Tales and Fantasies
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Robert Louis Stevenson >> Tales and Fantasies
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'Certainly not,' went Dick. 'You have had far too much
already.'
The parasite was on the point of resenting this; but a look
at Dick's face, and some recollection of the terms on which
they had stood in Paris, came to the aid of his wisdom and
restrained him.
'As you please,' he said; 'although I don't know what you
mean - nor care. But let us walk, if you prefer it. You are
still a young man; when you are my age - But, however, to
continue. You please me, Dick; you have pleased me from the
first; and to say truth, Esther is a trifle fantastic, and
will be better when she is married. She has means of her
own, as of course you are aware. They come, like the looks,
from her poor, dear, good creature of a mother. She was
blessed in her mother. I mean she shall be blessed in her
husband, and you are the man, Dick, you and not another.
This very night I will sound her affections.'
Dick stood aghast.
'Mr. Van Tromp, I implore you,' he said; 'do what you please
with yourself, but, for God's sake, let your daughter alone.'
'It is my duty,' replied the Admiral, 'and between ourselves,
you rogue, my inclination too. I am as matchmaking as a
dowager. It will be more discreet for you to stay away to-
night. Farewell. You leave your case in good hands; I have
the tact of these little matters by heart; it is not my first
attempt.'
All arguments were in vain; the old rascal stuck to his
point; nor did Richard conceal from himself how seriously
this might injure his prospects, and he fought hard. Once
there came a glimmer of hope. The Admiral again proposed an
adjournment to the 'Trevanion Arms,' and when Dick had once
more refused, it hung for a moment in the balance whether or
not the old toper would return there by himself. Had he done
so, of course Dick could have taken to his heels, and warned
Esther of what was coming, and of how it had begun. But the
Admiral, after a pause, decided for the brandy at home, and
made off in that direction.
We have no details of the sounding.
Next day the Admiral was observed in the parish church, very
properly dressed. He found the places, and joined in
response and hymn, as to the manner born; and his appearance,
as he intended it should, attracted some attention among the
worshippers. Old Naseby, for instance, had observed him.
'There was a drunken-looking blackguard opposite us in
church,' he said to his son as they drove home; 'do you know
who he was?'
'Some fellow - Van Tromp, I believe,' said Dick.
'A foreigner, too!' observed the Squire.
Dick could not sufficiently congratulate himself on the
escape he had effected. Had the Admiral met him with his
father, what would have been the result? And could such a
catastrophe be long postponed? It seemed to him as if the
storm were nearly ripe; and it was so more nearly than he
thought.
He did not go to the cottage in the afternoon, withheld by
fear and shame; but when dinner was over at Naseby House, and
the Squire had gone off into a comfortable doze, Dick slipped
out of the room, and ran across country, in part to save
time, in part to save his own courage from growing cold; for
he now hated the notion of the cottage or the Admiral, and if
he did not hate, at least feared to think of Esther. He had
no clue to her reflections; but he could not conceal from his
own heart that he must have sunk in her esteem, and the
spectacle of her infatuation galled him like an insult.
He knocked and was admitted. The room looked very much as on
his last visit, with Esther at the table and Van Tromp beside
the fire; but the expression of the two faces told a very
different story. The girl was paler than usual; her eyes
were dark, the colour seemed to have faded from round about
them, and her swiftest glance was as intent as a stare. The
appearance of the Admiral, on the other hand, was rosy, and
flabby, and moist; his jowl hung over his shirt collar, his
smile was loose and wandering, and he had so far relaxed the
natural control of his eyes, that one of them was aimed
inward, as if to watch the growth of the carbuncle. We are
warned against bad judgments; but the Admiral was certainly
not sober. He made no attempt to rise when Richard entered,
but waved his pipe flightily in the air, and gave a leer of
welcome. Esther took as little notice of him as might be.
'Aha! Dick!' cried the painter. 'I've been to church; I
have, upon my word. And I saw you there, though you didn't
see me. And I saw a devilish pretty woman, by Gad. If it
were not for this baldness, and a kind of crapulous air I
can't disguise from myself - if it weren't for this and that
and t'other thing - I - I've forgot what I was saying. Not
that that matters, I've heaps of things to say. I'm in a
communicative vein to-night. I'll let out all my cats, even
unto seventy times seven. I'm in what I call THE stage, and
all I desire is a listener, although he were deaf, to be as
happy as Nebuchadnezzar.'
