He was so earnest, he looked so reduced and wretched a being that Gerard was inclined to believe him, and to doubt whether Hester’s system might not be a mistake.
“It is hard for you, I dare say, to make so complete a change in your habits,” he said doubtfully.
“Her mistake is in insisting upon total abstinence. I have not forgotten the past, Mr. Hillersdon. I have not forgotten the degradation and disgrace which I have brought upon myself in your father’s church; but that unhappy exhibition was the outcome of long months of agony. I had been racked by neuralgia, and the only alleviation of my pain was the use of chloral or brandy. I have been free from neuralgic pain of late. My poor Hester is very careful of my diet, and takes the utmost care of my health after her own lights; but she cannot see how weak and depressed I am. She cannot understand the mental misery which a glass of sound port, twice a day, might cure.”
“Surely Miss Davenport would not object to your taking a glass of port after your luncheon and your dinner?”
“You don’t know her, my dear friend,” said Davenport, shaking his head. “Women are always in extremes. She would begin to cry if she saw me with a glass of wine in my hand, would go on her knees to ask me not to drink it. She has taken it into her head that the least indulgence in that line would bring about a return to habits of intemperance, which I can assure you were never a part of my nature.”
“I must talk to Miss Davenport, and induce her to let me send you a few dozen of fine old port, Cockburn’s’57, for instance.”
The old man’s eyes gleamed as he heard the offer.
“You may talk to her,” ho said, “but she won’t give way. She has made up her mind that my salvation depends upon living in her way. It is a hard thing for a man of my age to depend for subsistence upon a daughter’s manual labour, to see a lovely girl wearing out her life at vulgar drudgery, and never to have sixpence in my pocket — hardly the means of buying a newspaper. She doles out her pence, poor child, as if they were sovereigns. Women have such narrow notions about money.”
There was a silence of some minutes, during which Davenport nearly fell asleep again, and then Gerard said quietly —
“Why should yon depend upon your daughter, even for pocket-money? Why not do something for yourself?”
“What can I do? I have tried to get copying work, but I could not write a clerk’s hand. My penmanship was too weak and illegible to be worth even the starvation wages paid for that kind of work.”
“I was not thinking of so poor an occupation. Have you tried your hand at literature?”
“I have, in more than one line, though I had no vocation, and wrote slowly and laboriously. The articles I sent to the magazines all came back, ‘Declined with thanks.’ My daughter was the poorer by so many quires of Bath post and so many postage stamps.”
“You tried a wrong line, I dare say. Beginners in literature generally do. You are a good classic, I know.”
“I was once, but the man who took his degree at Oxford thirty years ago is dead and gone.”
“Men don’t forget Homer or Virgil when they have once loved them with the scholar’s fervour.”
“Forget, no. One does not forget old friends. Quote me any line from Horace or Virgil — the most obscure — and I will give you the context. Those two poets are interwoven with the fabric of my brain. I used also to be considered a pretty good critic upon the Greek Dramatists. I once got half way through a translation of Œdipus, which some of my contemporaries were flattering enough to persuade me to finish. I laid the manuscript aside when I began parish work, and Heaven knows what became of it.”
“The world has grown too frivolous to care for translations of Sophocles,” replied Gerard, “but I believe there is room for a new Horace — that is to say a new version of some of the lighter satires — a version which should be for the present epoch what Pope’s was for the time of Queen Anne; and I feel that it is in me to attempt the thing if I had the aid of a competent scholar — like yourself.”
The old man’s face lighted up with feverish eagerness.
“Surely your own Latin—” he began tremulously.
“Has grown sadly rusty. I want a new version of my favourite satires — a verbatim translation, reproducing the exact text in clear, nervous English, and upon that I could work, giving the old lines a modem turn, modulating the antique satire into a modern key. Will you collaborate with me, Mr. Davenport? Will you under take the scholarly portion of the work?”
“It is a task which will delight me. The very idea gives me new life. Which of the satires shall we start with?”
“Shall we say the ninth in the first book? It gives such a fine opportunity for the castigation of the modern bore.”
“Capital. I am proud to think that with so many translations ready to your hand you should prefer a new one by me.”
“I want to avoid all published versions,” answered Gerard, plausibly; as he opened a note-case.
The old man watched him with greedy eyes, and the weak lips quivered faintly. Did that note-case mean payment in advance?
The question was promptly answered. Gerard took out a couple of folded notes, and handed them to his future collaborator.
“You must allow me to give you two hundred pounds on account,” he said. “You will then at least have the feeling that your scholarship is worth something, and that you are not wholly dependent on your daughter’s labour.”
The old man fairly broke down, and burst into tears.
