On ne peut jamais dire.
Fontaine je ne boirai jamais de ton eau.
IF we could choose our ills we should not choose suspense. Rachel aged perceptibly during these last weeks. Her strong white hands became thinner, her lustreless eyes and haggard face betrayed her. In years gone by she had said to herself, when a human love had failed her, “I will never put myself through this torture a second time. Whatever happens I will not endure it again.”
And now she was enduring it again, though in a different form. There is an element of mother love in the devotion which some women give to men. In the first instance it had opened the door of Rachel’s heart to Hugh, and had gradually merged with other feelings and deepened into the painful love of a woman not in her first youth for a man of whom she is not sure.
Rachel was not sure of Hugh. Of his love for her she was sure, but not of the man himself, the gentle, refined, lovable nature that mutely worshipped and clung to her. She could not repulse him any more than she could repulse a child. But through all her knowledge of him, the knowledge of love — the only true knowledge of our fellow creatures — a thread of doubtful anxiety was interwoven. She could form some idea how men like Dick, Lord Newhaven, or the Bishop would act in given circumstances, but she could form no definite idea how Hugh would act in the same circumstances. Yet she knew Hugh a thousand times better than any of the others. Why was this? Many women before Rachel have sought diligently to find, and have shut their eyes diligently, lest they should discover what it is that is dark to them in the character of the man they love.
Perhaps Rachel half knew all the time the subtle inequality in Hugh’s character. Perhaps she loved him all the better for it. Perhaps she knew that if he had been without a certain undefinable weakness he would not have been drawn towards her strength. She was stronger than he, and perhaps she loved him more than she could have loved an equal.
“Les esprits faibles ne sont jamais sincères.” She had come across that sentence one day in a book she was reading, and had turned suddenly blind and cold with anger. “He is sincere,” she said fiercely, as if repelling an accusation. “He would never deceive me.” But no one had accused Hugh.
The same evening he made the confession for which she had waited so long. As he began to speak an intolerable suspense, like a new and acute form of a familiar disease, lay hold on her. Was he going to live or die? She should know at last. Was she to part with him, to bury love for the second time, or was she to keep him, to be his wife, the mother of his children?
As he went on, his language becoming more confused, she hardly listened to him. She had known all that too long. She had forgiven it, not without tears; but still, she had forgiven it long ago. Then he stopped. It seemed to Rachel as if she had reached a moment in life which she could not bear. She waited, but still he did not speak. Then she was not to know. She was to be ground between the millstones of four more dreadful days and nights. She suddenly became aware, as she stared at Hugh’s blanching face, that he believed she was about to dismiss him. The thought had never entered her mind.
“Do you not know that I love you?” she said silently to him as he kissed her hand.
When he had left her a gleam of comfort came to her, the only gleam that lightened the days and nights that followed. It was not his fault if he had made a half confession. If he had gone on, and had told her of the drawing of lots, and which had drawn the fatal lot, he would have been wanting in sense of honour. He owed it to the man he had injured to reserve entire secrecy.
“He told me of the sin which might affect my marrying him,” said Rachel, “but the rest had nothing to do with me. He was right not to speak of it. If he had told me, and then a few days afterwards Lord Newhaven had committed suicide, he would know I should put two and two together, and who the woman was, and the secret would not have died with Lord Newhaven as it ought to do. But if Hugh were the man who had to kill himself, he might have told me so without a breach of confidence, because then I should never have guessed who the others were. If he were the man he could have told me, he certainly would have told me, for it could have done no harm to any one. Surely Lady Newhaven must be right when she was so certain that her husband had drawn the short lighter. And she herself had gained the same impression from what Hugh had vaguely said at Wilderleigh. But what are impressions, suppositions, except the food of suspense. Rachel sighed and took up her burden as best she could. Hugh’s confession had at least one source of comfort in it, deadly cold comfort if he were about to leave her. She knew that night as she lay awake that she had not quite trusted him up till now, by the sense of entire trust and faith in him which rose up to meet his self-accusation. What might have turned away Rachel’s heart from him had had the opposite effect. “He told me the worst of himself, though he risked losing me by doing it. He wished me to know before he asked me to marry him. Though he acted dishonourably once he is an honourable man. He has shown himself upright in his dealing with me.”
Hugh came back no more after that evening. Rachel told herself she knew why, she understood. He could not speak of love and marriage when the man he had injured was on the brink of death. Her heart stood still when she thought of Lord Newhaven, the gentle, kindly man who was almost her friend, and who was playing with such quiet dignity a losing game. Hugh had taken from him his wife, and by that act was now taking from him his life too.
“It was an even chance,” she groaned. “Hugh is not responsible for his death. Oh, my God! At least he is not responsible for that. It might have been he who had to die instead of Lord Newhaven. But if it is he, surely he could not leave me without a word. If it is he, he would have come bid me good-bye. He cannot go down into silence without a word. If it is he, he will come yet.”
She endured through the two remaining days, turning faint with terror each time the door-bell rang, lest it might be Hugh.
But Hugh did not come.
Then, after repeated frantic telegrams from Lady Newhaven, she left London precipitately to go to her, as she had promised, the twenty-eighth of November, the evening of the last day of the five months.
And he went out immediately, and it was night
IT was nearly dark when Rachel reached Westhope Abbey. A great peace seemed to pervade the long dim lines of the gardens, and to be gathered into the solemn arches of the ruins against the darkening sky. Through the low doorway a faint light of welcome peered. As she drove up she was aware of two tall figures pacing amicably together in the dusk. As she passed them she heard Lord Newhaven’s low laugh at something his companion said.
A sense of unreality seized her. It was not the world which was out of joint, which was rushing to its destruction. It must be she who was mad, stark mad to have believed these chimeras.
As she got out of the carriage a step came lightly along the gravel, and Lord Newhaven emerged into the little ring of light by the archway.
“It is very good of you to come,” he said cordially, with extended hand. “My poor wife is very unwell, and expecting you anxiously. She told me she had sent for you.”
All was unreal — the familiar rooms and passages, the flickering light of the wood fire in the drawing-room, the darkened room, into which Rachel stole softly and knelt down beside a trembling white figure, which held her with a drowning clutch.
“I will be in the drawing-room after dinner,” Lady Newhaven whispered hoarsely. “I won’t dine down. I can’t bear to see him.”
It was all unreal except the jealousy which suddenly took Rachel by the throat and nearly choked her.
“I have undertaken what is beyond my strength,” she said to herself, as she hastily dressed for dinner. “How shall I bear it when she speaks of him? How shall I go through with it?”
Presently she was dining alone with Lord Newhaven. He mentioned that it was Dick Vernon with whom he had been walking when she arrived. Dick was staying in Southminster for business combined with hunting, and had ridden over. Lord Newhaven looked furtively at Rachel as he mentioned Dick. Her indifference was evidently genuine.
“She has not grown thin and parted with what little looks she possessed on Dick’s account,” he said to himself; and the remembrance slipped across his mind of Hugh’s first word when he recovered consciousness after drowning —“Rachel.”
“I would have asked Dick to dine,” continued Lord Newhaven, when the servants had gone, “but I thought two was company and three none, and that it was not fair on you and Violet to have him on your hands, as I am obliged to go to London on business by the night express.”
He was amazed at the instantaneous effect of his words.
Rachel’s face became suddenly livid, and she sank back in her chair. He saw that it was only by a supreme effort that she prevented herself from fainting. The truth flashed into his mind.
“She knows,” he said to himself. “That imbecile, that brainless viper to whom I am tied, has actually confided in her. And she and Scarlett are in love with each other, and the suspense is wearing her out.”
He looked studiously away from her, and continued a desultory conversation, but his face darkened.
The little boys came in, and pressed themselves one on each side of their father, their eyes glued on the crystallised cherries. Rachel had recovered herself, and she watched the children and their father with a pain at her heart which was worse than the faintness.
She had been unable to believe that if Lord Newhaven had drawn the short lighter he would remain quietly here over the dreadful morrow, under the same roof as Teddy and Pauly. Oh! surely nothing horrible could happen so near them. Yet he seemed to have no intention of leaving Westhope. Then perhaps he had not drawn the short lighter after all. At the moment when suspense, momentarily lulled, was once more rising hideous, colossal, he casually mentioned that he was leaving by the night train. The reason was obvious. The shock of relief almost stunned her.
“He will do it quietly to-morrow away from home,” she said to herself, watching him with miserable eyes as he divided the cherries equally between the boys. She had dreaded going upstairs to Lady Newhaven, but anything was better than remaining in the dining-room. She rose hurriedly, and the boys raced to the door and struggled which should open it for her.
Lady Newhaven was lying on a sofa by the wood fire in the drawing-room.
Rachel went straight up to her, and said hoarsely:
“Lord Newhaven tells me he is going to London this evening by the night express.”
Lady Newhaven threw up her arms.
“Then it is he,” she said. “When he stayed on and on up to to-day I began to be afraid that it was not he, after all; and yet little things made me feel sure it was, and that he was only waiting to do it before me and the children. I have been so horribly frightened. Oh! if he might only go away, and that I might never, never look upon his face again.”
Rachel sat down by the latticed window and looked out into the darkness. She could not bear to look at Lady Newhaven. Was there any help anywhere from this horror of death without, from this demon of jealousy within?
“I am her only friend,” she said to herself over and over again. "I cannot bear it, and I must bear it. I cannot desert her now. She has no one to turn to but me.”
“Rachel, where are you?” said the feeble, plaintive voice.
Rachel rose and went unsteadily towards her. It was fortunate the room was lit only by the firelight.
“Sit down by me here on the sofa, and let me lean against you. You do comfort me, Rachel, though you say nothing. You are the only true friend I have in the world, the only woman who really loves me. Your cheek is quite wet, and you are actually trembling. You always feel for me. I can bear it now you are here, and he is going away.”
When the boys had been reluctantly coerced to bed, Lord Newhaven rang for his valet, told him what to pack, that he should not want him to accompany him, and then went to his sitting-room on the ground floor.
“Scarlett seems a fortunate person,” he said, pacing up and down. “That woman loves him, and if she marries him she will reform him. Is he going to escape altogether in this world and the next, if there is a next? Is there no justice anywhere? Perhaps at this moment he is thinking that he has salved his conscience by offering to fight, and that, after all, I can’t do anything to prevent his living and marrying her if he chooses. He knows well enough I shall not touch him, or sue for a divorce, for fear of the scandal. He thinks he has me there. And he is right. But he is mistaken if he thinks I can do nothing. I may as well go up to London and see for myself whether he is still on his feet to-morrow night. It is a mere formality, but I will do it. I might have guessed that she would try to smirch her own name, and the boys through her, if she had the chance. She will defeat me yet, unless I am careful. Oh! ye gods! why did I marry a fool who does not even know her own interests. If I had life over again I would marry a Becky Sharp, any she-devil incarnate, if only she had brains. One cannot circumvent a fool because one can’t foresee their line of action. But Miss West, for a miracle, is safe. She has a lock-and-key face. But she is not for Scarlett. Did Scarlett tell her himself in an access of moral spring cleaning preparatory to matrimony? No. He may have told her that he had got into trouble with some woman, but not about the drawing of lots. Whatever his faults are, he has the instincts of a gentleman, and his mouth is shut. I can trust him like myself there. But she is not for him. He may think he will marry her, but I draw the line there. Violet and I have other views for him. He can live if he wants to, and apparently he does want to, though whether he will continue to want to is another question. But he shall not have Rachel. She must marry Dick.”