Of the two hours which followed upon this it is unnecessary
to give more than a sketch. The Admiral was extremely silly,
now and then amusing, and never really offensive. It was
plain that he kept in view the presence of his daughter, and
chose subjects and a character of language that should not
offend a lady. On almost any other occasion Dick would have
enjoyed the scene. Van Tromp's egotism, flown with drink,
struck a pitch above mere vanity. He became candid and
explanatory; sought to take his auditors entirely into his
confidence, and tell them his inmost conviction about
himself. Between his self-knowledge, which was considerable,
and his vanity, which was immense, he had created a strange
hybrid animal, and called it by his own name. How he would
plume his feathers over virtues which would have gladdened
the heart of Caesar or St. Paul; and anon, complete his own
portrait with one of those touches of pitiless realism which
the satirist so often seeks in vain.
'Now, there's Dick,' he said, 'he's shrewd; he saw through me
the first time we met, and told me so - told me so to my
face, which I had the virtue to keep. I bear you no malice
for it, Dick; you were right; I am a humbug.'
You may fancy how Esther quailed at this new feature of the
meeting between her two idols.
And then, again, in a parenthesis:-
'That,' said Van Tromp, 'was when I had to paint those dirty
daubs of mine.'
And a little further on, laughingly said perhaps, but yet
with an air of truth:-
'I never had the slightest hesitation in sponging upon any
human creature.'
Thereupon Dick got up.
'I think perhaps,' he said, 'we had better all be thinking of
going to bed.' And he smiled with a feeble and deprecatory
smile.
'Not at all,' cried the Admiral, 'I know a trick worth two of
that. Puss here,' indicating his daughter, 'shall go to bed;
and you and I will keep it up till all's blue.'
Thereupon Esther arose in sullen glory. She had sat and
listened for two mortal hours while her idol defiled himself
and sneered away his godhead. One by one, her illusions had
departed. And now he wished to order her to bed in her own
house! now he called her Puss! now, even as he uttered the
words, toppling on his chair, he broke the stem of his
tobacco-pipe in three! Never did the sheep turn upon her
shearer with a more commanding front. Her voice was calm,
her enunciation a little slow, but perfectly distinct, and
she stood before him as she spoke, in the simplest and most
maidenly attitude.
'No,' she said, 'Mr. Naseby will have the goodness to go home
at once, and you will go to bed.'
The broken fragments of pipe fell from the Admiral's fingers;
he seemed by his countenance to have lived too long in a
world unworthy of him; but it is an odd circumstance, he
attempted no reply, and sat thunderstruck, with open mouth.
Dick she motioned sharply towards the door, and he could only
obey her. In the porch, finding she was close behind him, he
ventured to pause and whisper, 'You have done right.'
'I have done as I pleased,' she said. 'Can he paint?'
'Many people like his paintings,' returned Dick, in stifled
tones; 'I never did; I never said I did,' he added, fiercely
defending himself before he was attacked.
'I ask you if he can paint. I will not be put off. CAN he
paint?' she repeated.
'No,' said Dick.
'Does he even like it?'
'Not now, I believe.'
'And he is drunk?' - she leaned upon the word with hatred.
'He has been drinking.'
'Go,' she said, and was turning to re-enter the house when
another thought arrested her. 'Meet me to-morrow morning at
the stile,' she said.
'I will,' replied Dick.
And then the door closed behind her, and Dick was alone in
the darkness. There was still a chink of light above the
sill, a warm, mild glow behind the window; the roof of the
cottage and some of the banks and hazels were defined in
denser darkness against the sky; but all else was formless,
breathless, and noiseless like the pit. Dick remained as she
had left him, standing squarely upon one foot and resting
only on the toe of the other, and as he stood he listened
with his soul. The sound of a chair pushed sharply over the
floor startled his heart into his mouth; but the silence
which had thus been disturbed settled back again at once upon
the cottage and its vicinity. What took place during this
interval is a secret from the world of men; but when it was
over the voice of Esther spoke evenly and without
interruption for perhaps half a minute, and as soon as that
ceased heavy and uncertain footfalls crossed the parlour and
mounted lurching up the stairs. The girl had tamed her
father, Van Tromp had gone obediently to bed: so much was
obvious to the watcher in the road. And yet he still waited,
straining his ears, and with terror and sickness at his
heart; for if Esther had followed her father, if she had even
made one movement in this great conspiracy of men and nature
to be still, Dick must have had instant knowledge of it from
his station before the door; and if she had not moved, must
she not have fainted? or might she not be dead?
He could hear the cottage clock deliberately measure out the
seconds; time stood still with him; an almost superstitious
terror took command of his faculties; at last, he could bear
no more, and, springing through the little garden in two
bounds, he put his face against the window. The blind, which
had not been drawn fully down, left an open chink about an
inch in height along the bottom of the glass, and the whole
parlour was thus exposed to Dick's investigation. Esther sat
upright at the table, her head resting on her hand, her eyes
fixed upon the candle. Her brows were slightly bent, her
mouth slightly open; her whole attitude so still and settled
that Dick could hardly fancy that she breathed. She had not
stirred at the sound of Dick's arrival. Soon after, making a
considerable disturbance amid the vast silence of the night,
the clock lifted up its voice, whined for a while like a
partridge, and then eleven times hooted like a cuckoo. Still
Esther continued immovable and gazed upon the candle.
