I, Thou, and the Other One: A Love Story

CHAPTER SEVENTH

THE LOST RING

“To-morrow some new light may come, and you will see things another way, Kitty.” This was Mrs. Atheling’s final opinion, and Kitty was inclined to take all the comfort there was in it. She was sitting then in her mother’s room, watching her dress for dinner, and admiring, as good daughters will always do, everything she could find to admire about the yet handsome woman.

“You have such beautiful hair, Mother. I wouldn’t wear a cap if I was you,” she said.

“Your father likes a bit of lace on my head, Kitty. He says it makes me look more motherly.”

She was laying the “bit of lace” on her brown hair as she spoke. Then she took from her open jewel case, two gold pins set with turquoise, and fastened the arrangement securely. Kitty watched her with loving smiles, and finally changed the whole fashion of the bit of lace, declaring that by so doing she had made her mother twenty years younger. And somehow in this little toilet ceremony, all Kitty’s sorrow passed away, and she said, “I wonder where my fears are gone to, Mother; for it does not now seem hard to hope that all is just as it was.”

“To be sure, Kitty, I never worry much about fears. Fears are mostly made of nothing; and in the long run they are often a blessing. Without fears, we couldn’t have hopes; now could we?”

“Oh, you dear, sweet, good Mother! I wish I was just like you!”

“Time enough, Kitty.” Then a look of love flashed from face to face, and struck straight from heart to heart; and there was a little silence that needed no words. Kitty lifted a ring and slipped it on her finger. It was a hoop of fine, dark blue sapphires, set in fretted gold, and clasped with a tiny padlock, shaped like a heart.

“What a lovely ring!” she cried. “Why do you not wear it, Mother?”

“Because it is a good bit too small now, Kitty.”

“Miss Vyner’s hands are always covered with rings, and she says every one of them has a romance.”

“I’ve heard, or read, something like that. There was a woman in the story-book, was there not, who kept a tally of her lovers on a string of rings they had given her? I don’t think it was anything to her credit. I shouldn’t wonder if that is a bit ill-natured. I ought not to say such a thing, so don’t mind it, Kitty.”

“Is this sapphire band yours, Mother?”

“To be sure it is.”

“May I wear it?”

“Well, Kitty, I think a deal of that ring. You must take great care of it.”

“So then, Mother, one of your rings has a story too, has it?” And there was a little laugh for answer, and Kitty slipped the coveted trinket on her finger, and held up her hand to admire the gleam of the jewels, as she said, musingly, “I wonder what Piers is doing?”

“I wouldn’t ‘wonder,’ dearie. Little troubles are often worrited into big troubles. If things are let alone, they work themselves right. I’ll warrant Piers is unhappy enough.”

But Mrs. Atheling’s warrant was hardly justified. Piers should have gone to the House; but he went instead to his room, threw himself among the cushions of a divan, and with a motion of his head indicated to his servant that he wanted his Turkish pipe. The strange inertia and indifference that had so suddenly assailed, still dominated him, and he had no desire to combat it. He was neither sick nor weary; yet he seemed to have lost all control over his feelings. Had the man within the man “gone off guard”? Have we not all–yes, we have all of us succumbed to just such intervals of supreme, inexpressible listlessness and insensibility? We are “not all there,” but where has our inner self gone to? And what is it doing? It gives us no account of such lapses.

Piers asked no questions of himself. He was like a man dreaming; for if his Will was not asleep, it was at least quiescent. He made no effort to control his thoughts, which drifted from Annabel to Kate, and from Kate to Annabel, in the vagrant, inconsequent manner which acknowledges neither the guidance of Reason or Will. And as the Levantine vapour lulled his brain, he felt a pleasure in this surrender of his noblest attributes. He thought of Annabel as he had seen her the previous evening, dressed in a shaded satin of blue and green, trimmed with the tips of peacock feathers. The same resplendent ornaments were in her strong, wavy, black hair, and round her throat was a necklace of emeralds and amethysts. “What a Duchess of Richmoor she would make!” he thought. “How stately and proud! How well she would wear the coronet and the gold strawberry leaves, and the crimson robe and ermine of her state dress! Yes, Annabel would be a proper Duchess; but–but–” and then he was sitting with Kate among the tall brackens, where the Yorkshire hills threw miles of shadow. She was in her riding dress; but her little velvet cap was in her hand, and the fresh wind was blowing her brown hair into bewitching tendrils about her lovely face. How well he knew the sweet seriousness of her downcast eyes, the rich bloom of her cheeks and lips, the tender smile with which she always answered his “Kate! Sweet Kate!”