A distant rumbling was heard of the carriage driving under the stable archway on its way to the front door.
Lord Newhaven picked up a novel with a mark in it, and left the room. In the passage he stopped a moment at the foot of the narrow black oak staircase to the nurseries, which had once been his own nurseries. All was very silent. He listened, hesitated, his foot on the lowest stair. The butler came round the corner to announce the carriage.
“I shall be back in four days at furthest,” Lord Newhaven said to him, and turning, went on quickly to the hall, where the piercing night air came in with the stamping of the impatient horses’ hoofs.
A minute later the two listening women upstairs heard the carriage drive away into the darkness, and a great silence settled down upon the house.
The fool saith, Who would have thought it?
WINTER had brought trouble with it to Warpington Vicarage. A new baby had arrived, and the old baby was learning, not in silence, what kings and ministers undergo when they are deposed. Hester had never greatly cared for the old baby. She was secretly afraid of it. But in its hour of adversity she took to it, and she and Regie spent many hours consoling it for the arrival of the little chrysalis upstairs.
Mrs. Gresley recovered slowly, and before she was downstairs again Regie sickened with one of those swift sudden illnesses of childhood which make childless women thank God for denying them their prayers.
Mrs. Gresley was not well enough to be told, and for many days Mr. Gresley and Hester and Doctor Brown held Regie forcibly back from the valley of the shadow where, since the first cradle was rocked, the soft feet of children have cleft so sharp an entrance over the mother hearts that vainly barred the way.
Mr. Gresley’s face grew as thin as Hester’s as the days went by. On his rounds, for he let nothing interfere with his work, heavy farmers in dog carts, who opposed him at vestry meetings, stopped to ask after Regie. The most sullen of his parishioners touched their hats to him as he passed, and mothers of families who never could be induced to leave their cooking to attend morning service, and were deeply offended at being called “after-dinner Christians” in consequence, forgot the opprobrious term, and brought little offerings of new-laid eggs and rosy apples to tempt “the little master.”
Mr. Gresley was touched, grateful.
“I don’t think I have always done them justice,” he actually said to Hester one day. “They do seem to understand me a little better at last. Walsh has never spoken to me since my sermon on Dissent, though I always make a point of being friendly to him, but to-day he stopped and said he knew what trouble was, and how he had lost”— Mr. Gresley’s voice faltered, “It is a long time ago — but how, when he was about my age, he lost his eldest boy, and how he always remembered Regie in his prayers, and I must keep up a good heart. We shook hands,” said Mr. Gresley. “I sometimes think Walsh means well, and that he may be a good-hearted man after all.”
Beneath the arrogance which a belief in Apostolic succession seems to induce in natures like Mr. Gresley’s, as mountain air induces asthma in certain lungs, the shaft of agonised anxiety had pierced to a thin layer of humility. Hester knew that that layer was only momentarily disturbed, and that the old self would infallibly reassert itself, but the momentary glimpse drew her heart towards her brother. He was conscious of it, and love almost grew between them as they watched by Regie’s bed.
At last, after an endless night, the little faltering feet came to the dividing of the ways, and hesitated. The dawn fell grey on the watchful faces of the doctor and Hester, and on the dumb suspense of the poor father. And with a sigh, as one who half knows he is making a life-long mistake, Regie settled himself against Hester’s shoulder and fell asleep.
The hours passed. The light grew strong, and still Regie slept. Doctor Brown put cushions behind Hester, and gave her food. He looked anxiously at her. “Can you manage?” he whispered later, when the sun was streaming in at the nursery window. And she smiled back in scorn. Could she manage? What did he take her for?
At last Regie stretched himself and opened his eyes. The doctor took him gently from Hester, gave him food, and laid him down.
“He is all right,” he said. “He will sleep all day.”
Mr. Gresley, who had hardly stirred, hid his face in his hands.
“Don’t try to move, Miss Hester,” said Doctor Brown gently.
Hester did not try. She could not. Her hands and face were rigid. She looked at him in terror. “I shall have to scream in another moment,” she whispered.
The old doctor picked her up, and carried her swiftly to her room, where Fraülein ministered to her.
At last he came down and found Mr. Gresley waiting for him at the foot of the stair.
“You are sure he is all right?” he asked.
“Sure! Fraülein is with him. He got the turn at dawn.”
“Thank God!”
“Well, I should say thank your sister too. She saved him. I tell you, Gresley, neither you nor I could have sat all those hours without stirring as she did. She had cramp after the first hour. She has a will of iron in that weak body of hers.”
“I had no idea she was uncomfortable,” said Mr. Gresley, half incredulous.
“That is one of the reasons why I always say you ought not to be a clergyman,” snapped the little doctor, and was gone.
Mr. Gresley was not offended. He was too overwhelmed with thankfulness to be piqued.
“Good old Brown,” he said indulgently. “He has been up all night, and he is so tired he does not know he is talking nonsense. As if a man who did not understand cramp was not qualified to be a priest. Ha! Ha! He always likes to have a little hit at me, and he is welcome to it. I must just creep up and kiss dear Hester. I never should have thought she had it in her to care for any one as she has shown she cares for Regie. I shall tell her so, and how surprised I am, and how I love her for it. She has always seemed so insensible, so callous. But, please God, this is the beginning of a new life for her. If it is she shall never hear one word of reproach about the past from me.”
A day or two later the Bishop of Southminster had a touch of rheumatism, and Doctor Brown attended him. This momentary malady may possibly account to the reader for an incident which remained to the end of life inexplicable to Mr. Gresley.
Two days after Regie had taken the turn towards health, and on the afternoon of the very same day when Doctor Brown had interviewed the Bishop’s rheumatism, the episcopal carriage might have been seen squeezing its august proportions into the narrow drive of Warpington Vicarage; at least, it was always called the drive, though the horses’ noses were reflected in the glass of the front door while the hind-wheels still jarred the gate-posts.
Out of the carriage stepped, not the Bishop, but the tall figure of Dick Vernon, who rang the bell, and then examined a crack in the portico.
He had plenty of time to do so.
“Lord! what fools!” he said half aloud. “The crazy thing is shouting out that it is going to drop on their heads, and they put a clamp across the crack. Might as well put a respirator on a South Sea Islander. Is Mr. Gresley in? Well then, just ask him to step this way, will you? Look here, James, if you want to be had up for manslaughter, you leave this porch as it is. No, I did not drive over from Southminster on purpose to tell you, but I mention it now I am here.”
“I added the portico myself when I came here,” said Mr. Gresley stiffly, who had not forgotten or forgiven the enormity of Dick’s behaviour at the temperance meeting.
“So I should have thought,” said Dick, warming to the subject, and mounting on a small garden-chair. “And some escaped lunatic has put a clamp on the stucco.”
“I placed the clamp myself,” replied Mr. Gresley. “There really is no necessity for you to waste your time and mine here. I understand the portico perfectly. The crack is merely superficial.”
“Is it?” said Dick; “then why does it run round those two consumptive little pillars? I tell you it’s tired of standing up. It’s going to sit down. Look here”— Dick tore at the stucco with his knife, and caught the clamp as it fell —“that clamp was only put in the stucco. It never reached the stone or the wood, whichever the little kennel is made of. You ought to be thankful it did not drop on one of the children, or on your own head. It would have knocked all the texts out of it for some time to come.”
Mr Gresley did not look very grateful as he led the way to his study.
“I was lunching with the Bishop to-day,” said Dick, “and Doctor Brown was there. He told us about the trouble here. He said the little chap Regie was going on like a house on fire. The Bishop told me to ask after him particularly.”
“He is wonderfully better every day,” said Mr. Gresley softening. “How kind of the Bishop to send you to inquire. Not having children himself, I should never have thought —”
“No,” said Dick, “you wouldn’t. Do you remember when we were at Cheam, and Ogilvy’s marked sovereign was found in the pocket of my flannel trousers. You were the only one of the boys, you and that sneak Field, who was not sure I might not have taken it. You said it looked awfully bad, and so it did.”
“No one was gladder than I was when it was cleared up,” said Mr. Gresley.
“No,” said Dick; “but we don’t care much what any one thinks when it’s cleared up. It’s before that matters. Is Hester in? I’ve two notes for her. One from Brown, and one from the Bishop, and my orders are to take her back with me. That is why the Bishop sent the carriage.”
“I am afraid Hester will hardly care to leave us at present,” said Mr. Gresley. “My wife is on her sofa, and Regie is still very weak. He has taken one of those unaccountable fancies of children for her, and can hardly bear her out of his sight.”
“The Bishop has taken another of those unaccountable fancies for her,” said Dick, looking full at Mr. Gresley in an unpleasant manner. “I’m not one that holds that parsons should have their own way in everything. I’ve seen too much of missionaries. I just shove out curates and vicars and all that small fry if they get in my way. But when they break out in buttons and gaiters, by Jove, I knock under to them, at least, I do to men like the Bishop. He knows a thing or two. He has told me not to come back without Hester, and I’m not going to. Ah! There she is in the garden.” Dick’s large back had been turned towards the window, but he had seen the reflection of a passing figure in the glass of a framed testimonial which occupied a prominent place on the study wall, and he at once marched out into the garden and presented the letters to Hester.
Hester was bewildered at the thought of leaving Warpington, into which she seemed to have grown like a Buddhist into his tree. She was reluctant, would think it over, &c. But Dick, after one glance at her strained face, was obdurate. He would hear no reason. He would not go away. She and Fraülein nervously cast a few clothes into a box, Fraülein so excited by the apparition of a young man and a possible love affair, that she could hardly fold Hester’s tea-gowns.
When Hester came down with her hat on she found Dick untyring Mr. Gresley’s bicycle in the most friendly manner while the outraged owner stood by remonstrating.
“I assure you, Dick, I don’t wish it to be touched. I know my own machine. If it were a common puncture I could mend it myself, but I don’t want the whole thing ruined by an ignorant person. I shall take it in to Southminster on the first opportunity.”
“No need to do that,” said Dick cheerfully. “Might as well go to a doctor to have your nails cut. Do it at home. You don’t believe in the water test? Oh! that’s rot. You’ll believe in it when you see it. You’re learning it now. There! Now I’ve got it in the pail; see all these blooming little bubbles jostling up in a row. There’s a leak at the valve. No, there isn’t. It’s only unscrewed. Good Lord, James, it’s only unscrewed, and you thought the whole machine was out of order. There, now, I’ve screwed it up. Devil a bubble! What’s that you’re saying about swearing in your presence? Oh! don’t apologise! You can’t help being a clergyman. Look for yourself. You will never learn if you look the other way just when a good-natured chap is showing you. I would have put the tyre on again, but as you say you can do it better yourself, I won’t. Sorry to keep you waiting, Hester. And look here, James, you ought to bicycle more. Strengthen your legs for playing the harmonium on Sundays. Well, I could not tell you had an organ in that little one-horse church. Good-bye, Fraülein, good-bye, James. Home, Coleman. And look here,” said Dick, putting his mischievous face out of the window as the carriage turned, “if you are getting up steam for another temperance meeting I’m your man.”
