Beatrice is a Webnovel created by H. Rider Haggard.
This lightnovel is currently completed.
“She was there a second ago,” he said, pointing to the pillar, “but I’ve lost her now–I fancy she went towards the railway station, but I could not see. Stop, is that she?” and he pointed to a tall person walking towards the Abbey.
Quickly they moved to intercept her, but the result was not satisfactory, and they retreated hastily from the object of their attentions.
Meanwhile Beatrice found herself opposite the entrance to the Westminster Bridge Station. A hansom was standing there; she got into it and told the man to drive to Paddington.
Before the pair had retraced their steps she was gone. “She has vanished again,” said “Tom,” and went on to give a description of her to Geoffrey. Of her dress he had unfortunately taken little note. It might be one of Beatrice’s, or it might not. It seemed almost inconceivable to Geoffrey that she should be masquerading about London, under the name of Mrs. Everston. And yet–and yet–he could have sworn–but it was folly!
Suddenly he bade his friend good-night, and took a hansom. “The mystery thickens,” said the astonished “Tom,” as he watched him drive away.
“I would give a hundred pounds to find out what it all means. Oh! that woman’s face–it haunts me. It looked like the face of an angel bidding farewell to Heaven.”
But he never did find out any more about it, though the despairing eyes of Beatrice, as she bade her mute farewell, still sometimes haunt his sleep.
Geoffrey reflected rapidly. The thing was ridiculous, and yet it was possible. Beyond that brief line in answer to his letter, he had heard nothing from Beatrice. Indeed he was waiting to hear from her before taking any further step. But even supposing she were in London, where was he to look for her? He knew that she had no money, he could not stay there long. It occurred to him there was a train leaving Euston for Wales about four in the morning. It was just possible that she might be in town, and returning by this train. He told the cabman to drive to Euston Station, and on arrival, closely questioned a sleepy porter, but without satisfactory results.
Then he searched the station; there were no traces of Beatrice. He did more; he sat down, weary as he was, and waited for an hour and a half, till it was time for the train to start. There were but three pa.s.sengers, and none of them in the least resembled Beatrice.
“It is very strange,” Geoffrey said to himself, as he walked away. “I could have sworn that I felt her presence just for one second. It must have been nonsense. This is what comes of occult influences, and that kind of thing. The occult is a nuisance.”
If he had only gone to Paddington!
CHAPTER XXVIII
I WILL WAIT FOR YOU
Beatrice drove back to Paddington, and as she drove, though her face did not change from its marble cast of woe the great tears rolled down it, one by one.
They reached the deserted-looking station, and she paid the man out of her few remaining shillings–seeing that she was a stranger, he insisted upon receiving half-a-crown. Then, disregarding the astonished stare of a night porter, she found her way to the waiting room, and sat down.
First she took the letter from her breast, and added some lines to it in pencil, but she did not post it yet; she knew that if she did so it would reach its destination too soon. Then she laid her head back against the wall, and utterly outworn, dropped to sleep–her last sleep upon this earth, before the longest sleep of all.
And thus Beatrice waited and slept at Paddington, while her lover waited and watched at Euston.
At five she woke, and the heavy cloud of sorrow, past, present, and to come, rushed in upon her heart. Taking her bag, she made herself as tidy as she could. Then she stepped outside the station into the deserted street, and finding a s.p.a.ce between the houses, watched the sun rise over the waking world. It was her last sunrise, Beatrice remembered.
She came back filled with such thoughts as might well strike the heart of a woman about to do the thing she had decreed. The refreshment bar was open now, and she went to it, and bought a cup of coffee and some bread and b.u.t.ter. Then she took her ticket, not to Bryngelly or to Coed, but to the station on this side of Bryngelly, and three miles from it.
She would run less risk of being noticed there. The train was shunted up; she took her seat in it. Just as it was starting, an early newspaper boy came along, yawning. Beatrice bought a copy of the _Standard_, out of the one and threepence that was left of her money, and opened it at the sheet containing the leading articles. The first one began, “The most powerful, closely reasoned, and eloquent speech made last night by Mr. Bingham, the Member for Pillham, will, we feel certain, produce as great an effect on the country as it did in the House of Commons. We welcome it, not only on account of its value as a contribution to the polemics of the Irish Question, but as a positive proof of what has already been suspected, that the Unionist party has in Mr. Bingham a young statesman of a very high order indeed, and one whom remarkable and rapid success at the Bar has not hampered, as is too often the case, in the larger and less technical field of politics.”
And so on. Beatrice put the paper down with a smile of triumph.
Geoffrey’s success was splendid and unquestioned. Nothing could stop him now. During all the long journey she pleased her imagination by conjuring up picture after picture of that great future of his, in which she would have no share. And yet he would not forget her; she was sure of this. Her shadow would go with him from year to year, even to the end, and at times he might think how proud she would have been could she be present to record his triumphs. Alas! she did not remember that when all is lost which can make life beautiful, when the sun has set, and the spirit gone out of the day, the poor garish lights of our little victories can but ill atone for the glories that have been. Happiness and content are frail plants which can only flourish under fair conditions if at all. Certainly they will not thrive beneath the gloom and shadow of a pall, and when the heart is dead no triumphs, however splendid, and no rewards, however great, can compensate for an utter and irredeemable loss. She never guessed, poor girl, that time upon time, in the decades to be, Geoffrey would gladly have laid his honours down in payment for one year of her dear and unforgotten presence. She was too unselfish; she did not think that a man could thus prize a woman’s love, and took it for an axiom that to succeed in life was his one real object–a thing to which so divine a gift as she had given Geoffrey is as nothing. It was therefore this Juggernaut of her lover’s career that Beatrice would cast down her life, little knowing that thereby she must turn the worldly and temporal success, which he already held so cheap, to bitterness and ashes.