Even through all his listlessness, this vision moved him, and he heard his heart say, “Oh, Kate, wife of my soul! Oh, Beloved! Love of my life, who can part us? Thou and I, Kate! Thou and I–”

“And the Other One.”

From whom or from where came the words? Piers heard them with his spiritual sense plainly, and their suggestion annoyed him. Now if we stir under a nightmare, it is gone; and this faint rebellion broke the chain of that mental inertia which had held him at least three hours under its spell. He moved irritably, and in so-doing threw down the lid of the tobacco jar, and then rose to his feet. In a moment, he was “all there.”

“I ought to be in the House,” he muttered, and he touched the bell for his valet, and dressed with less deliberation than was his wont. And during the toilet he was aware of a certain mental anger that longed to expend itself: “If Mr. Brougham is as insufferably dictatorial as he was last night, if Mr. O’Connell only plays the buffoon again, we shall meet in a narrow path–and one of us will fare ill,” he muttered.

The hour generally comes when we are ready for it; and Piers found both gentlemen in the tempers he detested. He gladly accepted his own challenge, and the Squire was so interested in the wordy fight that he did not return home to dinner. Mrs. Atheling neither worried nor waited. She knew that the Squire’s vote might be wanted at any inconvenient hour; and, besides, the night had set stormily in, and she said cheerfully to Kate, “It wouldn’t do for father to get a wetting and then be hours in damp clothes. He is far better sitting to-day’s business out while he is there.”

But the evening dragged wearily, in spite of the efforts of both women to make little pleasantries. Kate’s whole being was in her sense of hearing. She was listening for a step that did not come. On other nights there had been visitors; she heard the roll of carriages and the clash of the heavy front door; but this dreary night no roll of wheels broke the stillness of the aristocratic Square; and she listened for the sound of the closing door until she was ready to cry out against the strain and the suspense. However, the longest, saddest day wears to its end; and though it does not appear likely that a loving girl’s anxiety about a coolness in her lover should teach us how far deeper, even than mother-love, is our trust in God’s love, yet little Kitty’s behaviour on this sorrowful evening did show forth this sublime fact.

For the girl left undone none of her usual duties, left unsaid none of the pleasant words she knew her mother expected from her; she even followed her–as she always did when the Squire was late–to her bedroom, and helped her lay away her laces and jewels ere she bid her a last “good-night.” But as soon as she had closed the door of her own room, she felt she might give herself some release. If she did not read the whole of the Evening Service, God would understand. She could trust His love to excuse, to pity, to release her from all ceremonies. She knelt down, she bowed her head, and said only the two or three words which opened her heart and let the rain of tears wash all her anxieties away.

And though sorrow may endure for a night, joy comes in the morning; and this is specially true in youth. When Kate awoke, the sun was shining, and the care and ache was gone from her heart. “He giveth His Beloved sleep,” and thus some angel had certainly comforted her, though she knew it not. With a cheerful heart she dressed and went into the breakfast-room, and there she saw her father standing on the hearthrug, with The Times open in his hand. He looked at her over its pages with beaming eyes, and she ran to him and took the paper away, and nestling to his heart, said, “she would have no rival, first thing in the morning.”

And the proud father stroked her hair, and kissed her lips, and answered her, “Rival was not born yet, and never would be born; and that he was only seeing if them newspaper fellows had told lies about Piers.”

“Piers!” cried Mrs. Atheling, entering the room at the moment, “what about Piers?”

“Well, Mother, the lad had his say last night; but, Dal it! Mr. Brougham went at the Government and the Electors as if they were all of them wearing the devil’s livery. I call it scandalous! It was nothing else. He let on to be preaching for Reform, but he was just preaching for Henry Brougham.”

“What was Mr. Brougham talking about, Father?”

