Les ames dont j’aurai besoin,
Et les étoiles sont trop loin
Je mourral dans un coin.
HOW Hugh shook off Lady Newhaven when she followed him out of the Palace he did not know. There had been some difficulty. She had spoken to him, had urged something upon him. But he had got rid of her somehow, and had found himself sitting in his bedroom at the Southminster Hotel. Anything to be alone! He had felt that was the one thing in life to attain. But now that he was alone solitude suddenly took monstrous and hideous proportions, and became a horror to flee from. He could not bear the face of a fellow creature. He could not bear this ghoul of solitude. There was no room for him between these great millstones. They pressed upon him till he felt they were crushing him to death between them. In vain he endeavoured to compose himself, to recollect himself. But exhaustion gradually did for him what he could not do for himself.
Rachel had thrown him over. He had always known she would, and — she had.
They were to have been married in a few weeks; three weeks and one day. He marked a day off every morning when he waked. He had thought of her as his wife till the thought had become part of himself. Its roots were in his inmost being. He tore it out now, and looked at it apart from himself, as a man bleeding and shuddering looks upon a dismembered limb.
The sweat broke from Hugh’s forehead. The waiting and daily parting had seemed unbearable, that short waiting of a few weeks. Now she would never be his. That long, ever-growing hunger of the heart would never be appeased. She had taken herself away, taking away with her her dear hands and her faithful eyes and the low voice, the very sound of which brought comfort and peace. They were his hands and eyes. She had given them to him. And now she had wrenched them away again, those faithful eyes had seared him with their scorn, those white hands against which he had leaned his forehead, had thrust him violently from her. He could not live without her. This was death, to be parted from her.
“I can’t, Rachel, I can’t,” said Hugh, over and over again. What was any lesser death, compared to this, compared to her contempt?
She would never come back. She despised him. She would never love him any more. He had told her that it must be a dream that she could love him, and that he should wake. And she had said it was all quite true. How sweetly she had said it. But it was a dream after all, and he had waked — in torment. Life as long as he lived would be like this moment.
“I will not bear it,” he said suddenly, with the frantic instinct of escape which makes a man climb out of a burning house over a window ledge. Far down is the pavement, quiet, impassive, deadly. But behind is the blast of the furnace. Panic staggers between the two and — jumps.
“I will not bear it,” said Hugh, tears of anguish welling up into his eyes.
He had not only lost her, but he had lost himself. That better humble earnest self had gone away with Rachel, and he was thrust back on the old false cowardly self whom since she had loved him he had abhorred. He had disowned it. He had cast it off. Now it enveloped him again like a shirt of fire, and a voice within him said, “This is the real you. You deceived yourself for a moment. But this is the real you, the liar, the coward, the traitor, who will live with you again for ever.”
“I am forsaken,” said Hugh. He repeated the words over and over again. “Forsaken. Forsaken.” And he looked round for a way of escape.
Somewhere in the back of his mind a picture hung which he had seen once and never looked at again. He turned and looked at it now, as a man turns and looks at a picture on the wall behind him.
He saw it again, the still upturned face of the little lake among its encircling trees, as he had seen it that day when he and Doll came suddenly upon it in the woods. What had it to do with him? He had escaped from it once. He understood now.
Who, that has once seen it, has ever forgotten it, the look that deep water takes when life is unbearable! “Come down to me among my tall water plants,” it says. “I am a refuge, a way of escape. This horror and nightmare of life cannot reach you in my bosom. Come down to me. I promise nothing but to lay my cool hand upon the fire in your brain, and that the world shall release its clutch upon you, the world which promises, and will not keep its promises. I will keep mine.”
Hugh’s mind wavered, as the flame of a candle wavers in a sudden draught. So had it wavered once in the fear of death, and he had yielded to that fear. So it wavered now in a greater fear, the fear of life, and he yielded to that fear.
He caught up his hat, and went out.
It was dark, and he hit against the people in the feebly lighted streets as he hurried past. How hot it was! How absurd to see those gathered heaps of snow, and the muffled figures of men and women.
Presently he had left the town, and was in the open country. Where was he going along this interminable road in this dim snow light?
The night was very still. The spirit of the frost stooped over the white face of the earth. The long homely lines of meadow and wold and hedgerow showed like the austere folds of a shroud.