Midnight followed, and then one of the morning; and still she
had not stirred, nor had Richard Naseby dared to quit the
window. And then, about half-past one, the candle she had
been thus intently watching flared up into a last blaze of
paper, and she leaped to her feet with an ejaculation, looked
about her once, blew out the light, turned round, and was
heard rapidly mounting the staircase in the dark.
Dick was left once more alone to darkness and to that dulled
and dogged state of mind when a man thinks that Misery must
now have done her worst, and is almost glad to think so. He
turned and walked slowly towards the stile; she had told him
no hour, and he was determined, whenever she came, that she
should find him waiting. As he got there the day began to
dawn, and he leaned over a hurdle and beheld the shadows flee
away. Up went the sun at last out of a bank of clouds that
were already disbanding in the east; a herald wind had
already sprung up to sweep the leafy earth and scatter the
congregated dewdrops. 'Alas!' thought Dick Naseby, 'how can
any other day come so distastefully to me?' He still wanted
his experience of the morrow.
CHAPTER VII - THE ELOPEMENT
IT was probably on the stroke of ten, and Dick had been half
asleep for some time against the bank, when Esther came up
the road carrying a bundle. Some kind of instinct, or
perhaps the distant light footfalls, recalled him, while she
was still a good way off, to the possession of his faculties,
and he half raised himself and blinked upon the world. It
took him some time to recollect his thoughts. He had
awakened with a certain blank and childish sense of pleasure,
like a man who had received a legacy overnight; but this
feeling gradually died away, and was then suddenly and
stunningly succeeded by a conviction of the truth. The whole
story of the past night sprang into his mind with every
detail, as by an exercise of the direct and speedy sense of
sight, and he arose from the ditch and, with rueful courage,
went to meet his love.
She came up to him walking steady and fast, her face still
pale, but to all appearance perfectly composed; and she
showed neither surprise, relief, nor pleasure at finding her
lover on the spot. Nor did she offer him her hand.
'Here I am,' said he.
'Yes,' she replied; and then, without a pause or any change
of voice, 'I want you to take me away,' she added.
'Away?' he repeated. 'How? Where?'
'To-day,' she said. 'I do not care where it is, but I want
you to take me away.'
'For how long? I do not understand,' gasped Dick.
'I shall never come back here any more,' was all she
answered.
Wild words uttered, as these were, with perfect quiet of
manner and voice, exercise a double influence on the hearer's
mind. Dick was confounded; he recovered from astonishment
only to fall into doubt and alarm. He looked upon her frozen
attitude, so discouraging for a lover to behold, and recoiled
from the thoughts which it suggested.
'To me?' he asked. 'Are you coming to me, Esther?'
'I want you to take me away,' she repeated with weary
impatience. 'Take me away - take me away from here.'
The situation was not sufficiently defined. Dick asked
himself with concern whether she were altogether in her right
wits. To take her away, to marry her, to work off his hands
for her support, Dick was content to do all this; yet he
required some show of love upon her part. He was not one of
those tough-hided and small-hearted males who would marry
their love at the point of the bayonet rather than not marry
her at all. He desired that a woman should come to his arms
with an attractive willingness, if not with ardour. And
Esther's bearing was more that of despair than that of love.
It chilled him and taught him wisdom.
'Dearest,' he urged, 'tell me what you wish, and you shall
have it; tell me your thoughts, and then I can advise you.
But to go from here without a plan, without forethought, in
the heat of a moment, is madder than madness, and can help
nothing. I am not speaking like a man, but I speak the
truth; and I tell you again, the thing's absurd, and wrong,
and hurtful.'
She looked at him with a lowering, languid look of wrath.
'So you will not take me?' she said. 'Well, I will go
alone.'
And she began to step forward on her way. But he threw
himself before her.
'Esther, Esther!' he cried.
'Let me go - don't touch me - what right have you to
interfere? Who are you, to touch me?' she flashed out,
shrill with anger.
Then, being made bold by her violence, he took her firmly,
almost roughly, by the arm, and held her while he spoke.
'You know well who I am, and what I am, and that I love you.
You say I will not help you; but your heart knows the
contrary. It is you who will not help me; for you will not
tell me what you want. You see - or you could see, if you
took the pains to look - how I have waited here all night to
be ready at your service. I only asked information; I only
urged you to consider; and I still urge and beg you to think
better of your fancies. But if your mind is made up, so be
it; I will beg no longer; I give you my orders; and I will
not allow - not allow you to go hence alone.'