“Mr. Brougham can talk about nothing but Reform, Kitty, the right of every man to vote as seems good in his own eyes. He said peers and landowners influenced and prejudiced votes in a way that was outrageous and not to be borne, and a lot more words of the same kind; for Henry Brougham would lose his speech if he had anything pleasant to say. I was going to get up and give him a bit of my mind, when Piers rose; and the cool way in which he fixed his eye-glass, and looked Mr. Brougham up and down, and straight in the face, set us all by the ears. He was every inch of him, then and there, the future Duke of Richmoor; and he told Brougham, in a very sarcastic way, that his opinions were silly, and would neither bear the test of reason nor of candid examination.”

“But, Father, I thought Mr. Brougham was the great man of the Commons, and held in much honour.”

“Well, my little maid, he may be; but I’ll warrant it is only by people who have their own reasons for worshipping the devil.”

“Come, come, John! If I was thee, I would be silent until I could be just.”

“Not thou, Maude! Right or wrong, thou wouldst say thy say. I think I ought to know thee by this time.”

“Never mind me, John. We want to hear what Piers said.”

“Brougham’s words had come rattling off in full gallop. Piers, after looking at him a minute, began in that contemptuous drawl of his,–you’ve heard it I’ve no doubt,–‘Mr. Brougham affords an example of radical opinions degrading a statesman into a politician. He cannot but know that it is the positive, visible duty of every landowner to influence and prejudice votes. It is the business and the function of education and responsibility to enlighten ignorance, and to influence the misguided and the misled. If it is the business and the function of the clergy to influence and prejudice people in favour of a good life; if it is the business and function of a teacher to influence and prejudice scholars in favour of knowledge,–it is just as certainly the business and function of the landowner to influence his tenants in favour of law and order, and to prejudice them against men who would shatter to pieces the noblest political Constitution in the world.’”

The Squire read this period aloud with great emphasis, and added, “Well, Maude, you never heard such a tumult as followed. Cries of ‘Here! Here!’ and ‘Order! Order!’ filled the House; and the Speaker had work enough to make silence. Piers stood quite still, watching Brougham, and as soon as all was quiet, he went on,–

“‘If you take the peers, the gentry, the scholars, the men of enterprise and wealth, from our population, what kind of a government should we get from the remainder? Would they be fit to select and elect?’ Then there was another uproar, and Piers sat down, and O’Connell jumped up. He put his witty tongue in his laughing cheek, and, buttoning his coat round him, held up his right hand. And the Reform members cheered, and the Tory members shrugged their shoulders, and waited for what he would say.”

“I don’t want to hear a word from him,” answered Mrs. Atheling. “Come and get your coffee, John. A cup of good coffee costs a deal now, and it’s a shame to let it get cold and sloppy over Dan O’Connell’s blackguarding.”

“Tell us what he said, Father,” urged Kate, who really desired to know more about Piers’s efforts. “You can drink your coffee to his words. I don’t suppose they will poison it.”

“I wouldn’t be sure of that,” said Mrs. Atheling, with a dubious shake of her head; while the Squire lifted his cup, and emptied it at a draught.

“What did he say, Father? Did he attack Piers?”

“To be sure he did. He took the word ‘Remainder,’ and said Piers had called the great, substantial working men of England, Scotland, and Ireland Remainders. He said these ‘Remainders’ might only be farmers, and bakers, and builders, and traders; but they were the backbone of the nation; and the honourable gentleman from Richmoor Palace had called them ‘Remainders.’ And then he gave Piers a few of such stinging, abusive names as he always keeps on hand,–and he keeps a good many kinds of them on hand,–and Piers was like a man that neither heard nor saw him. He looked clean through the member for Kilkenny as if he wasn’t there at all. And then Mr. Scarlett got up, and asked the Speaker if such unparliamentary conduct was to be permitted? And Mr. Dickson called upon the House to protect itself from the browbeating, bullying ruffianism of the member for Kilkenny; and Dan O’Connell sat laughing, with his hat on one side of his head, till Dickson sat down; then he said, he ‘considered Mr. Dickson’s words complimentary;’ and the shouts became louder and louder, and the Speaker had hard work to get things quieted down.”

“Why, John! I never heard tell of such carryings on.”