“Good-bye, dear James,” interrupted Hester hastily, and the carriage drove away.
“He looks pasty,” said Dick, after an interval. “A chap like James has no power in his arms and legs. He can kneel down in church, and put his arm round Mrs. Gresley’s waist, but that’s about all he’s up to. He doesn’t take enough exercise.”
“He is not well. I don’t think I ought to have left them.”
“You had no choice. Brown said, unless you could be got away at once you would be laid up. I was at luncheon at the Palace when he said it. The Bishop’s sister was too busy with her good works to come herself so I came instead. I said I should not come back alive without you. They seemed to think I should all the same, but of course that was absurd. I wanted the Bishop to bet upon it, but he wouldn’t.”
“Do you always get what you want?” said Hester.
“Generally, if it depends on myself. But sometimes things depend on others besides me. Then I may be beaten.”
They were passing Westhope Abbey wrapped in a glory of sunset and mist.
“Did you know Miss West was there?” Dick said suddenly.
“No,” said Hester surprised. “I thought she was in London.”
“She came down last night to be with Lady Newhaven who is not well. Miss West is a great friend of yours, isn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“Well, she has one fault, and it is one I can’t put up with. She won’t look at me.”
“Don’t put up with it,” said Hester softly. “We women all have our faults, dear Dick. But if men point them out to us in a nice way we can sometimes cure them.”
When the sun sets, who doth not look for night?
— SHAKESPEARE.
TWO nights had passed since Lord Newhaven had left the Abbey. And now the second day, the first day of December, was waning to its close. How Rachel had lived through them she knew not. The twenty-ninth had been the appointed day. Both women had endured till then, feeling that that day would make an end. Neither had contemplated the possibility of hearing nothing for two days more. Long afterwards in quiet years Rachel tried to recall those two days and nights. But memory only gave lurid glimpses as of lightning across darkness. In one of those glimpses she recalled that Lady Newhaven had become ill, that the doctor had been sent for, that she had been stupefied with narcotics. In another she was walking in the desolate frost-nipped gardens, and the two boys were running towards her across the grass.
As the sun sank on the afternoon of the second day it peered in at her sitting alone by her window. Lady Newhaven after making the whole day frightful was mercifully asleep. Rachel sat looking out into the distance beyond the narrow confines of her agony. Has not every man and woman who has suffered sat thus by the window, looking out, seeing nothing, but still gazing blindly out hour after hour?
Perhaps the quiet mother earth watches us, and whispers to our deaf ears —
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.
Little pulse of life writhing in your shirt of fire, the shirt is but of clay of your mother’s weaving, and she will take it from you presently when you lay back your head on her breast.
There had been wind all day, a high, dreadful wind, which had accompanied all the nightmare of the day as a wail accompanies pain. But now it had dropped with the sun, who was setting with little pageant across the level land. The whole sky, from north to south, from east to west, was covered with a wind-threshed floor of thin wan clouds, and shreds of clouds, through which, as through a veil, the steadfast face of the heaven beyond looked down.
And suddenly, from east to west, from north to south, as far as the trees and wolds in the dim, forgotten east, the exhausted livid clouds blushed wave on wave, league on league, red as the heart of a rose. The wind-whipped earth was still. The trees held their breath. Very black against the glow the carved cross on the adjoining gable stood out. And in another moment the mighty tide of colour went as it had come, swiftly ebbing across its infinite shores of sky. And the waiting night came down suddenly.
“Oh! my God,” said Rachel, stretching out her hands to ward off the darkness. “Not another night. I cannot bear another night.”
A slow step came along the gravel; it passed below the window and stopped at the door. Some one knocked. Rachel tore open the throat of her gown. She was suffocating. Her long-drawn breathing seemed to deaden all other sounds. Nevertheless she heard it — the faint footfall of some one in the hall, a distant opening and shutting of doors. A vague, indescribable tremor seemed to run through the house.
She stole out of her room and down the passage. At Lady Newhaven’s door her French maid was hesitating, her hand on the handle.
Below, on the stairs, stood a clergyman and the butler.
“I am the bearer of sad tidings,” said the clergyman. Rachel recognised him as the Archdeacon at whom Lord Newhaven had so often laughed. “Perhaps you would prepare Lady Newhaven before I break them to her.”
The door was suddenly opened, and Lady Newhaven stood in the doorway. One small clenched hand held together the long white dressing-gown which she had hastily flung round her, while the other was outstretched against the door-post. She swayed as she stood. Morphia and terror burned in her glassy eyes fixed in agony upon the clergyman. The light in the hall below struck upwards at her colourless face. In later days this was the picture which Lady Newhaven recalled to mind as the most striking of the whole series.
“Tell her,” said Rachel, sharply.
The Archdeacon advanced.
“Prepare yourself, dear Lady Newhaven,” he said sonorously. “Our dear friend, Lord Newhaven, has met with a serious accident. Er — the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
“Is he dead?” whispered Lady Newhaven.
The Archdeacon bowed his head.
Every one except the children heard the scream which rang through the house.
Rachel put her arms round the tottering, distraught figure, drew it gently back into the room, and closed the door behind her.
And Nicanor lay dead in his harness.
— I MACCABEES, XV. 28.
RACHEL laid down the papers which were full of Lord Newhaven’s death.
“He has managed it well,” she said to herself. “No one could suspect that it was not an accident. He has played his losing game to the bitter end, weighing each move. None of the papers even hint that his death was not an accident. He has provided against that.”
The butler received a note from Lord Newhaven the morning after his death, mentioning the train by which he should return to Westhope that day, and ordering a carriage to meet him. A great doctor made public the fact that Lord Newhaven had consulted him the day before about the attacks of vertigo from which it appeared he had suffered of late. A similar attack seemed to have seized upon him while waiting at Clapham Junction when the down express thundered past. The few who saw him said that, as he was pacing the empty platform, he staggered suddenly as the train was sweeping up behind him, put his hand to his head, and stumbled over the edge on to the line. Death was instantaneous. Only his wife and one other woman knew that it was premeditated.
“The only thing I cannot understand about it,” said Rachel to herself, “is why a man, who from first to last could act with such caution, and with such deliberate determination, should have been two days late. The twenty-ninth of November was the last day of the five months, and he died on the afternoon of December the first. Why did he wait two days after he left Westhope? I should have thought he would have been the last man in the world to overstep the allotted time by so much as an hour. Yet nevertheless he waited two whole days. I don’t understand it.”
After an interminable interval Lord Newhaven’s luggage returned, the familiar portmanteaux and dressing-bag, and even the novel which he was reading when he left Westhope, with the mark still in it. All came back. And a coffin came back, too, and was laid before the little altar in the disused chapel.
“I will go and pray for him in the chapel as soon as the lid is fastened down,” said Lady Newhaven to Rachel, “but I dare not before. I can’t believe he is really dead. And they say somebody ought to look, just to verify. I know it is always done. Dear Rachel, would you mind?”
So Rachel, familiar with death as all are who have known poverty, or who have loved their fellows, went alone into the chapel, and stood a long time looking down upon the muffled figure, the garment of flesh which the soul had so deliberately rent and flung aside.
The face was fixed in a grave attention, as of one who sees that which he awaits. The sarcasm, the weariness, the indifference, the impatient patience, these were gone, these were indeed dead. The sharp thin face knew them no more. It looked intently, unflinchingly through its half-closed eyes into the beyond which some call death, which some call life.
“Forgive him,” said Rachel, kneeling beside the coffin. “My friend, forgive him. He has injured you, I know. And your just revenge, for you thought it just, has failed to reach him. But the time for vengeance has passed. The time for forgiveness has come. Forgive my poor Hugh, who will never forgive himself. Do you not see now, you who see so much, that it was harder for him than for you; that it would have been the easier part for him if he had been the one to draw death, to have atoned to you for his sin against you by his death, instead of feeling, as he always must, that your stroke failed, and that he has taken your life from you as well as your honour. Forgive him,” said Rachel, over and over again.
But the unheeding face looked earnestly into the future. It had done with the past.
“Ah!” said Rachel, “if I who love him can forgive him, cannot you, who only hated him, forgive him, too? For love is greater than hate.”
She covered the face and went out.
Le nombre des êtres qui veulent voir vrai est extraordinairement petit. Ce qui domine los hommes, c’est la peur de la vérité, à moins que la vérité ne leur soit utile.
— AMIEL.
LADY NEWHAVEN insisted on attending the funeral, a little boy in either hand. Rachel had implored that she would spare the children, knowing how annoyed their father would have been, but Lady Newhaven was obdurate.
“No,” she said. “He may not have cared much about them, but that is no reason why they should forget he is their father.”
So Teddy and Pauly stared with round eyes at the crowd, and at the coffin, and the wealth of flowers, and the deep grave in which their old friend and playfellow was laid. Perhaps they did not understand. They did not cry.
“They are like their father. They have not much heart,” Lady Newhaven said to Rachel.
Dick, who was at the funeral, looked at them, winking his hawk eyes a little, and afterwards he came back boldly to the silent house, and obtained leave to take them away for the afternoon. He brought them back towards bedtime, with a dancing doll he had made for them, and a man’s face cut out of cork. They met Rachel and the governess in the garden on their return, and flew to them with their trophies.
Dick waited a moment after the others had gone in.
“It seems hard on him to have left it all,” he said. “His wife and the little chaps, and his nice home and everything.”
Rachel could say nothing.
“He was very fond of the boys,” he went on. “He would have done anything for them.”
“He did what he could,” said Rachel almost inaudibly, and then added. “He was very fond of you.”
“He was a good friend,” said Dick, his crooked mouth twitching a little, “and a good enemy. That was why I liked him. He was hard to make a friend of or an enemy, but when he once did either he never let go.”
Rachel shivered. The frost was settling white upon the grass.
“I must go in,” she said, holding out her hand.
“Are you staying much longer?” said Dick, keeping it in his.
“I leave to-morrow morning very early.”
“You will be in London perhaps.”
“I think so for the present.”
“May I come and see you?”
The expression of Dick’s eyes was unmistakable. In the dusk he seemed all eyes and hand.
“Dear Mr. Dick, it’s no use.”
“I like plain speaking,” said Dick. “I can’t think why it’s considered such a luxury. You are quite right to say that, and I should be quite wrong if I did not say that I mean to keep on till you are actually married.”
He released her hand with difficulty. It was too dark to see his face. She hesitated a moment, and then fled into the house.
It is a well-known fact that after the funeral the strictest etiquette permits, nay, encourages, certain slight relaxations on the part of the bereaved.