Hugh walked swiftly, looking neither to right nor left. The fire in his brain mounted, mounted. The moon, entangled in a dim thicket, got up behind him.
At last he stopped short. That farm on the right! He had seen it before. Yes. That was Greenfields. Doll had pointed it out to him when they had walked on that Sunday afternoon to Beaumere. They had left the road here, and had taken to the fields. There was the gate. Hugh opened it. Crack had been lost here and had rejoined them in the wood. The field was empty. A path like a crease ran across it.
He knew the way. It was the only way of escape from this shadow in front of him, this other self who had come back to him, and torn Rachel from him, and made her hate him. She loved him really. She was faithful. She would never have forsaken him. But she had mistaken this evil creeping shadow for him, and he had not been able to explain. But she would understand presently. He would make it all very clear and plain, and she would love him again, when he had got rid of this other Hugh. He would take him down and drown him in Beaumere. It was the only way to get rid of him. And he, the real Hugh, would get safely through. He had done it once, and he knew. He should stifle and struggle for a little while. There was a turn exceeding sharp to be passed, but he should reach that place of peace beyond, as he had done before, and find Rachel waiting for him, her arms round him again.
“It is the only way,” he said over and over again, “the only way.”
He reached the wood. The moon was up now, and smote white and sharp down the long winding aisle of the cathedral which God builds Him in every forest glade, where the hoar frost and the snow held now their solemn service of praise.
Hugh saw the little light of the keeper’s cottage, and instinctively edged his way to the left. He was pressed for time. A wheel was turning in his head, so quickly, so quickly in this great heat that, unless he were quicker than it, it would out-distance him altogether.
At last he saw the water, and ran down swiftly towards it. The white tree-trunks were in league against him, and waylaid him, striking him violently. But he struck back, and got through them. They fell behind at last. His shadow was beside him now, short and nimble. He looked round once or twice to make sure it was still with him.
He reached the water’s edge and then stopped short, aghast. Where was the water gone? It had deceived him and deserted him, like everything else. It was all hard as iron, one great white sheet of ice stretching away in front of him. He had thought of the little lake as he had last seen it, cool and deep, and with the shadows of the summer trees in it. It was all changed and gone. There was no help here. The way of escape was closed. With a hoarse cry he set off, running across the ice in the direction of the place where he had been nearly drowned before.
It was here, opposite that clump of silver birch. The ice was a different colour here. It tilted and creaked suddenly beneath his feet. He flung himself down upon it and struck it wildly with his fist. “Let me through,” he stammered. But the ice resisted him. It made an ominous dry crackling as if in mockery. It barely resisted him, but it did resist him. And he had no time, no time. He scrambled to his feet again, and it gave way instantly. The other self pounced suddenly upon him and came through with him, and they struggled furiously together in deep water.
“I must, I must,” gasped Hugh between his clenched teeth.
“You shall not,” said the other self, mad with terror. “Hold on to the ice.”
Hugh saw his bleeding hands holding tightly to the jagged edge. It broke. He clutched another piece. It broke again. The current was sucking him slowly under the ice. The broken pieces pushed him. One arm was under already, and he could not get it out. The animal horror of a trap seized him. He had not known it would be like this. He was not prepared for this.
The other self fought furiously for life, clutching and tearing at the breaking ice.
“Call,” it said to him, “while there is still time.”
Hugh set his teeth.
The ice broke in a great piece and tilted heavily against him. It was over one shoulder.
“Call,” said the other self sharply again, “or you will be under the ice.”
And up to the quiet heaven rose once and again a hoarse wild cry of human agony and despair.
Ueber allen gipfeln
Ist Ruh;
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest Du
Kaum einen Hauch;
Die V?gelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest Du auch.
— GOETHE.
THE doctor was very late. Rachel, who was going to the Watch Service, waited for the Bishop in the hall till he came out of his study with the curate, who had doubts.
When the young man had left, Rachel said, hesitating:
“I shall not go to the service if Dr. Brown does not arrive before then. Hugh was to have come with us. I don’t want him to go all through the night thinking — perhaps if I am prevented going you will see him, and speak a word to him.”
“My dear,” said the Bishop, “I went across to his rooms two hours ago, directly you went up to Hester.”
