Old Kensington. Anne Thackeray Ritchie
aware of this silent scrutiny, and resented it. Dolly was more brusque and fierce and uncomfortable that evening than she had ever been in all her life before. Dorothea Vanborough was one of those people who reflect the atmosphere somehow, whose lights come and go, and whose brilliance comes and goes. Dull fogs would fall upon her sometimes, at others sunlight, moonlight, or faint reflected rays would beam upon her world. It was a wide one, and open to all the winds of heaven.
So Frank Raban discovered when it was too late. He admired her when he should have loved her. He judged her in secret when he should have trusted or blamed her openly. A day came when he felt he had forfeited all right even to help her or to protect her, and that, while he was still repenting for the past, he had fallen (as people sometimes do who walk backwards) into fresh pitfalls.
'My cousin Robert has asked me and Rhoda to spend a day at Cambridge in the spring,' said Dolly, reluctantly struggling on at conversation.
Frank Raban was wondering if Lady Sarah was never coming back.
There was a sigh, a movement from the distant corner.
'Did you call me?' said a faint, shrill voice, plaintive and tremulous, and a figure rose from the nest of soft shawls and came slowly forward, dispersing the many wraps that lay coiling on the floor.
'Have I been asleep? I thought Mr. Henley was here?' said the voice, confusedly.
Dolly turned towards her. 'No, he is not here, Rhoda. Sit down, don't stand; here is Mr. Raban come to see us.'
And then in the dim light of the fire and distant candle, Raban saw two dark eyes looking out of a pale face that he seemed to remember.
'Mr. Raban!' said the voice.
'Have you forgotten?' said Dolly, hastily, going up to the distant sofa. 'Mr. Raban, from Paris——' she began; then seeing he had followed her, she stopped; she turned very red. She did not want to pain him. And Raban, at the same moment, recognised the two girls he had seen once before, and remembered where it was that he had known the deep grey eyes, with their look of cold repulsion and dislike.
'Are you Mr. Raban?' repeated Rhoda, looking intently into his face. 'I should have known you if it had not been so dark.' And she instinctively put up her hand and clasped something hanging round her neck.
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, blushing 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 assailed 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-class 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 shining 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 pass 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 fashion 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 cocked hat, of a king who proclaimed himself a god; 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 aptitude for the exercise—what a