Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (482 page)

Meantime, Dick had been thinking deeply and bitterly. It seemed to him as if his love had gone from him, indeed, yet gone but a little way; as if he needed but to find the right touch or intonation, and her heart would recognise him and be melted. Yet he durst not open his mouth, and drove in silence till they had passed the main park-gates and turned into the cross-cut lane along the wall. Then it seemed to him as if it must be now, or never.

‘Can’t you see you are killing me?’ he cried. ‘Speak to me, look at me, treat me like a human man.’

She turned slowly and looked him in the face with eyes that seemed kinder. He dropped the reins and caught her hand, and she made no resistance, although her touch was unresponsive. But when, throwing one arm round her waist, he sought to kiss her lips, not like a lover indeed, not because he wanted to do so, but as a desperate man who puts his fortunes to the touch, she drew away from him, with a knot in her forehead, backed and shied about fiercely with her head, and pushed him from her with her hand. Then there was no room left for doubt, and Dick saw, as clear as sunlight, that she had a distaste or nourished a grudge against him.

‘Then you don’t love me?’ he said, drawing back from her, he also, as though her touch had burnt him; and then, as she made no answer, he repeated with another intonation, imperious and yet still pathetic, ‘You don’t love me, DO you, DO you?’

‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘Why do you ask me? Oh, how should I know? It has all been lies together - lies, and lies, and lies!’

He cried her name sharply, like a man who has taken a physical hurt, and that was the last word that either of them spoke until they reached Thymebury Junction.

This was a station isolated in the midst of moorlands, yet lying on the great up line to London. The nearest town, Thymebury itself, was seven miles distant along the branch they call the Vale of Thyme Railway. It was now nearly half an hour past noon, the down train had just gone by, and there would be no more traffic at the junction until half-past three, when the local train comes in to meet the up express at a quarter before four. The stationmaster had already gone off to his garden, which was half a mile away in a hollow of the moor; a porter, who was just leaving, took charge of the phaeton, and promised to return it before night to Naseby House; only a deaf, snuffy, and stern old man remained to play propriety for Dick and Esther.

Before the phaeton had driven off, the girl had entered the station and seated herself upon a bench. The endless, empty moorlands stretched before her, entirely unenclosed, and with no boundary but the horizon. Two lines of rails, a waggon shed, and a few telegraph posts, alone diversified the outlook. As for sounds, the silence was unbroken save by the chant of the telegraph wires and the crying of the plovers on the waste. With the approach of midday the wind had more and more fallen, it was now sweltering hot and the air trembled in the sunshine.

Dick paused for an instant on the threshold of the platform. Then, in two steps, he was by her side and speaking almost with a sob.

‘Esther,’ he said, ‘have pity on me. What have I done? Can you not forgive me? Esther, you loved me once - can you not love me still?’

‘How can I tell you? How am I to know?’ she answered. ‘You are all a lie to me - all a lie from first to last. You were laughing at my folly, playing with me like a child, at the very time when you declared you loved me. Which was true? was any of it true? or was it all, all a mockery? I am weary trying to find out. And you say I loved you; I loved my father’s friend. I never loved, I never heard of, you, until that man came home and I began to find myself deceived. Give me back my father, be what you were before, and you may talk of love indeed!’

‘Then you cannot forgive me - cannot?’ he asked.

‘I have nothing to forgive,’ she answered. ‘You do not understand.’

‘Is that your last word, Esther?’ said he, very white, and biting his lip to keep it still.

‘Yes, that is my last word,’ replied she.

‘Then we are here on false pretences, and we stay here no longer,’ he said. ‘Had you still loved me, right or wrong, I should have taken you away, because then I could have made you happy. But as it is - I must speak plainly - what you propose is degrading to you, and an insult to me, and a rank unkindness to your father. Your father may be this or that, but you should use him like a fellow-creature.’

‘What do you mean?’ she flashed. ‘I leave him my house and all my money; it is more than he deserves. I wonder you dare speak to me about that man. And besides, it is all he cares for; let him take it, and let me never hear from him again.’

‘I thought you romantic about fathers,’ he said.

‘Is that a taunt?’ she demanded.