“My dear young friend, your delicacy of feeling, your generosity overcome me,” he faltered, clutching the notes with shaking fingers, “but I cannot — I cannot take this money.” His hold of the notes tightened involuntarily as he spoke, in abject fear lest he should have to give them back. “I suspect your proposed translation is only a generous fiction — devised to spare me the sense of humiliation in accepting this munificent honorarium. I own to you that the work you propose would be full of interest for me. I perceive the opportunities of those satires — treated as freely as Pope treated them — the allusions, political, social, literary — and to a writer of your power — who have made your mark in the very morning of life by a work of real genius — the task would be easy.”
“You will help me, then?” said Gerard, his hollow cheek flushing with a hectic glow.
“With all my heart, and to the utmost of my power,” answered Davenport, slipping the notes into his waistcoat-pocket as if by an automatic movement. “Without conceit I think I may venture to say that for the mere verbal work you could employ no better hack.”
“I am sure of that, and for much more than merely verbal work. And now, good day to you, Mr. Davenport. It is about your daughter’s time for coming home, and she won’t care to find a visitor here when she comes in tired after her walk.”
“Yes, she will be here directly,” answered the old man, starting as with some sudden apprehension, “and on second thoughts I would rather you did not tell her anything about our plans until they are carried out. When your book is published she will be proud, very proud, to know that her old father has helped in so distinguished a work; but in the meantime if you changed your mind, and the book were never finished, she would be disappointed; and then, on the other hand, I should not like her to know that I had so much money in my possession.”
All this was faltered nervously, in broken sentences, while Mr. Davenport followed his patron to the door, and showed him out, eagerly facilitating his departure.
Gerard had dismissed his cab on arriving, and he walked slowly away towards the river, carefully avoiding that road by which Hester was likely to return. He was pale to the lips, and he felt like a murderer.
CHAPTER XVII. “SO, QUIET AS DESPAIR, I TURNED FROM HIM.”
GERARD called in Rosamond Road on the following evening at the hour when he had been accustomed to find Mr. Davenport reposing after his comfortable little dinner, and his daughter reading to him. To-night the open window showed him Hester si
tting alone in a despondent attitude, with an unread book on the table before her.
She came to the door in answer to his knock.
“My father is out,” she said. “He did not come home to dinner. He went out early in the afternoon while I was away, and he left a little note for me, saying that he had to go into London to meet an old friend. He did not tell me the friend’s name, and it seems so strange, for we have no friends left. We have drifted away from all old ties.”
“May I come in and talk with you?” Gerard asked. “I am so sorry you should have any cause for uneasiness.”
“Perhaps I am foolish to be uneasy, but you know — you know why. I was just going for a little walk. It is so sultry indoors, and we may meet him.” She took her hat from a peg in the passage, and put it on. “We are not very particular about gloves in this neighbourhood,” she said.
He perfectly understood that she would not receive him in her father’s absence, that even in her fallen estate, a work-girl among other work-girls, she clung to the conventionalities of her original sphere, and that it would not be easy for him to break through them.
They walked to the end of Rosamond Road almost in silence, but on the Embankment, with the dark swift river flowing past them, and the summer stars above, she began to tell him her trouble.
“You know how happy I have been,” she said, “in a life which many girls of my age would think miserable and degraded.”
“Miserable, yes; degraded, no. The most feather-headed girl in England, if she knew your life, would consider you a heroine.”
“Oh, please don’t make so much out of so little. I have done no more than hundreds of girls would do for a dear old father. I was so proud and happy to think that I had saved him — that he was cured of that fatal vice — and now, now I am full of fear that since yesterday, somehow or other, he has obtained the means of falling back into the old habit — the habit that wrecked him.”
“What makes you fear this?”
“He insisted upon going out last night after dinner. He was going to the Free Library to look at the August magazines. I offered to go there with him. We used to read there of an evening in the winter, but since the warm weather began we have not done so. I reminded him how hot the reading-room would be with the gas, but he was unusually eager to go, and I could not hinder him. The worst sign of all was that he did not like my going with him, and when we had been sitting there for half-an-hour he seemed anxious to get rid of me, and reminded me of some work which he knew I had to finish before this morning. But for that work I should have stayed with him till he came home; but I could not disappoint my employer, so I left my father sitting engrossed in ‘Blackwood,’ and I hoped all would be well. He promised me to come straight home when the library closed, and he came home about the time I expected him, but one look in his face, one sentence from his lips told me that by some means or other he had been able to get the poison which destroys him.”
“Are you not exaggerating the evil in your own imagination?” asked Gerard, soothingly. “After all, do you think that a few glasses too much once in a way can do your father any harm? He has seemed to me below par of late. He really may suffer from this enforced abstinence.”
“Suffer! Ah, you do not know, you do not know! I may seem hard with him, perhaps, but I would give my life to keep him from that old horror — that madness of the past, which degraded a gentleman and a scholar to the level of the lowest drunkard in London. There is no difference — the drink madness makes them all alike. And now that some one has given him money all my care is useless. I cannot think who can have done it. I don’t know of any so-called friend to whom he could apply.”