Lady Newhaven lay on the sofa in her morning-room in her long black draperies, her small hands folded. They were exquisite, little blue-veined hands. There were no rings on them except a wedding-ring. Her maid, who had been living in an atmosphere of pleasurable excitement since Lord New- haven’s death, glanced with enthusiastic admiration at her mistress. Lady Newhaven was a fickle, inconsiderate mistress, but at this moment her behaviour was perfect. She, Angélique, knew what her own part should be, and played it with effusion. She suffered no one to come into the room. She, who would never do a hand’s turn for the English servants, put on coal with her own hands. She took the lamps from the footman at the door. Presently she brought in a little tray with food and wine, and softly besought “Miladi” to eat. Perhaps the mistress and maid understood each other. Lady Newhaven impatiently shook her head, and Angélique wrung her hands. In the end Angélique prevailed.
“Have they all gone?” Lady Newhaven asked after the little meal was finished and, with much coaxing, she had drunk a glass of champagne.
Angélique assured her they were all gone, the relations who had come to the funeral —“Milor Windham and l’Honorable Carson” were the last. They were dining with Miss West, and they were leaving immediately after dinner by the evening express.
“Ask Miss West to come to me as soon as they have gone,” she said.
Angélique hung about the room, and was finally dismissed.
Lady Newhaven lay quite still, watching the fire. A great peace had descended upon that much tossed soul. The dreadful restlessness of the last weeks was gone. The long suspense, prolonged beyond its time, was over. The shock of its ending which shattered her at first, was over too. She was beginning to breathe again, to take comfort once more: not the comfort that Rachel had tried so hard to give her, but the comfort of feeling that happiness and ease were in store for her once more; that these five hideous months were to be wiped out, and not her own past, to which she still secretly clung, out of which she was already building her future.
“It is December now. Hugh and I shall be married next December, D.V., not before. We will be married quietly in London and go abroad. I shall have a few tailor-made gowns from Vernon, but I shall wait for my other things till I am in Paris on my way back. The boys will be at school by then. Pauly is rather young, but they had better go together, and they need not come home for the holidays just at first. I don’t think Hugh would care to have the boys always about. I won’t keep my title. I hate everything to do with him“—(Lord Newhaven was still him)—“and I know the Queen does not like it. I will be presented as Mrs. Scarlett, and we will live at his place in Shropshire, and at last we shall be happy. Hugh will never turn against me as he did.”
Lady Newhaven’s thoughts travelled back in spite of herself to her marriage with Lord Newhaven, and the humble, boundless admiration which she had accepted as a matter of course, which had been extinguished so entirely, so inexplicably, soon after marriage, which had been succeeded by still more inexplicable paroxysms of bitterness and contempt. Other men, Lady Newhaven reflected, respected and loved their wives even after they lost their complexions, and — she had kept hers. Why had he been different from others? It was impossible to account for men and their ways. And how he had sneered at her when she talked gravely to him, especially on religious subjects. Decidedly, Edward had been very difficult, until he settled down into the sarcastic indifference that had marked all his intercourse with her after the first year.
“Hugh will never be like that,” she said to herself, “and he will never laugh at me for being religious. He understands me as Edward never did. And I will be married in a pale shade of violet velvet trimmed with ermine, as it will be a winter wedding. And my bouquet shall be of Neapolitan violets to match my name.”
“May I come in?” said Rachel’s voice.
“Do,” said Lady Newhaven, but without enthusiasm.
She no longer needed Rachel. The crisis during which she had clung to her was past. What shipwrecked seaman casts a second thought after his rescue to the log which supported him upon a mountainous sea. Rachel interrupted pleasant thoughts. Lady Newhaven observed that her friend’s face had grown unbecomingly thin, and that what little colour there was in it was faded. “She is the same age as I am, but she looks much older,” said Lady Newhaven to herself, adding aloud:
“Dear Rachel!”
“Every one has gone,” said Rachel, “and I have had a telegram from Lady Trentham. She has reached Paris, and will be here to-morrow afternoon.”
“Dearest mamma,” said Lady Newhaven.
“So now,” said Rachel, sitting down near the sofa with a set countenance, “I shall feel quite happy about leaving you.”
“Must you go?”
“I must. I have arranged to leave by the seven-thirty to-morrow morning. I think it will be better if we say good-bye over night.”
“I shall miss you dreadfully.” Lady Newhaven perceived suddenly, and with resentment, that Rachel was anxious to go.
“I do not think you will miss me.”
“I don’t know why you say that. You have been so dear and sympathetic. You understand me much better than mamma. And then mamma was always so fond of Edward. She cried for joy when I was engaged to him. She said her only fear was that I should not appreciate him. She never could see that he was in fault. I must say he was kind to her. I do wish I was not obliged to have her now. I know she will do nothing but talk of him. Now I come to think of it, do stay, Rachel.”
“There is a reason why I can’t stay, and why you won’t wish me to stay when I tell it you.”
“Oh, Mr. Vernon! I saw you and him holding hands in the dusk. But I don’t mind if you marry him, Rachel. I believe he is a good sort of young man — not the kind I could ever have looked at, but what does that matter? I am afraid it has rankled in your mind that I once warned you against him. But, after all, it is your affair, not mine.”
“I was not going to speak of Mr. Vernon.”
Lady Newhaven sighed impatiently. She did not want to talk of Rachel’s affairs. She wanted, now the funeral was over, to talk of her own. She often said there were few people with less curiosity about others than herself.
Rachel pulled herself together.
“Violet,” she said, “we have known each other five months, haven’t we?”
“Yes, exactly. The first time you came to my house was that dreadful night of the drawing of lots. I always thought Edward drew the short lighter. It was so like him to turn it off with a laugh.”
“I want you to remember, if ever you think hardly of me, that during those five months I did try to be a friend. I may have failed, but — I did my best.”
“But you did not fail. You have been a real friend, and you will always be so, dear Rachel. And when Hugh and I are married you will often come and stay with us.”
A great compassion flooded Rachel’s heart for this poor creature, with its house of cards. Then her face became fixed as a surgeon’s who gets out his knife.
“I think I ought to tell you — you ought to know — that I care for Mr. Scarlett.”
“He is mine,” said Lady Newhaven instantly, her blue eyes dilating.
“He is unmarried and I am unmarried,” said Rachel hoarsely. “I don’t know how it came about, but I have gradually become attached to him.”
“He is not unmarried. It is false. He is my husband in the sight of heaven. I have always through everything looked upon him as such.
This seemed more probable than that heaven had so regarded him. Rachel did not answer. She had confided her love to no one, not even to Hester; and to speak of it to Lady Newhaven had been like tearing the words out of herself with hot pincers.
“I knew he was poor, but I did not know he was as poor as that,” said Lady Newhaven after a pause.
Rachel got up suddenly, and moved away to the fireplace. She felt it would be horribly easy to strangle that voice.
“And you came down here pretending to be my friend while all the time you were stealing his heart from me.”
Still Rachel did not answer. Her forehead was pressed against the mantelshelf. She prayed urgently that she might stay upon the hearthrug, that whatever happened she might not go near the sofa.
“And you think he is in love with you?
“I do.”
“Are you not rather credulous? But I suppose he has told you over and over again that he cares for you yourself alone. Is the wedding-day fixed?”
“No, he has not asked me to marry him yet. I wanted to tell you before it happened.”
Lady Newhaven threw herself back on the sofa. She laughed softly. A little mirror hung tilted at an angle which allowed her to see herself as she lay. She saw a very beautiful woman, and then she turned and looked at Rachel, who had no beauty as she understood it, and laughed again.
“My poor dear,” she said, in a voice that made Rachel wince, “Hugh is no better than the worst. He has made love to you pour passer le temps, and you have taken him seriously, like the dear simple woman you are. But he will never marry you. You own he has not proposed. Of course not. Men are like that. It is hateful of them, but they will do it. They are the vainest creatures in the world. Don’t you see that the reason he has not asked you is because he knew that Edward had to — and that I should soon be free to marry him. And Rachel, you need not feel the least little bit humiliated, for I shan’t tell a soul, and, after all, he loved me first.”
Lady Newhaven was quite reassured. It had been a horrible moment, but it was past.
“Why do I always make trouble?” she said, with plaintive self-complacency. “Rachel, you must not be jealous of me. I can’t help it.”
Rachel tried to say “I am not,” but the words would not come. She was jealous, jealous of the past, cut to the heart every time she noticed that Lady Newhaven’s hair waved over her ears, and that she had taper fingers.
“I think it is no use talking of this any more,” Rachel said. “Perhaps I was wrong to speak of it at all. I did as I would be done by. As I am starting early I think I will say good-night and good-bye.”
“Good-night, dear Rachel, and perhaps, as you say, it had better be good-bye. You may remain quite easy in your mind that I shall never breathe a word of what you have said to any living soul — except Hugh,” she added to herself as Rachel left the room.
To every coward safety, and afterwards his evil hour.
SLEEP, that fickle courtier of our hours of ease, had deserted Hugh. When the last hour of the last day was over, and the dawn which he had bound himself in honour not to see found him sitting alone in his room, where he had sat all night, horror fell upon him at what he had done. Now that its mire was upon him he saw by how foul, by how dastardly a path he had escaped.
“To every coward safety, and afterwards his evil hour.” Hugh’s evil hour had come. But was he a coward? Men not braver than he have earned the Victoria Cross, have given up their lives freely for others. Hugh had it in him to do as well as any man in hot blood, but not in cold. That was where Lord Newhaven had the advantage of him. He had been overmatched from the first. The strain without had been greater than the power of resistance within. As the light grew, Hugh tasted of that cup which God holds to no man’s lips — remorse. Would the cup of death which he had pushed aside have been more bitter?
He took up his life like a thief. Was it not stolen? He could not bear his rooms. He could not bear the crowded streets. He could not bear the parks. He wandered aimlessly from one to the other, driven out of each in turn, consumed by the smouldering flame of his self-contempt. Scorn seemed written on the faces of the passers-by. As the day waned he found himself once again for the twentieth time in the park, pacing in “the dim persistent rain,” which had been falling all day.
But he could not get away from the distant roar of the traffic. He heard it everywhere, like the Niagara which he had indeed escaped, but the sound of which would be in his ears till he died. He drew nearer and nearer to the traffic, and stood still in the rain listening to it intently. Might one of those thousand wheels be even now bringing his enemy towards him, to force him to keep his unspoken word. Hugh had not realised that his worst enemy was he who stood with him in the rain.
The forlorn London trees, black and bare, seemed to listen too, and to cling closer to their parks and grass, as if they dimly foresaw the inevitable time coming when they too should toil, and hate, and suffer, as they saw on all sides those stunted uprooted figures toil and suffer, which had once been trees like themselves. “We shall come to it,” they seemed to say, shivering in all their branches, as they peered through the iron rails at the stream of human life, much as man peers at a passing funeral.