‘No,’ he replied, ‘it is an argument. No one can make you like him, but don’t disgrace him in his own eyes. He is old, Esther, old and broken down. Even I am sorry for him, and he has been the loss of all I cared for. Write to your aunt; when I see her answer you can leave quietly and naturally, and I will take you to your aunt’s door. But in the meantime you must go home. You have no money, and so you are helpless, and must do as I tell you; and believe me, Esther, I do all for your good, and your good only, so God help me.’

She had put her hand into her pocket and withdrawn it empty.

‘I counted upon you,’ she wailed.

‘You counted rightly then,’ he retorted. ‘I will not, to please you for a moment, make both of us unhappy for our lives; and since I cannot marry you, we have only been too long away, and must go home at once.’

‘Dick,’ she cried suddenly, ‘perhaps I might - perhaps in time - perhaps - ‘

‘There is no perhaps about the matter,’ interrupted Dick. ‘I must go and bring the phaeton.’ And with that he strode from the station, all in a glow of passion and virtue. Esther, whose eyes had come alive and her cheeks flushed during these last words, relapsed in a second into a state of petrifaction. She remained without motion during his absence, and when he returned suffered herself to be put back into the phaeton, and driven off on the return journey like an idiot or a tired child. Compared with what she was now, her condition of the morning seemed positively natural. She sat white and cold and silent, and there was no speculation in her eyes. Poor Dick flailed and flailed at the pony, and once tried to whistle, but his courage was going down; huge clouds of despair gathered together in his soul, and from time to time their darkness was divided by a piercing flash of longing and regret. He had lost his love - he had lost his love for good.

The pony was tired, and the hills very long and steep, and the air sultrier than ever, for now the breeze began to fail entirely. It seemed as if this miserable drive would never be done, as if poor Dick would never be able to go away and be comfortably wretched by himself; for all his desire was to escape from her presence and the reproach of her averted looks. He had lost his love, he thought - he had lost his love for good.

They were already not far from the cottage, when his heart again faltered and he appealed to her once more, speaking low and eagerly in broken phrases.

‘I cannot live without your love,’ he concluded.

‘I do not understand what you mean,’ she replied, and I believe with perfect truth.

‘Then,’ said he, wounded to the quick, ‘your aunt might come and fetch you herself. Of course you can command me as you please. But I think it would be better so.’

‘Oh yes,’ she said wearily, ‘better so.’

This was the only exchange of words between them till about four o’clock; the phaeton, mounting the lane, ‘opened out’ the cottage between the leafy banks. Thin smoke went straight up from the chimney; the flowers in the garden, the hawthorn in the lane, hung down their heads in the heat; the stillness was broken only by the sound of hoofs. For right before the gate a livery servant rode slowly up and down, leading a saddle horse. And in this last Dick shuddered to identify his father’s chestnut.

Alas! poor Richard, what should this portend?

The servant, as in duty bound, dismounted and took the phaeton into his keeping; yet Dick thought he touched his hat to him with something of a grin. Esther, passive as ever, was helped out and crossed the garden with a slow and mechanical gait; and Dick, following close behind her, heard from within the cottage his father’s voice upraised in an anathema, and the shriller tones of the Admiral responding in the key of war.

CHAPTER VIII - BATTLE ROYAL

SQUIRE NASEBY, on sitting down to lunch, had inquired for Dick, whom he had not seen since the day before at dinner; and the servant answering awkwardly that Master Richard had come back but had gone out again with the pony phaeton, his suspicions became aroused, and he cross-questioned the man until the whole was out. It appeared from this report that Dick had been going about for nearly a month with a girl in the Vale - a Miss Van Tromp; that she lived near Lord Trevanion’s upper wood; that recently Miss Van Tromp’s papa had returned home from foreign parts after a prolonged absence; that this papa was an old gentleman, very chatty and free with his money in the public-house - whereupon Mr. Naseby’s face became encrimsoned; that the papa, furthermore, was said to be an admiral - whereupon Mr. Naseby spat out a whistle brief and fierce as an oath; that Master Dick seemed very friendly with the papa - ‘God help him!’ said Mr. Naseby; that last night Master Dick had not come in, and to- day he had driven away in the phaeton with the young lady -

‘Young woman,’ corrected Mr. Naseby.

