" to her instructress, as the phrase goes. But the upshot of it all was, that she had very little sound knowledge, and that the real educational process had commenced for her with the termination of Miss Pettigrew's reign, and had received considerable impetus when Clare had been transferred--on the not particularly lamented decease of the fashionable mother, who was Sir Thomas Boldero's sister, and remarkably unlike that hearty and unworldly country gentleman--to Poynings and the guardianship of Mr. Carruthers. Then the girl began to read after her own fancy indeed, unguided and uncontrolled, but in an omnivorous fashion; and as she was full of feeling, fancy, and enthusiasm, her reading ran a good deal in the poetical, romantic, and imaginative line. Novels she devoured, and she was of course a devotee of Tennyson and Longfellow, saying of the latter, as her highest idea of praise, that she could hardly believe him to be an American, or a dweller in that odious vulgar country, and wondering why Mrs. Carruthers seemed a little annoyed by the observation. She read history, too, provided it was picturesquely written, and books of travel, exploration, and adventure she delighted in. Periodical literature she was specially addicted to, and it was rather a pleasant little vanity of Clare to "keep up with" all the serial stories--not confusing the characters or the incidents, no matter how numerous they were, and to know the tables of contents of all the magazines and reviews thoroughly. She had so much access to books that, as far as a lady's possible requirements could go, it might be said, without exaggeration, to be unlimited. Not only did the Sycamores boast a fine library, kept up with the utmost care and attention by Sir Thomas Boldero, and of which she had the freedom, but Poynings was also very creditably endowed in a similar respect, and Mrs. Carruthers, as persistent a reader as Clare, if less discursive, subscribed largely to Mudie's. Croquet had not yet assumed its sovereign sway over English young-persondom, and none but ponderous and formal hospitalities prevailed at Poynings, so that Clare had ample leisure to bestow upon her books, her pets, and her flowers. She was so surrounded with luxury and comfort, that it was not wonderful she should invest opposite conditions of existence with irresistible charms; and her habitual associates were so commonplace, so prosperous and conventional, that her aspirations for opportunities of hero-worship naturally directed themselves towards oppressed worth, unappreciated genius, and fiery hearts struggling manfully with adverse fate. "The red planet Mars" was a great favourite with her, and to suffer and be strong a much finer idea to her mind than not to suffer and to have no particular occasion for strength. She knew little of the realities of life, having never had a deeper grief than that caused by the death of her mother, and she was in the habit of reproaching herself very bitterly with the superficiality and the insufficiency of the sorrow she had experienced on that occasion, and therefore mild and merciful judges would have pitied and excused her errors of judgment, her impulsive departure from conventional rules. Mild and merciful judges are not plentiful commodities, however, and Mrs. Grundy would doubtless have had a great deal to say, and a very fair pretext for saying it, had she seen Miss Carruthers strolling through the fields which lay between the Sycamores and Amherst, in deep and undisguisedly delighted conversation with a strange young man, who was apparently absorbed in the pleasure of talking to and listening to her, while C?sar trotted now by the side of the one, anon of the other, with serene and friendly complacency. Mrs. Grundy was, however, not destined to know anything about the "very suspicious" circumstance for the present. And George Dallas and Clare Carruthers, with the unscrupulous yielding to the impulse of the moment, which affords youth such splendid opportunities for getting into scrapes, from which the utmost efforts of their elders are powerless to extricate ............