CHAPTER XXXIV.
IN WHICH LILIAS HEARS A STAVE OF AN OLD SONG AND THERE IS A LEAVE-TAKING
BESIDE THE RIVER.
Devereux's move was very sudden, and the news did not reach the Elms
till his groom had gone on to Island-bridge with the horses, and he
himself, booted and spurred, knocked at the door. The doctor was not at
home; he had ridden into Dublin. Of course it was chiefly to see him he
had gone there.
'And Miss Walsingham?'
She was also out; no, not in the garden. John thought maybe at old Miss
Chattesworth's school; or, Sally said, maybe at Belmont; they did not
know.
Devereux looked into the large room at the right hand of the hall, with
the fair sad portrait of Lilias's young mother smiling, from the wall. Like her, too—and the tall glasses of flowers—and the harpsichord open, with the music she would play, just as usual, that evening, he supposed; and he stood at the door, looking round the room, booted and spurred, as I have said, with his cocked hat held to his breast, in a reverie. It was not easy for old Sally to guess what was passing in his mind, for whenever he was sad he smiled, but with the somewhat of bitter in his smile, and when he suffered he used to joke.
Just at that moment Lilias Walsingham was walking along the high street
of the village to the King's House, and stopping to say a good-natured
little word to old Jenny Creswell, was overtaken by mild Mrs. Sturk, who
was walking her little menagerie into the park.
'And oh! dear Miss Walsingham, did you hear the news? she said; 'Captain
Devereux is gone to England, and I believe we sha'n't see him here
again.'
Lilias felt that she grew pale, but she patted one of the children on
the head, and smiled, and asked him some foolish little question.
'But why don't you listen, dear Miss Lilias? You don't hear, I think,'
said Mrs. Sturk.
'I do hear, indeed; when did he go?' she asked, coldly enough.
'About half an hour ago,' Mrs. Sturk thought: and so, with a word or two
more, and a kissing of hands, the good lady turned, with her brood, up
the park lane, and Lily walked on to pay her visit to Mrs. Colonel
Stafford, feeling all the way a strange pang of anger and
disappointment.
'To think of his going away without taking leave of my father!'
And when she reached the hall-door of the King's House for a moment she
forgot what she had come for, and was relieved to find that good Mrs. Strafford was in town.
There was then, I don't know whether there is not now, a little path
leading by the river bank from Chapelizod to Island-bridge, just an
angler's footpath, devious and broken, but withal very sweet and pretty. Leaving the King's House, she took this way home, and as she walked down to the river bank, the mortified girl looked down upon the grass close by her feet, and whispered to the daisies as she went along—'No, there's no more kindness nor friendliness left in the world; the people are all cold creatures now, and hypocrites; and I'm glad he's gone.'
She paused at the stile which went over the hedge just beside an old
fluted pier, with a grass-grown urn at top, and overgrown with a
climbing rose-tree, just such a study as a young lady might put in her
album; and then she recollected the long letter from old Miss Wardle
that Aunt Becky had sent her to read, with a request, which from that
quarter was a command, that she should return it by six o'clock, for
Aunt Becky, even in matters indifferent, liked to name hours, and nail
people sharp and hard to futile appointments and barren punctualities.