She looked at him for awhile with cold, unkind scrutiny like
one who tries the temper of a tool.
'Well, take me away, then,' she said with a sigh.
'Good,' said Dick. 'Come with me to the stables; there we
shall get the pony-trap and drive to the junction. To-night
you shall be in London. I am yours so wholly that no words
can make me more so; and, besides, you know it, and the words
are needless. May God help me to be good to you, Esther -
may God help me! for I see that you will not.'
So, without more speech, they set out together, and were
already got some distance from the spot, ere he observed that
she was still carrying the hand-bag. She gave it up to him,
passively, but when he offered her his arm, merely shook her
head and pursed up her lips. The sun shone clearly and
pleasantly; the wind was fresh and brisk upon their faces,
and smelt racily of woods and meadows. As they went down
into the valley of the Thyme, the babble of the stream rose
into the air like a perennial laughter. On the far-away
hills, sun-burst and shadow raced along the slopes and leaped
from peak to peak. Earth, air and water, each seemed in
better health and had more of the shrewd salt of life in them
than upon ordinary mornings; and from east to west, from the
lowest glen to the height of heaven, from every look and
touch and scent, a human creature could gather the most
encouraging intelligence as to the durability and spirit of
the universe.
Through all this walked Esther, picking her small steps like
a bird, but silent and with a cloud under her thick eyebrows.
She seemed insensible, not only of nature, but of the
presence of her companion. She was altogether engrossed in
herself, and looked neither to right nor to left, but
straight before her on the road. When they came to the
bridge, however, she halted, leaned on the parapet, and
stared for a moment at the clear, brown pool, and swift,
transient snowdrift of the rapids.
'I am going to drink,' she said; and descended the winding
footpath to the margin.
There she drank greedily in her hands and washed her temples
with water. The coolness seemed to break, for an instant,
the spell that lay upon her; for, instead of hastening
forward again in her dull, indefatigable tramp, she stood
still where she was, for near a minute, looking straight
before her. And Dick, from above on the bridge where he
stood to watch her, saw a strange, equivocal smile dawn
slowly on her face and pass away again at once and suddenly,
leaving her as grave as ever; and the sense of distance,
which it is so cruel for a lover to endure, pressed with
every moment more heavily on her companion. Her thoughts
were all secret; her heart was locked and bolted; and he
stood without, vainly wooing her with his eves.
'Do you feel better?' asked Dick, as she at last rejoined
him; and after the constraint of so long a silence, his voice
sounded foreign to his own ears.
She looked at him for an appreciable fraction of a minute ere
she answered, and when she did, it was in the monosyllable -
'Yes.'
Dick's solicitude was nipped and frosted. His words died
away on his tongue. Even his eyes, despairing of
encouragement, ceased to attend on hers. And they went on in
silence through Kirton hamlet, where an old man followed them
with his eyes, and perhaps envied them their youth and love;
and across the Ivy beck where the mill was splashing and
grumbling low thunder to itself in the chequered shadow of
the dell, and the miller before the door was beating flour
from his hands as he whistled a modulation; and up by the
high spinney, whence they saw the mountains upon either hand;
and down the hill again to the back courts and offices of
Naseby House. Esther had kept ahead all the way, and Dick
plodded obediently in her wake; but as they neared the
stables, he pushed on and took the lead. He would have
preferred her to await him in the road while he went on and
brought the carriage back, but after so many repulses and
rebuffs he lacked courage to offer the suggestion. Perhaps,
too, he felt it wiser to keep his convoy within sight. So
they entered the yard in Indian file, like a tramp and his
wife.
The grooms eyebrows rose as he received the order for the
pony-phaeton, and kept rising during all his preparations.
Esther stood bolt upright and looked steadily at some
chickens in the corner of the yard. Master Richard himself,
thought the groom, was not in his ordinary; for in truth, he
carried the hand-bag like a talisman, and either stood
listless, or set off suddenly walking in one direction after
another with brisk, decisive footsteps. Moreover he had
apparently neglected to wash his hands, and bore the air of
one returning from a prolonged nutting ramble. Upon the
groom's countenance there began to grow up an expression as
of one about to whistle. And hardly had the carriage turned
the corner and rattled into the high road with this
inexplicable pair, than the whistle broke forth - prolonged,
and low and tremulous; and the groom, already so far
relieved, vented the rest of his surprise in one simple
English word, friendly to the mouth of Jack-tar and the sooty
pitman, and hurried to spread the news round the servants'
hall of Naseby House. Luncheon would be on the table in
little beyond an hour; and the Squire, on sitting down, would
hardly fail to ask for Master Richard. Hence, as the
intelligent reader can foresee, this groom has a part to play
in the imbroglio.
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?'
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