The early night drove Hugh back to the house. He found a note from a man who had rooms above him enclosing a theatre ticket, which at the last moment he had been prevented using. He instantly clutched at the idea of escaping from himself for a few hours at least. He hastily changed his wet clothes, ate the food that had been prepared for him, and hurried out once more.
The play was “Julius C?sar,” at Her Majesty’s. He had seen it several times, but to-night it appealed to him as it had never done before. He hardly noticed the other actors. His whole interest centred in the awful figure of Cassius, splendid in its unswerving deathless passion of a great hate and a great love. His eyes never left the ruthless figure as it stood in silence with its unflinching eyes upon its victim. Had not Lord Newhaven thus watched him, Hugh, ready to strike when the hour came.
The moment of the murder was approaching. Hugh held his breath. Cassius knelt with the rest before C?sar. Hugh saw his hand seek the handle of his sword, saw the end of the sheath tilt upwards under his robe as the blade slipped out of it. Then came the sudden outburst of animal ferocity long held in leash, of stab on stab, the self-recovery, the cold stare at the dead figure with Cassius’ foot upon its breast.
For a moment the scene vanished. Hugh saw again the quiet study with its electric reading-lamp, the pistols over the mantelpiece, the tiger glint in Lord Newhaven’s eyes. He was like Cassius. He, too, had been ready to risk life, everything in the prosecution of his hate.
“He shall never stand looking down on my body,” said Hugh to himself, “with his cursed foot upon me.” And he realised that if he had been a worthier antagonist, that also might have been. The play dealt with men. Cassius and Lord Newhaven were men. But what was he?
The fear of death leading the love of life by the hand took with shame a lower seat. Hugh saw them at last in their proper places. If he could have died then he would have died cheerfully, gladly, as he saw Cassius die by his own hand, counting death the little thing it is. Afterwards, as he stood in the crowd near the door, where the rain was delaying the egress, he saw suddenly Lord Newhaven’s face watching him. His heart leapt. “He has come to make me keep my word,” he said to himself, the exaltation of the play still upon him. “I will not avoid him. Let him do it,” and he pressed forward towards him.
Lord Newhaven looked fixedly at him for a moment, and then disappeared.
“He will follow me and stab me in the back,” said Hugh. “I will walk home by the street where the pavement is up, and let him do it.”
He walked slowly, steadily on, looking neither to right nor left. Presently he came to a barrier across a long deserted street, with a red lamp keeping guard over it. He walked deliberately up it. He had no fear. In the middle he stopped, and fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette.
A soft step was coming up behind him.
“It will be quickly over,” he said to himself. “Wait. Don’t look round.”
He stood motionless. His silver cigarette case dropped from his hand. He looked at it for a second, forgetting to pick it up. A dirty hand suddenly pounced upon it, and a miserable ragged figure flew past him up the street. Hugh stared after it bewildered, and then looked round. The street was quite empty. He drew a long breath, and something between relief and despair took hold of him.
“Then he does not want to after all. He has not even followed me. Why was he there? He was waiting for me. What horrible revenge is he planning against me. Is he laying a second trap for me?”
The following night Hugh read in the evening papers that Lord Newhaven had been accidentally killed on the line. The revulsion of feeling was too sudden, too overwhelming. He could not bear it. He could not live through it. He flung himself on his face upon the floor, and sobbed as if his heart would break.
The cyclone of passion which had swept Hugh into its vortex spent itself and him, and flung him down at last. How long a time elapsed he never knew between the moment when he read the news of the accident and the moment when shattered, exhausted, disfigured by emotion, he raised himself to his feet. He opened the window, and the night air laid its cool mother touch upon his face and hands. The streets were silent. The house was silent. He leaned with closed eyes against the window post. Time passed by on the other side.
And after a while angels came and ministered to him. Thankfulness came softly, gently, to take his shaking hand in hers. The awful past was over. A false step, a momentary giddiness on the part of his enemy, and the hideous strangling meshes of the past had fallen from him at a touch, as if they had never wrapped him round. Lord Newhaven was gone to return no more. The past went with him. Dead men tell no tales. No one knew of the godless compact between them, and of how he, Hugh, had failed to keep to it, save they two alone. He and one other. And that other was dead, was dead.
Hope came next, shyly, silently, still pale from the embrace of her sister Despair, trimming anew her little lamp, which the labouring breath of Despair had well-nigh blown out. She held the light before Hugh, shading it with her veil, for his eyes were dazed with long gazing into darkness. She turned it faintly upon the future, and he looked where the light fell. And the light grew.
He had a future once more. He had been given that second chance for which he had so yearned. His life was his own once more: not the shamed life in death, worse than death of the last two days, but his own to take up again, to keep, to enjoy, best of all to use worthily. No horrible constraint was upon him to lay it down, or to live in torment because he still held it. He was free, free to marry Rachel whom he loved, and who loved him. He saw his life with her. Hope smiled, and turned up her light. It was too bright. Hugh hid his face in his hands.
And last of all, dwarfing Hope, came a divine constraining presence who ever stretches out strong hands to them that fall, who alone sets the stumbling feet upon the upward path. Repentance came to Hugh at last. In all this long time she had not come while he was suffering, while smouldering Remorse had darkened his soul with smoke. But in this quiet hour she came and stood beside him.
Hugh had in the past leaned heavily on extenuating circumstances. He had made many excuses for himself. But now he made none. Perhaps for the first time in his life, under the pressure of that merciful, that benign hand, he was sincere with himself. He saw his conduct — that easily condoned conduct — as it was. Love and Repentance, are not these the great teachers? Some of us so frame our lives that we never come face to face with either, or with ourselves. Hugh came to himself at last. He saw how, whether detected or not, his sin had sapped his manhood, spread like a leaven of evil through his whole life, laid its hideous touch of desecration and disillusion even on his love for Rachel. It had tarnished his mind, his belief in others, his belief in good. These ideals, these beliefs had been his possession once, his birthright. He had sold his birthright for red pottage. Until now he had scorned the red pottage. Now he saw that his sin lay deeper, even in his original scorn of his birthright, his disbelief in the Divine Spirit Who dwells with man.
Nevertheless his just punishment had been remitted. Hitherto he had looked solely at that punishment, feeling that it was too great. He had prayed many times that he might escape it. Now for the first time he prayed that he might be forgiven.
Repentance took his hands and locked them together.
“God helping me,” he said, “I will lead a new life.”
Les sots sont plus à craindre que les méchans.
MR. GRESLEY had often remarked to persons in affliction that when things are at their worst they generally take a turn for the better. This profound truth was proving itself equal to the occasion at Warpington Vicarage.
Mrs. Gresley was well again, after a fortnight at the seaside with Regie. The sea air had blown back a faint colour into Regie’s cheeks. The new baby’s vaccination was ceasing to cast a vocal gloom over the thin-walled house. The old baby’s whole attention was mercifully diverted from his wrongs to the investigation of that connection between a chair and himself, which he perceived the other children could assume at pleasure. He stood for hours looking at his own little chair, solemnly seating himself at long intervals where no chair was. But his mind was working, and work, as we know, is the panacea for mental anguish.
Mr. Gresley had recovered that buoyancy of spirits which was the theme of Mrs. Gresley’s unceasing admiration.
On this particular evening, when his wife had asked him if the beef were tender, he had replied, as he always did if in a humorous vein: “Douglas, Douglas, tender and true.” The arrival of the pot of marmalade (that integral part of the mysterious meal which begins with meat and is crowned with buns) had been hailed by the exclamation, “What! More family jars.” In short, Mr. Gresley was himself again.
The jocund Vicar, with his arm round Mrs. Gresley, proceeded to the drawing-room.
On the hall table was a large parcel insured for two hundred pounds. It had evidently just arrived by rail.
“Ah! Ha!” said Mr. Gresley, “my pamphlets at last. Very methodical of Smithers insuring them for such a large sum,” and without looking at the address he cut the string.
“Well packed,” he remarked. “Waterproof sheeting, I do declare. Smithers is certainly a cautious man. Ha! at last!”
The inmost wrapping shelled off, and Mr. Gresley’s jaw dropped. Where were the little green and gold pamphlets entitled “Modern Dissent,” for which his parental soul was yearning? He gazed down frowning at a solid mass of manuscript, written in a small, clear hand.
“This is Hester’s writing,” he said. “There is some mistake.”
He turned to the direction on the outer cover.
“Miss Hester Gresley, care of Rev. James Gresley.” He had only seen his own name.
“I do believe,” he said, “that this is Hester’s book, refused by the publisher. Poor Hester! I am afraid she will feel that.”
His turning over of the parcel dislodged an unfolded sheet of notepaper, which made a parachute expedition to the floor. Mr. Gresley picked it up, and laid it on the parcel.
“Oh! it’s not refused after all,” he said, his eye catching the sense of the few words before him. “Hester seems to have sent for it back to make some alterations, and Mr. Bentham, I suppose that is the publisher, asks for it back with as little delay as possible. Then she has sold it to him. I wonder what she got for it. She got a hundred for ‘The Idyll.’ It is wonderful to think of, when Bishop Heavysides got nothing at all for his Diocesan sermons, and had to make up thirty pounds out of his own pocket as well. But as long as the public is willing to pay through the nose for trashy fiction to amuse its idleness, so long will novelists reap in these large harvests. If I had Hester’s talent —”
“You have. Mrs. Loftus was saying so only yesterday.”
“If I had time to work it out I should not pander to the depraved public taste as Hester does. I should use my talent, as I have often told her, for the highest ends, not for the lowest. It would be my aim,” Mr. Gresley’s voice rose sonorously, “to raise my readers, to educate them, to place a high ideal before them, to ennoble them.”
“You could do it,” said Mrs. Gresley with conviction. And it is probable that the conviction both felt was a true one, that Mr. Gresley could write a book which would, from their point of view, fulfil these vast requirements.
Mr. Gresley shook his head, and put the parcel on a table in his study.
“Hester will be back the day after to-morrow,” he said, “and then she can take charge of it herself.” And he filled in the railway form of its receipt.
Mrs. Gresley, who had been to tea with the Pratts for the first time since her convalescence, was tired, and went early to bed, or, as Mr. Gresley termed it, “Bedfordshire;” and Mr. Gresley retired to his study to put a few finishing touches to a paper he was writing on St. Augustine — not by request — for that receptacle of clerical genius, the parish magazine.
Will the contents of parish magazines always be written by the clergy? Is it Utopian to hope that a day will dawn when it will be perceived even by clerical editors that Apostolic Succession does not invariably confer literary talent? What can an intelligent artisan think when he reads — what he reads — in his parish magazine. A serial story by a Rector unknown to fame, who, if he possesses talent, conceals it in some other napkin than the parish magazine; a short paper on “Bees,” by an Archdeacon; “An Easter Hymn,” by a Bishop, and such a good Bishop, too — but what a hymn! “Poultry Keeping,” by Alice Brown. We draw breath, but the relief is only momentary; “Side Lights on the Reformation,” by a Canon. “Half-hours with the Young,” by a Rural Dean.