“His letter tells you of an old friend—”
“Yes! It maybe some one who has returned from abroad — some friend of years ago who knows nothing of his unhappy story, and cannot guess the harm that money may do.”
“Pray do not be too anxious,” said Gerard, taking her hand and lifting it to his lips.
She snatched the small cold hand away from him indignantly.
“Pray don’t,” she said. “Is this a time for idle gallantry, and to me of all people — to me who have to deal only with the hard things of this life?”
“No, Hester, but it is a time for love — devoted love — to speak. You know that I love you.”
He took the poor little gloveless hand again and held it fast, and kissed the work-worn fingers again and again.
“You know that I love you, fondly, dearly, with all my soul. Hester, only yesterday my doctor told me that I have not many years to spend upon this planet — perhaps not many months. He told me to be happy if I could — happy with the woman I love, for my day of happiness must be brief even at the best. It is but a poor remnant of life that I offer, Hester, but it means all myself — mind and heart and hope and dreams are all centred and bound up in you. Since I have known you — since that first night under the stars when you were so hard and cold, when yon would have nothing to say to me — since that night I have loved only you, lived only for you.”
She had heard him in despite of herself, her free will struggling against her love, like a bird caught in a net. Yes, she loved him. Her desolate heart had gone to him as gladly, blindly, eagerly as his heart had gone to her. There had been no more hesitation, no more doubt than in Margaret in the garden, when in a sweet simplicity that scarce knew fear of shame, she gave her young heart to her unknown lover. Hester’s lave was just as pure, and fond, and unselfish; but she had more knowledge of danger than Goethe’s guileless maiden. She knew that peril lay in Gerard Hillersdon’s love — generous, reverential even, as it might seem. It was only a year ago that she had sat, late into the night, reading Clarissa Harlowe, and she knew how tender, how delicate, how deeply respectful a lover might seem and yet harbour the basest designs against a woman’s honour.
“You have no right to talk to me like this,” she said indignantly. “You take advantage of my loneliness and my misery. Do you think I can forget the distance your fortune has set between us? I know that you are bound to another woman — that you will marry a woman who can do you honour before the world. I know that in England wealth counts almost as high as rank, and that a marriage between a millionaire and a work-girl is out of the question.”
“A lady is always a lady, Hester. Do you think your womanly dignity is lowered in my esteem because you have toiled to support your father — do you think there is any man in England who would not admire you for that self-sacrifice? Yes, it is true that I am bound in honour to another woman — to a woman whom I loved four years ago, and whom I thought this world’s one woman — but from that first night when I followed you across the Park — when you sent me away from you so cruelly, the old love was dead. It died in an hour, and no effort of mine would conjure the passion back to life. I knew then how poor a thing that first love was — a young man’s fancy for a beautiful face. My love for you is different. I should love you as dearly if that sweet face of yours was faded and distorted — if those sweet eyes were blind and dim. I should love you as the clerk loved the leper — with a passion that no outward circumstance could change.”
They were walking slowly under the trees — in the warm darkness of a breathless August night. He had his arm round her, and though her face was turned from him she did not repulse him. She let his arm clasp her, and draw her nearer and nearer, till it seemed as they moved slowly under the wavering branches as if they were one already. Other obligations, the opinion of the world, the past, the future, what could these matter to two beings whose hearts beat throb for throb, in the sweet madness of newly-spoken love?
“Dearest, say you love me. I know it, I know it — only let me hear, let me hear it from those lips. Hester, you love me, you love me.”
Her face was turned to him now — pale in that faint light of distant stars, dark violet eyes still darker in the shadow of night.
Their lips met, and between his passionate kisses he heard the faint whisper
, “Yes, I love you — love you better than my life — but it cannot be.”
“What cannot be — not love’s sweet union — all our life, my poor brief life, spent together in one unbroken dream, like this, like this, and this—”
She wrenched herself out of his arms.
“You know that it cannot be — you know that you cannot marry me — that it is cruel to try to cheat me — with sweet words that mean nothing. No man ever kissed me before — except my father. You have made me hate myself. Let me go — let me never hear your voice again.”
“Hester, is there no other way? Do you want the marriage law to bind us? Won’t you trust in me — won’t you believe in me — as other women have trusted their lovers, all the world over?”
“Don’t,” she cried passionately, “why could you not leave those words unspoken? Why must you fill my cup of shame? I knew those hateful words would come if ever I let you tell me of your love, and I have tried to hinder your telling me. Yes, I knew what your love was worth. You will keep your promise to the great lady — your sister told me about her — and you would let me lose my soul for your love. You have been trying to win my heart — so that I should have no power to resist you — but I am not so weak and helpless a creature as you think. Oh, God, look down upon my loneliness — motherless, fatherless, friendless — take pity upon me because I am so lonely. I have none but Thee.”
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 913