At Chester Beatrice got out of the train and posted her letter to Geoffrey. She would not do so till then because it might have reached him too soon–before all was finished! Now it would be delivered to him in the House after everything had been accomplished in its order. She looked at the letter; it was, she thought, the last token that could ever pa.s.s between them on this earth. Once she pressed it to her heart, once she touched it with her lips, and then put it from her beyond recall. It was done; there was no going back now. And even as she stood the postman came up, whistling, and opening the box carelessly swept its contents into his canvas bag. Could he have known what lay among them he would have whistled no more that day.
Beatrice continued her journey, and by three o’clock arrived safely at the little station next to Bryngelly. There was a fair at Coed that day, and many people of the peasant cla.s.s got in here. Amidst the confusion she gave up her ticket to a small boy, who was looking the other way at the time, and escaped without being noticed by a soul. Indeed, things happened so that n.o.body in the neighbourhood of Bryngelly ever knew that Beatrice had been to London and back upon those dreadful days.
Beatrice walked along the cliff, and in an hour was at the door of the Vicarage, from which she seemed to have been away for years. She unlocked it and entered. In the letter-box was a post-card from her father stating that he and Elizabeth had changed their plans and would not be back till the train which arrived at half-past eight on the following morning. So much the better, she thought. Then she disarranged the clothes upon her bed to make it seem as though it had been slept it, lit the kitchen fire, and put the kettle on to boil, and as soon as it was ready she took some food. She wanted all her nerve, and that could not be kept up without food.
Shortly after this the girl Betty returned, and went about her duties in the house quite unconscious that Beatrice had been away from it for the whole night. Her sister was much better, she said, in answer to Beatrice’s inquiries.
When she had eaten what she could–it was not much–Beatrice went to her room, undressed herself, bathed, and put on clean, fresh things. Then she unbound her lovely hair, and did it up in a coronet upon her head.
It was a fashion that she did not often adopt, because it took too much time, but on this day, of all days, she had a strange fancy to look her best. Also her hair had been done like this on the afternoon when Geoffrey first met her. Next she put on the grey dress once more which she had worn on her journey to London, and taking the silver Roman ring that Geoffrey had given her from the string by which she wore it about her neck, placed it on the third finger of her left hand.
All this being done, Beatrice visited the kitchen and ordered the supper. She went further in her innocent cunning. Betty asked her what she would like for breakfast on the following morning, and she told her to cook some bacon, and to be careful how she cut it, as she did not like thick bacon. Then, after one long last look at the Vicarage, she started for the lodging of the head teacher of the school, and, having found her, inquired as to the day’s work.
Further, Beatrice told her a.s.sistant that she had determined to alter the course of certain lessons in the school. The Wednesday arithmetic cla.s.s had hitherto been taken before the grammar cla.s.s. On the morrow she had determined to change this; she would take the grammar cla.s.s at ten and the arithmetic cla.s.s at eleven, and gave her reasons for so doing. The teacher a.s.sented, and Beatrice shook hands with her and bade her good-night. She would have wished to say how much she felt indebted to her for her help in the school, but did not like to do so, fearing lest, in the light of pending events, the remark might be viewed with suspicion.
Poor Beatrice, these were the only lies she ever told!
She left the teacher’s lodgings, and was about to go down to the beach and sit there till it was time, when she was met by the father of the crazed child, Jane Llewellyn.
“Oh, Miss Beatrice,” he said, “I have been looking for you everywhere.
We are in sad trouble, miss. Poor Jane is in a raving fit, and talking about h.e.l.l and that, and the doctor says she’s dying. Can you come, miss, and see if you can do anything to quiet her? It’s a matter of life and death, the doctor says, miss.”
Beatrice smiled sadly; matters of life and death were in the air. “I will come,” she said, “but I shall not be able to stay long.”
How could she better spend her last hour?
She accompanied the man to his cottage. The child, dressed only in a night-shirt, was raving furiously, and evidently in the last stage of exhaustion, nor could the doctor or her mother do anything to quiet her.
“Don’t you see,” she screamed, pointing to the wall, “there’s the Devil waiting for me? And, oh, there’s the mouth of h.e.l.l where the minister said I should go! Oh, hold me, hold me, hold me!”
Beatrice walked up to her, took the thin little hands in hers, and looked her fixedly in the eyes.
“Jane,” she said. “Jane, don’t you know me?”
“Yes, Miss Granger,” she said, “I know the lesson; I will say it presently.”
Beatrice took her in her arms, and sat down on the bed. Quieter and quieter grew the child till suddenly an awful change pa.s.sed over her face.
“She is dying,” whispered the doctor.
“Hold me close, hold me close!” said the child, whose senses returned before the last eclipse. “Oh, Miss Granger, I shan’t go to h.e.l.l, shall I? I am afraid of h.e.l.l.”
“No, love, no; you will go to heaven.”
Jane lay still awhile. Then seeing the pale lips move, Beatrice put her ear to the child’s mouth.
“Will you come with me?” she murmured; “I am afraid to go alone.”
And Beatrice, her great grey eyes fixed steadily on the closing eyes beneath, whispered back so that no other soul could hear except the dying child:
“Yes, I will come presently.” But Jane heard and understood.
“Promise,” said the child.
“Yes, I promise,” answered Beatrice in the same inaudible whisper.
“Sleep, dear, sleep; I will join you very soon.”