But as an invalid will rebel against a long course of milk puddings, and will crave for the jam roll which is for others, so Mr. Gresley’s mind revolted from St. Augustine, and craved for something different.
His wandering eye fell on Hester’s book.
“I can’t attend to graver things to-night,” he said, “I will take a look at Hester’s story. I showed her my paper on ‘Dissent,’ so of course I can dip into her book. I hate lopsided confidences, and I daresay I could give her a few hints, as she did me. Two heads are better than one. The Pratts and Thursbys all think that bit in ‘The Idyll’ where the two men quarrelled was dictated by me. Strictly speaking, it wasn’t, but no doubt she picked up her knowledge of men which surprises people so much from things she has heard me say. She certainly did not want me to read her book. She said I should not like it. But I shall have to read it some time, so I may as well skim it before it goes to the printers. I have always told her I did not feel free from responsibility in the matter after ‘The Idyll’ appeared with things in it which I should have made a point of cutting out if she had only consulted me before she rushed into print.”
Mr. Gresley lifted the heavy mass of manuscript to his writing-table, turned up his reading-lamp and sat down before it.
The church clock struck nine. It was always wrong, but it set the time at Warpington.
There were two hours before bedtime — I mean “Bedfordshire.”
He turned over the first blank sheet and came to the next, which had one word only written on it.
“Husks!“ said Mr. Gresley. “That must be the title. Husks that the swine did eat. Ha! I see. A very good sound story might be written on that theme of a young man who left the Church, and how inadequate he found the teaching — the spiritual food — of other denominations compared to what he had partaken freely of in his Father’s house. Husks! It is not a bad name, but it is too short. ‘The Consequences of Sin’ would be better, more striking, and convey the idea in a more impressive manner.” Mr. Gresley took up his pen, and then laid it down. “I will run through the story before I alter the name. It may not take the line I expect.”
It did not.
The next page had two words on it:
“TO RACHEL.”
What an extraordinary thing! Any one, be they who they might, would naturally have thought that if the book were dedicated to any one it would be to her only brother. But Hester, it seemed, thought nothing of blood relations. She disregarded them entirely.
The blood relation began to read. He seemed to forget to skip. Page after page was slowly turned. Sometimes he hesitated a moment to change a word. He had always been conscious of a gift for finding the right word. This gift Hester did not share with him. She often got hold of the wrong end of the stick. He could hardly refrain from a smile when he came across the sentence, “He was young enough to know better,” as he substituted in a large illegible hand the word old for young. There were many obvious little mistakes of this kind that he corrected as he read, but now and then he stopped short.
One of the characters, an odious person, was continually saying things she had no business to say. Mr. Gresley wondered how Hester had come across such doubtful women — not under his roof. Lady Susan must have associated with thoroughly unsuitable people.
“I keep a smaller spiritual establishment than I did,” said the odious person. “I have dismissed that old friend of my childhood, the devil. I really had no further use for him.”
Mr. Gresley crossed through the passage at once. How could Hester write so disrespectfully of the devil?
“This is positive nonsense,” said Mr. Gresley irritably, coming as it does just after the sensible chapter about the new vicar who made a clean sweep of all the old dead regulations in his parish because he felt he must introduce spiritual life into the place. Now that is really good. I don’t quite know what Hester means by saying he took exercise in his clerical cul-de-sac. I think she means surtout, but she is a good French scholar, so she probably knows what she is talking about.”
Whatever the book lacked it did not lack interest. Still it bristled with blemishes.
And then what could the Pratts, or indeed any one, make of such a sentence as this:
“When we look back at what we were seven years ago, five years ago, and perceive the difference in ourselves, a difference amounting almost to change of identity; when we look back and see in how many characters we have lived and loved and suffered and died before we reached the character that momentarily clothes us, and from which our soul is struggling out to clothe itself anew; when we feel how the sympathy even of those who love us best is always with our last expression, never with our present feeling, always with the last dead self on which our climbing feet are set —”
“She is hopelessly confused,” said Mr. Gresley without reading to the end of the sentence, and substituting the word ladder, for dead self. “Of course, I see what she means, the different stages of life, the infant, the boy, the man, but hardly any one else will so understand it.”
The clock struck ten. Mr. Gresley was amazed. The hour had seemed like ten minutes.
“I will just see what happens in the next chapter,” he said. And he did not bear the clock when it struck again. The story was absorbing. It was as if through that narrow shut-up chamber a gust of mountain air were sweeping like a breath of fresh life. Mr. Gresley was vaguely stirred in spite of himself, until he remembered that it was all fantastic, visionary. He had never felt like that, and his own experience was his measure of the utmost that is possible in human nature. He would have called a kettle visionary if he had never seen one himself. It was only saved from that reproach by the fact that it hung on his kitchen hob. What was so unfair about him was that he took gorillas and alligators, and the “wart pig” and all its warts on trust, though he had never seen them. But the emotions which have shaken the human soul since the world began, long before the first “wart pig,” was thought of — these he disbelieved.
All the love which could not be covered by his own mild courtship of the obviously grateful Mrs. Gresley, Mr. Gresley put down as exaggerated. There was a good deal of such exaggeration in Hester’s book, which could only be attributed to the French novels of which he had frequently expressed his disapproval when be saw Hester reading them. It, was given to Mr. Gresley to perceive that the French classics are only read for the sake of the hideous improprieties contained in them. He had explained this to Hester, and was indignant that she had continued to read them just as frequently as before, even translating parts of some of them into English, and back again into the original. She would have lowered the Bishop for ever in his Vicar’s eyes, if she had mentioned by whose advice and selection she read, so she refrained.
Suddenly as he read, Mr. Gresley’s face softened. He came to the illness and death of a child. It had been written long before Regie fell ill, but Mr. Gresley supposed it could only have been the result of what had happened a few weeks ago since the book was sent up to the publisher.
Two large tears fell on to the sheet. Hester’s had been there before them. It was all true every word. Here was no exaggeration, no fantastic over-colouring for the sake of effect.
“Ah! Hester,” he said, wiping his eyes. “If only the rest were like that. If you would only write like that.”
A few pages more, and his eyes were like flint. The admirable clergyman who had attracted him from the first reappeared. His opinions were uncommonly well put. But gradually it dawned upon Mr. Gresley that the clergyman was toiling in very uncomfortable situations, in which he did not appear to advantage. Mr. Gresley did not see that the uncomfortable situations were the inevitable result of holding certain opinions, but he did see that “Hester was running down the clergy.” Any fault found with the clergy was in Mr. Gresley’s eyes an attack upon the Church, nay, upon religion itself. That a protest against a certain class of the clergy might be the result of a close observation of the causes that bring ecclesiastical Christianity into disrepute could find no admission to Mr. Gresley’s mind. Yet a protest against the ignorance or inefficiency of some of our soldiers he would have seen without difficulty might be the outcome, not of hatred of the army, but of a realisation of its vast national importance, and of a desire of its well-being.
Mr. Gresley was outraged. “She holds nothing sacred,” he said striking the book. “I told her after the ‘Idyll,’ that I desired she would not mention the subject of religion in her next book, and this is worse than ever. She has entirely disregarded my expressed wishes. Everything she says has a sting in it. Look at this. It begins well, but it ends with a sneer.
“Christ lives. He wanders still in secret over the hills and the valleys of the soul, that little kingdom which should not be of this world, which knows not the things that belong unto its peace. And earlier or later there comes an hour when Christ is arraigned before the judgment bar in each individual soul. Once again the Church and the world combine to crush Him Who stands silent in their midst, to condemn Him who has already condemned them. Together they raise their fierce cry ‘Crucify Him. Crucify Him.’”
Mr. Gresley tore the leaf out of the manuscript, and threw it in the fire.
But worse remained behind. To add to its other sins, the book, now drawing to its close, took a turn which had been led up to inevitably step by step from the first chapter, but which, in its reader’s eyes, who perceived none of the steps, was a deliberate gratuitous intermeddling with vice. Mr. Gresley could not help reading, but as he laid down the manuscript for a moment to rest his eyes he felt that he had reached the limit of Hester’s powers, and that he could only attribute the last volume to the Evil One himself.
He had hardly paid this high tribute to his sister’s talent when the door opened, and Mrs. Gresley came in in a wrapper that had once been white.
“Dear James,” she said, “is anything wrong? It is past one o’clock. Are you never coming to bed?”
“Minna,” said her pastor and master, “I have been reading the worst book I have come across yet, and it was written by my own sister under my own roof.”
He might have added “close under the roof,” if he had remembered the little attic chamber where the cold of winter and the heat of summer had each struck in turn and in vain at the indomitable perseverance of the writer of those many pages.
The only sin which we never forgive in each other is difference of opinion.
— EMERSON.
MR. GRESLEY was troubled, more troubled than he had ever been since a never-to-be-forgotten period before his ordination, when he had come in contact with worldly minds, and had had doubts as to the justice of eternal punishment. He was apt to speak in after years of the furnace through which he had passed, and from which nothing short of a conversation with a bishop had had power to save him, as a great experience which he could not regret, because it had brought him into sympathy with so many minds. As he often said in his favourite language of metaphor, he “had threshed out the whole subject of agnosticism, and could consequently meet other minds still struggling in its turbid waves.”
But now again he was deeply perturbed, and it was difficult to see in what blessing to his fellow creatures this particular agitation would result. He walked with bent head for hours in the garden. He could not attend to his sermon, though it was Friday. He entirely forgot his Bible-class at the almshouses in the afternoon.
Mrs. Gresley watched him from her bedroom window, where she was mending the children’s stockings. At last she laid aside her work and went out.
She might not be his mental equal. She might be unable, with her small feminine mind, to fathom the depths and heights of that great intelligence, but still she was his wife. Perhaps, though she did not know it, it troubled her to see him so absorbed in his sister, for she was sure it was of Hester and her book that he was thinking. “I am his wife,” she said to herself, as she joined him in silence and passed her arm through his. He needed to be reminded of her existence. Mr. Gresley pressed it, and they took a turn in silence.
He had not a high opinion of the feminine intellect. He was wont to say that he was tired of most women in ten minutes. But he had learnt to make an exception of his wife. What mind does not feel confidence in the sentiments of its echo?
“I am greatly troubled about Hester,” he said at last.
“It is not a new trouble,” said Mrs. Gresley. “I sometimes think, dearest, it is we who are to blame in having her to live with us. She is worldly — I suppose she can’t help it — and we are unworldly. She is irreligious, and you are deeply religious. I wish I could say I was too, but I lag far behind you. And though I am sure she does her best — and so do we — her presence is a continual friction. I feel she always drags us down.”
Mr. Gresley was too much absorbed in his own thoughts to notice the diffident plea which his wife was putting forward that Hester might cease to live with them.
“I was not thinking of that,” he said, “so much as of this novel which she has written. It is a profane, immoral book, and will do incalculable harm if it is published.”
“I feel sure it will,” said Mrs. Gresley, who had not read it.