‘Yes, sir,’ said the man, who had been unwilling enough to gossip from the first, and was now cowed by the effect of his communications on the master. ‘Young woman, sir!’

‘Had they luggage?’ demanded the Squire.

‘Yes, sir.’

Mr. Naseby was silent for a moment, struggling to keep down his emotion, and he mastered it so far as to mount into the sarcastic vein, when he was in the nearest danger of melting into the sorrowful.

‘And was this - this Van Dunk with them?’ he asked, dwelling scornfully upon the name.

The servant believed not, and being eager to shift the responsibility of speech to other shoulders, suggested that perhaps the master had better inquire further from George the stableman in person.

‘Tell him to saddle the chestnut and come with me. He can take the gray gelding; for we may ride fast. And then you can take away this trash,’ added Mr. Naseby, pointing to the luncheon; and he arose, lordly in his anger, and marched forth upon the terrace to await his horse.

There Dick’s old nurse shrunk up to him, for the news went like wildfire over Naseby House, and timidly expressed a hope that there was nothing much amiss with the young master.

‘I’ll pull him through,’ the Squire said grimly, as though he meant to pull him through a threshing-mill; ‘I’ll save him from this gang; God help him with the next! He has a taste for low company, and no natural affections to steady him. His father was no society for him; he must go fuddling with a Dutchman, Nance, and now he’s caught. Let us pray he’ll take the lesson,’ he added more gravely, ‘but youth is here to make troubles, and age to pull them out again.’

Nance whimpered and recalled several episodes of Dick’s childhood, which moved Mr. Naseby to blow his nose and shake her hard by the hand; and then, the horse arriving opportunely, to get himself without delay into the saddle and canter off.

He rode straight, hot spur, to Thymebury, where, as was to be expected, he could glean no tidings of the runaways. They had not been seen at the George; they had not been seen at the station. The shadow darkened on Mr. Naseby’s face; the junction did not occur to him; his last hope was for Van Tromp’s cottage; thither he bade George guide him, and thither he followed, nursing grief, anxiety, and indignation in his heart.

‘Here it is, sir,’ said George stopping.

‘What! on my own land!’ he cried. ‘How’s this? I let this place to somebody - M’Whirter or M’Glashan.’

‘Miss M’Glashan was the young lady’s aunt, sir, I believe,’ returned George.

‘Ay - dummies,’ said the Squire. ‘I shall whistle for my rent too. Here, take my horse.’

The Admiral, this hot afternoon, was sitting by the window with a long glass. He already knew the Squire by sight, and now, seeing him dismount before the cottage and come striding through the garden, concluded without doubt he was there to ask for Esther’s hand.

‘This is why the girl is not yet home,’ he thought: ‘a very suitable delicacy on young Naseby’s part.’

And he composed himself with some pomp, answered the loud rattle of the riding-whip upon the door with a dulcet invitation to enter, and coming forward with a bow and a smile, ‘Mr. Naseby, I believe,’ said he.

The Squire came armed for battle; took in his man from top to toe in one rapid and scornful glance, and decided on a course at once. He must let the fellow see that he understood him.

‘You are Mr. Van Tromp?’ he returned roughly, and without taking any notice of the proffered hand.

‘The same, sir,’ replied the Admiral. ‘Pray be seated.’

‘No sir,’ said the Squire, point-blank, ‘I will not be seated. I am told that you are an admiral,’ he added.

‘No sir, I am not an admiral,’ returned Van Tromp, who now began to grow nettled and enter into the spirit of the interview.

‘Then why do you call yourself one, sir?’

‘I have to ask your pardon, I do not,’ says Van Tromp, as grand as the Pope.

But nothing was of avail against the Squire.

‘You sail under false colours from beginning to end,’ he said. ‘Your very house was taken under a sham name.’

‘It is not my house. I am my daughter’s guest,’ replied the
Admiral. ‘If it WERE my house - ‘

‘Well?’ said the Squire, ‘what then? hey?’

The Admiral looked at him nobly, but was silent.

‘Look here,’ said Mr. Naseby, ‘this intimidation is a waste of time; it is thrown away on me, sir; it will not succeed with me. I will not permit you even to gain time by your fencing. Now, sir, I presume you understand what brings me here.’