“Then, Maude, I thought I would say a word or two; and I got the Speaker’s eye, and he said peremptorily, ‘The member for Asketh!’ and I rose in my place and said I thought the honourable member for Kilkenny–”

“John! I wouldn’t have called him ‘honourable.’”

“I know thou wouldst not, Maude. Well, I said honourable, and I went on to say that Mr. O’Connell had mistaken the meaning Lord Exham attached to the word ‘Remainder.’ I said it wasn’t a disrespectful word at all, and that there were plenty of ‘remainders,’ we all of us thought a good deal of; but, I said, I would come to an instance which every man could understand,–the remainder of a glass of fine, old October ale. The rich, creamy, bubbling froth might stand for the landowners; but it was part of the whole; and the remainder was all the better for the froth, and the more froth, and the richer the froth, the better the ale below it. And I went on to say that Lord Exham, and every man of us, knew right well, that the great body of the English nation wasn’t made up of knaves, and scoundrels, and fools, but of good men and women. And then our benches cheered me, up and down, till I felt it was a good thing to be a Representative of the Remainder, and I said so.”

Then Mrs. Atheling and Kitty cheered the Squire more than a little, with smiles, and kisses, and proud words; and he went on with increased animation, “In a minute O’Connell was on his feet again, and he called me a lot of names I needn’t repeat here; until he said, ‘My example of a glass of ale was exactly what anybody might expect from such a John Bull as the member for Asketh.’ And, Maude and Kitty, I could not stand that. The House was shouting, ‘Order! Order!’ and I cried, ‘Mr. Speaker!’ and the Speaker said, ‘Order, the member for Kilkenny is speaking!’ ‘But, Mr. Speaker,’ I said, ‘I only want to say to the member for Kilkenny that I would rather be a John Bull, than a bully.’ And that was the end. There was no ‘Order’ after it. Our side cheered and roared, and, Maude, what dost thou think?–the one to cheer loudest was thy son Edgar. He must have got in by the Speaker’s favour; but there he was, and when I came through the lobby, with Piers and Lord Althorp, and a crowd after me, he was standing with that young fellow I threw on Atheling Green; and he looked at me so pleased, and eager, and happy, that I thought for a moment he was going to shake hands; but I kept my hands in my pockets–yet I’ll say this,–he has thy fine eyes, Maude,–I most felt as if thou wert looking at me.”

“John! John! How couldst thou keep thy hands in thy pockets? How couldst thou do such an unfatherly thing? I’m ashamed of thee! I am.”

“Give me a slice of ham, and don’t ask questions. I want my breakfast now. I can’t live on talk, as if I was a woman.”

Fortunately at this moment a servant entered with the morning’s mail. He gave Mrs. Atheling a letter, and Kate two letters; and then offered the large salver full of matter to the Squire. He looked at the pile with indignation. “Put it out of my sight, Dobson,” he said angrily. “Do you think I want letters and papers to my breakfast? I’m astonished at you!” He was breaking his egg-shell impatiently as he spoke, and he looked up with affected anger at his companions. Kitty met his glance with a smile. She could afford to do so, for both her letters lay untouched at her side. She tapped the upper one and said, “It is from Miss Vyner, Father; it can easily wait.”

“And the other, Kitty? Who is it from?”

“From Piers, I don’t want to read it yet.”

“To be sure.” Then he looked at Mrs. Atheling, and was surprised. Her face was really shining with pleasure, her eyes misty with happy tears. She held her letter with a certain pride and tenderness that her whole attitude also expressed; and the Squire had an instant premonition as to the writer of it.

“Well, Maude,” he said, “I would drink my coffee, if I was thee. A cup of coffee costs a deal now; and it’s a shame to let it get cold and sloppy over a bit of a letter–nobody knows who from.”

“It is from Edgar,” said Mrs. Atheling, far too proud and pleased to keep her happiness to herself. “And, John, I am going to have a little lunch-party to-day at two o’clock; and I do wish thou wouldst make it in thy way to be present.”

“I won’t. And I would like to know who is coming here. I won’t have all kinds and sorts sitting at my board, and eating my bread and salt–and I never heard tell of a good wife asking people to do that without even mentioning their names to her husband–and–”