“It is dreadfully coarse in places,” continued Mr. Gresley, who had the same opinion of George Eliot’s works. “And I warned Hester most solemnly on that point when I found she had begun another book. I told her that I well knew that to meet the public taste it was necessary to interlard fiction with risqué things in order to make it sell, but that it was my earnest hope she would in future resist this temptation. She only said that if she introduced improprieties into her book in order to make money, in her opinion she deserved to be whipped in the public streets. She was very angry, I remember, and became as white as a sheet, and I dropped the subject.”
“She can’t bear even the most loving word of advice,” said Mrs. Gresley.
“She holds nothing sacred,” went on Mr. Gresley, remembering an unfortunate incident in the clergyman’s career. “Her life here seems to have had no softening effect upon her. She sneers openly at religion. I never thought, I never allowed myself to think, that she was so dead to spiritual things as her book forces me to believe. Even her good people, her heroine, have not a vestige of religion, only a sort of vague morality, right for the sake of right, and love teaching people things; nothing real.”
There was a moment’s silence.
“Hester is my sister,” said Mr. Gresley, “and I am fond of her in spite of all, and she has no one to look to for help and guidance but me. I am her only near relation. That is why I feel so much the way she disregards all I say. She does not realise that it is for her sake I speak.”
Mr. Gresley thought he was sincere, because he was touched.
Mrs. Gresley’s cheek burned. That faithful devoted little heart, which lived only for her husband and children, could not brook — what? That her priest should be grieved and disregarded? Or was it any affection for and interest in another woman that it could not brook?
“I have made up my mind,” said Mr. Gresley, “to forbid her most solemnly when she comes back to-morrow to publish that book.”
“She does not come back to-morrow, but this evening,” said the young wife, and pushed by some violent nameless feeling which was too strong for her, she added, “She will not obey you. When has she ever listened to what you say? She will laugh at you, James. She always laughs at you. And the book will be published all the same.”
“It shall not,” said Mr. Gresley, colouring darkly. “I shall not allow it.”
“You can’t prevent it,” said Mrs. Gresley, her breath coming quickly. She was not thinking of the book at all, but of the writer. What was a book, one more or one less? It was her duty to speak the truth to her husband. His sister, whom he thought so much of, had no respect for his opinion, and he ought to know it. Mr. Gresley did know it, but he felt no particular satisfaction in his wife’s presentment of the fact.
“It is no use saying I can’t prevent it,” he said coldly, letting his arm fall by his side. He was no longer thinking of the book either, but of the disregard of his opinion, nay, of his authority which had long gravelled him in his sister’s attitude towards him. “I shall use my authority when I see fit, and if I have so far used persuasion rather than authority, it was only because in my humble opinion it was the wisest course.”
“It has always failed,” said Mrs. Gresley, stung by the slackening of his arm. Yes. In spite of the new baby, she would rather have a hundred a year less than have this woman in the house. The wife ought to come first. By first, Mrs. Gresley meant without a second. She had this morning seen Emma laying Hester’s clean clothes on her bed, just returned from a distant washerwoman whom the Gresleys did not employ, and whom they had not wished Hester to employ. The sight of those two white dressing gowns beautifully “got up” with goffered frills, had aroused afresh in Mrs. Gresley, what she believed to be indignation at Hester’s extravagance, an indignation which had been increased when she caught sight of her own untidy wrapper over her chair. She always appeared to disadvantage in Hester’s presence. The old smouldering grievance about the washing set alight to other feelings. They caught. They burned. They had been drying in the oven a long time.
“It has always failed,” said Mrs. Gresley, with subdued passion, “and it will fail again. I heard you tell Mrs. Loftus that you would never let Hester publish another book like the ‘Idyll.’ But though you say this one is worse, you won’t be able to stop her. You will see when she comes back that she will pack up the parcel and send it back to the publisher, whatever you may say.”
The young couple were so absorbed in their conversation that they had not observed the approach of a tall clerical figure whom the parlour-maid was escorting towards them.
“I saw you through the window, and I said I would join you in the garden,” said Archdeacon Thursby majestically. “I have been lunching with the Pratts. They naturally wished to hear the details of the lamented death of our mutual friend, Lord Newhaven.”
Archdeacon Thursby was the clergyman who had been selected as a friend of Lady Newhaven’s to break to her her husband’s death.
“It seems,” he added, “that a Miss West, who was at the Abbey at the time, is an intimate friend of the Pratts.”
Mrs. Gresley slipped away to order tea, the silver tea-pot, &c.
The Archdeacon was a friend of Mr. Gresley’s. Mr. Gresley had not many friends among the clergy, possibly because he always attributed the popularity of any of his brethren to a laxity of principle on their part, or their success if they did succeed to the peculiarly easy circumstances in which they were placed. But he greatly admired the Archdeacon, and made no secret of the fact, that in his opinion, he ought to have been the Bishop of the diocese.
A long conversation now ensued on clerical matters, and Mr. Gresley’s drooping spirits revived under a refreshing douche of compliments on “Modern Dissent.”
The idea flashed across his mind of asking the Archdeacon’s advice regarding Hester’s book. His opinion carried weight. His remarks on “Modern Dissent” showed how clear, how statesmanlike his judgment was. Mr. Gresley decided to lay the matter before him, and to consult him as to his responsibility in the matter. The Archdeacon did not know Hester. He did not know — for he lived at a distance of several miles — that Mr. Gresley had a sister who had written a book.
Mr. Gresley did not wish him to become aware of this last fact, for we all keep our domestic skeletons in their cupboards, so he placed a hypothetical case before his friend.
Supposing some one he knew, a person for whose actions he felt himself partly responsible, had written a most unwise letter, and this letter, by no fault of Mr. Gresley’s, had fallen into his hands and been read by him. What was he, Mr. Gresley, to do? The letter, if posted, would certainly get the writer into trouble, and would cause acute humiliation to the writer’s family. What would the Archdeacon do, in his place?
Mr. Gresley did not perceive that the hypothetical case was not “on all fours” with the real one. His first impulse had been to gain the opinion of an expert without disclosing family dissensions. Did some unconscious secondary motive impel him to shape the case so that only one verdict was probable?
The good Archdeacon ruminated, asked a few questions, and then said without hesitation:
“I cannot see your difficulty. Your course is clear. You are responsible —”
“To a certain degree.”
“To a certain degree for the action of an extremely injudicious friend or relation who writes a letter which will get him and others into trouble. It providentially falls into your hands. If I were in your place I should destroy it, inform your friend that I had done so principally for his own sake, and endeavour to bring him to a better mind on the subject.”
“Supposing the burning of the letter entailed a money loss?”
“I judge from what you say of this particular letter that any money that accrued from it would be ill-gotten gains.”
“Oh! decidedly.”
“Then burn it; and if your friend remains obstinate he can always write it again; but we must hope that by gaining time you will be able to arouse his better feelings, and at least induce him to moderate its tone.”
“Of course he could write it again if he remains obstinate. I never thought of that," said Mr. Gresley in a low voice. “So he would not eventually lose the money if he were still decided to gain it in an unscrupulous manner. Or I could help him to re-write it. I never thought of that before.”
“Your course is perfectly clear, my dear Gresley,” said the Archdeacon, not impatiently, but as one who is ready to open up a new subject. “Your tender conscience alone makes the difficulty. Is not Mrs. Gresley endeavouring to attract our attention?”
Mrs. Gresley was beckoning them in to tea.
When the Archdeacon had departed Mr. Gresley said to his wife: “I have talked over the matter with him, not mentioning names, of course. He is a man of great judgment. He advises me to burn it.”
“Hester’s book?”
“Yes.”
“He is quite right, I think,” said Mrs. Gresley, her hands trembling as she took up her work. Hester would never forgive her brother if he did that. It would certainly cause a quarrel between them. Young married people did best without a third person in the house.
“Will you follow his advice?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I— you see — poor Hester! It has taken her a long time to write. I wish to goodness she would leave writing alone.”
“She is coming home this evening,” said his wife significantly.
Mr. Gresley abruptly left the room, and went back to his study. He was irritated, distressed.
Providence seemed to have sent the Archdeacon to advise him. And the Archdeacon had spoken with decision. “Burn it.” That was what he had said, “and tell your friend that you have done so.”
It did not strike Mr. Gresley that the advice might have been somewhat different if the question had been respecting the burning of a book instead of a letter. Such subtleties had never been allowed to occupy Mr. Gresley’s mind. He was, as he often said, no splitter of hairs.
He told himself that from the very first moment of consulting him he had dreaded that the Archdeacon would counsel exactly as he had done. Mr. Gresley stood a long time in silent prayer by his study window. If his prayers took the same bias as his recent statements to his friend, was that his fault? If he silenced as a sign of cowardice a voice within him which entreated for delay, was that his fault? If he had never educated himself to see any connection between a seed and a plant, a cause and a result, was that his fault? The first seedling impulse to destroy the book was buried and forgotten. If he mistook this towering, full-grown determination which had sprung from it for the will of God, the direct answer to prayer, was that his fault?
As his painful duty became clear to him, a thin veil of smoke drifted across the little lawn.
Regie came dancing and caracoling round the corner.
“Father,” he cried, rushing to the window, “Abel has made such a bonfire in the backyard, and he is burning weeds and all kinds of things, and he has given us each a ‘‘tato’ to bake, and Fraülein has given us a bandbox she did not want, and we’ve filled it quite full of dry leaves. And do you think if we wait a little Auntie Hester will be back in time to see it burn?”
It was a splendid bonfire. It leaped. It rose and fell. It was replenished. Something alive in the heart of it died hard. The children danced round it.
“Oh, if only Auntie Hester was here!” said Regie, clapping his hands as the flame soared.
But “Auntie Hester” was too late to see it.
And we are punished for our purest deeds,
And chasten’d for our holiest thoughts; alas!
There is no reason found in all the creeds,
Why these things are, nor whence they come to pass.
— OWEN MEREDITH.
IT was while Hester was at the Palace that Lord Newhaven died. She had perhaps hardly realised till he was gone how much his loyal friendship had been to her. Yet she had hardly seen him for the last year, partly because she was absorbed in her book, and partly because, to her astonishment, she found that her brother and his wife looked coldly upon “an unmarried woman receiving calls from a married man.”
For in the country individuality has not yet emerged. People are married or they are unmarried — that is all. Just as in London they are agreeable or dull — that is all.
“Since I have been at Warpington,” Hester said to Lord Newhaven one day, the last time he found her in, “I have realised that I am unmarried. I never thought of it all the years I lived in London, but when I visit among the country people here, as I drive through the park, I remember with a qualm that I am a spinster, no doubt because I can’t help it. As I enter the hall I recall with a pang that I am eight and twenty. By the time I am in the drawing-room I am an old maid.”
She had always imagined she would take up her friendship with him again, and when he died she reproached herself for having temporarily laid it aside. Perhaps no one, except Lord Newhaven’s brothers, felt his death more than Dick and Hester and the Bishop. The Bishop had sincerely liked Lord Newhaven. A certain degree of friendship had existed between the two men, which had often trembled on the verge of intimacy. But the verge had never been crossed. It was the younger man who always drew back. The Bishop, with the instinct of the true priest, had an unshaken belief in his cynical neighbour. Lord Newhaven, who trusted no one, trusted the Bishop. They might have been friends. But there was a deeper reason for grief at his death than any sense of personal loss. The Bishop was secretly convinced that he had died by his own hand.
Lord Newhaven had come to see him, the night he left Westhope, on his way to the station. He had only stayed a few minutes, and had asked him to do him a trifling service. The older man had agreed, had seen a momentary hesitation as Lord Newhaven turned to leave the room, and had forgotten the incident immediately in the press of continuous business. But with the news of his death the remembrance of that momentary interview returned, and with it the instant conviction that that accidental death had been carefully planned.
And now Hester’s visit at the Palace had come to an end, and the Bishop’s carriage was taking her back to Warpington.
The ten days at Southminster had brought a little colour back to her thin cheeks, a little calmness to her glance. She had experienced the rest — better than sleep — of being understood, of being able to say what she thought without fear of giving offence. The Bishop’s hospitality had been extended to her mind, instead of stopping short at the menu.
Her hands were full of chrysanthemums which the Bishop had picked for her himself, her small head full of his parting words and counsel.
Yes, she would do as he so urgently advised, give up the attempt to live at Warpington. She had been there a whole year. If the project had failed, as he seemed to think it had, at any rate it had been given a fair trial. Both sides had done their best. She might ease money matters later for her brother by laying by part of the proceeds of this book for Regie’s schooling. She could see that the Bishop thought highly of the book. He had read it before it was sent to the publisher. While she was at the Palace he had asked her to reconsider one or two passages in it which he thought might give needless offence to her brother and others of his mental calibre, and she had complied at once, and had sent for the book. No doubt she should find it at Warpington on her return.
When it was published she should give Minna a new sofa for the drawing-room, and Fraülein a fur boa and muff, and Miss Brown a typewriter for her G.F.S. work, and Abel a barometer, and each of the servants a new gown, and James those four enormous volumes of Pusey for which his soul yearned. And what should she give Rachel, dear Rachel? Ah! What need to give her anything? The book itself was hers. Was it not dedicated to her? And she would make her home with Rachel for the present, as the Bishop advised, as Rachel had so urgently begged her to do.
“And we will go abroad together after Christmas as she suggests,” said Hester to herself. “We will go to Madeira or one of those warm places where one can sit like a cat in the sun, and do nothing, nothing, nothing, from morning till night. I used to be so afraid of going back to Warpington, but now that the time is coming to an end I am sure I shall not irritate them so much. And Minna will be glad. One can always manage if it is only for a fixed time. And they shall not be the losers by my leaving them. I will put by the money for my little Regie. I shall feel parting with him.”
The sun was setting as she reached Warpington. All was grey, the church tower, the trees, the pointed gables of the Vicarage, set small together as in a Christmas card, against the still red sky. It only needed “Peace and Good Will” and a robin in the foreground to be complete. The stream was the only thing that moved, with its shimmering mesh of fire-tipt ripples fleeing into the darkness of the reeds. The little bridge, so vulgar in everyday life, leaned a mystery of darkness over a mystery of light. The white frost held the meadows, and binding them to the grey house and church and bare trees was a thin floating ribbon of — was it mist or smoke? In her own window a faint light wavered. They had lit a fire in her room. Hester’s heart warmed to her sister-in-law at that little token of care and welcome. Minna should have all her flowers, except one small bunch for Fraülein. In another moment she was ringing the bell, and Emma’s smiling red face appeared behind the glass door.
Hester ran past her into the drawing-room. Mrs. Gresley was sitting near the fire with the old baby beside her. She returned Hester’s kiss somewhat nervously. She looked a little frightened.
The old baby, luxuriously seated in his own little armchair, rose, and holding it firmly against his small person to prevent any disconnection with it, solemnly crossed the hearthrug, and placed the chair with himself in it by Hester.
“You would like some tea,” said Mrs. Gresley. “It is choir practice this evening, and we don’t have supper till nine.”
But Hester had had tea before she started.
“And you are not cold?”
Hester was quite warm. The Bishop had ordered a foot-warmer in the carriage for her.
“You are looking much better.”
Hester felt much better, thanks.
“And what lovely flowers!”
Hester suggested with diffidence that they would look pretty in the drawing-room.
“I think,” said Mrs, Gresley, who had thought the same till that instant, “that they would look best in the hall.”
“And the rest of the family,” said Hester, whose face had fallen a little. “Where are they?”
“The children have just come in. They will be down directly. Come back to me, Toddy; you are boring your aunt. And James is in his study.”
“Is he busy, or may I go in and speak to him?”
“He is not busy. He is expecting you.”
Hester gathered up her rejected flowers and rose. She felt as if she had been back at Warpington a year — as if she had never been away.
She stopped a moment in the hall to look at her letters, and laid down her flowers beside them. Then she went on quickly to the study, and tapped at the door.
“Come in,” said the well-known voice.
Mr. Gresley was found writing. Hester instantly perceived that it was a pose, and that he had taken up the pen when he heard her tap.
Her spirits sank a peg lower.
“He is going to lecture me about something,” she said to herself as he kissed her.
“Have you had tea? It is choir practice this evening, and we don’t have supper till nine.”
Hester had had tea before she started.
“And you are not cold?”
On the contrary, Hester was quite warm thanks. Bishop, foot-warmer, &c.
“You are looking much stronger.”
Hester felt much stronger. Certainly married people grew very much alike by living together.
Mr. Gresley hesitated. He never saw the difficulties entailed by any action until they were actually upon him. He had had no idea he would find it well-nigh impossible to open a certain subject.
Hester involuntarily came to his assistance. “Well, perhaps I ought to look at my letters. By the way, there ought to be a large package for me from Bentham. It was not with my letters. Perhaps you sent it to my room.”
“It did arrive,” said Mr. Gresley, “and perhaps I ought to apologise, for I saw my name on it and I opened it by mistake. I was expecting some more copies of my ‘Modern Dissent’.”
“It does not matter. I have no doubt you put it away safely. Where is it?”
“Having opened it, I glanced at it.”
“I am surprised to hear that,” said Hester, a pink spot appearing on each cheek, and her eyes darkening. “When did I give you leave to read it?”
Mr. Gresley looked dully at his sister, and went on without noticing her question.
“I glanced at it. I do not see any difference between reading a book in manuscript or in print. I don’t pretend to quibble on a point like that. After looking at it, I felt that it was desirable I should read the whole. You may remember, Hester, that I showed you my ‘Modern Dissent.’ If I did not make restrictions, why should you?”
“The thing is done,” said Hester. “I did not wish you to read it, and you have read it. It can’t be helped. We won’t speak of it again.”
“It is my duty to speak of it.”
Hester made an impatient movement.
“But it is not mine to listen,” she said. “Besides, I know all you are going to say — the same as about ‘The Idyll,’ only worse. That it is coarse and profane and exaggerated, and that I have put in improprieties in order to make it sell, and that I run down the clergy, and that the book ought never to be published. Dear James, spare me. You and I shall never agree on certain subjects. Let us be content to differ.”
Mr. Gresley was disconcerted. Your antagonist has no business to discount all you were going to remark by saying it first.
His colour was gradually leaving him. This was worse than an Easter vestry meeting, and that was saying a good deal.
“I cannot stand by calmly and see you walk over a precipice if I can forcibly hold you back,” he said. “I think, Hester, you forget that it is my affection for you that makes me try to restrain you. It is for your own sake that — that —”
“That what?”
“That I cannot allow this book to be published,” said Mr. Gresley in a low voice. He hardly ever lowered his voice.
There was a moment’s pause. Hester felt the situation was serious. How not to wound him, yet not to yield?
“I am eight and twenty,” she said. “I am afraid I must follow my own judgment. You have no responsibility in the matter. If I am blamed,” she smiled proudly — at that instant she knew all that her book was worth —“the blame will not attach to you. And, after all, Minna and the Pratts and the Thursbys need not read it.”
“No one will read it,” said Mr. Gresley. “It was a profane, wicked book. No one will read it.”
“I am not so sure of that,” said Hester.
The brother and sister looked at each other with eyes of flint.
“No one will read it,” repeated Mr. Gresley — he was courageous, but all his courage was only just enough —“because, for your own sake, and for the sake of the innocent minds which might be perverted by it, I have — I have — burnt it.”
Hester stood motionless, like one struck by lightning, livid, dead already — all but the eyes.
“You dared not,” said the dead lips. The terrible eyes were fixed on him. They burnt into him.
He was frightened.
“Dear Hester,” he said, “I will help you to re-write it. I will give up an hour every morning till —” Would she never fall? Would she always stand up like that? “Some day you will know I was right to do it. You are angry now, but some day —” If she would only faint, or cry, or look away.
“When Regie was ill,” said the slow difficult voice, “I did what I could. I did not let your child die. Why have you killed mine?”
There was a little patter of feet in the passage. The door was slowly opened by Mary, and Regie walked solemnly in, holding with extreme care a small tin plate, on which reposed a large potato.
“I baked it for you, Auntie Hester,” he said in his shrill voice, his eyes on the offering. “It was my very own ‘tato Abel gave me. And I baked it in the bonfire and kept it for you.”
Hester turned upon the child like some blinded infuriated animal at bay, and thrust him violently from her. He fell shrieking. She rushed past him out of the room, and out of the house, his screams following her. “I’ve killed him,” she said.
The side gate was locked. Abel had just left for the night. She tore it off its hinges and ran into the backyard.
The bonfire was out. A thread of smoke twisted up from the crater of grey ashes. She fell on her knees beside the dead fire, and thrust apart the hot embers with her bare hands.
A mass of thin black films that had once been paper met her eyes. The small writing on them was plainly visible as they fell to dust at the touch of her hands.
“It is dead,” she said in a loud voice, getting up. Her gown was burnt through where she had knelt down.
In the still air a few flakes of snow were falling in a great compassion.
“Quite dead,” said Hester. “Regie and the book.”
And she set off running blindly across the darkening fields.
It was close on eleven o’clock. The Bishop was sitting alone in his study writing. The night was very still. The pen travelled, travelled. The fire had burnt down to a red glow. Presently he got up, walked to the window, and drew aside the curtain.
“The first snow,” he said, half aloud.
It was coming down gently through the darkness. He could just see the white rim on the stone sill outside.
“I can do no more to-night,” he said, and he bent to lock his despatch box with the key on his watch chain.
The door suddenly opened. He turned to see a little figure rush towards him and fall at his feet, holding him convulsively by the knees.
“Hester!” he said in amazement. “Hester!”
She was bareheaded. The snow was upon her hair and shoulders. She brought in the smell of fire with her.
He tried to raise her, but she held him tightly with her bleeding hands, looking up at him with a convulsed face. His own hands were red as he vainly tried to loosen hers.
“They have killed my book,” she said. “They have killed my book. They burnt it alive when I was away. And my head went. I don’t know what I did, but I think I killed Regie. I know I meant to.”