He loved Rachel, but he wondered at her lack of imagination.
“Two hours ago! And what did you say to him?”
“I did not see him. I was too late. He was gone.”
“Gone!” said Rachel faintly. “Where?”
“I do not know. I went up to his rooms. All his things were still there.”
“Where is he now?”
“I do not know.”
The Bishop looked at her compassionately. She had been a long time forgiving him. While she hesitated he had said to her, “Where is he now?” and she had not understood.
Her face became pinched and livid. She understood now, after the event.
“I am frightened for him,” she said.
The Bishop had been alarmed while she poured out his tea before they began to talk.
“Perhaps he has gone back to London,” she said, her eyes widening with a vague dread.
The Bishop had gone on to the station, and had ascertained that Hugh had not left by the one train which had stopped at Southminster between seven and nine. But he did not add to her anxiety by saying so.
The doctor’s brougham, coming at full speed, drew up suddenly at the door.
“There he is at last,” said the Bishop, and before the bell could be rung he opened the door.
A figure was already on the threshold, but it was not Dr. Brown. It was Dick.
“Where is Dr. Brown?” said Rachel and the Bishop simultaneously, looking at the doctor’s well known brougham and smoking horses.
“He asked me to come,” said Dick, measuring Rachel with his eye. Then he did as he would be done by, and added slowly. “He was kept. He was on his way here from Wilderleigh, where one of the servants is ill, and as I was dining there he offered me a lift back. And when we were passing that farm near the wood a man stopped us. He said there had been an accident — some one nearly drowned. I went, too. It turned out to be Scarlett. Dr. Brown remained with him, and sent me to take you to him.”
“Is he dead?” asked Rachel, her eyes never leaving Dick’s face.
“No, but he is very ill.”
“I will come now.”
The chaplain came slowly across the hall, laden with books and papers.
“Let Canon Sebright know at once that I cannot take part in the service,” said the Bishop sharply; and he hurried down the steps after Rachel, and got into the carriages with her. Dick turned up the collar of his fur coat, and climbed up beside the coachman.
The carriage turned warily, and then set off at a great pace.
The cathedral loomed up suddenly, all aglow with light within. Out into the night came the dirge of the organ for the dying year.
The Bishop kept his eyes fixed on the pane. The houses were left behind. They were in the country.
“Who is that?” said Rachel suddenly, as a long shadow ran beside them along the white hedgerow.
“It is only Dick. There is a rise in the ground here, and he is running to ease the horses.”
There was a long silence.
“I believe he did it on purpose,” said Rachel at last. “I forsook him in his great need, and now he has forsaken me.”
“He would never forsake you, Rachel.”
“Not knowingly,” she said. “I did it knowing. That is the difference between him and me.”
She did not speak again.
For a lifetime, as it seemed to the Bishop, the carriage swayed from side to side of the white road. At last, when he had given up all hope, it turned into a field and jolted heavily over the frozen ruts. Then it came to a standstill.
Rachel was out of the carriage before Dick could get off the box.
She looked at him without speaking, and he led the way swiftly through the silent wood under the moon. The Bishop followed.
The keeper’s cottage had a dim yellow glimmer in it. Man’s little light looked like a kind of darkness in the great white, all-pervading splendour of the night. The cottage door was open. Dr. Brown was looking out.
Rachel went up to him.
“Where is he?” she said.
He tried to speak; he tried to hold her gently back while he explained something. But he saw she was past explanation, blind and deaf except for one voice, one face.
“Where is he?” she repeated, shaking her head impatiently.
“Here,” said the doctor, and he led her through the kitchen. A man and woman rose up from the fireside as she came in. He opened the door into the little parlour.
On the floor on a mattress lay a tall figure. The head, supported on a pillow, was turned towards the door, the wide eyes were fixed on the candle on the table. The lips moved continually. The hands were picking at the blankets.
For the first moment Rachel did not know him. How could this be Hugh? How could these blank, unrecognising eyes be Hugh’s eyes, which had never until now met hers without love?
But it was he. Yes, it was he. She traced the likeness as we do in a man’s son to the man himself.
She fell on her knees beside him and took the wandering hands and kissed them.
He looked at her, through her, with those bright unseeing eyes, and the burning hands escaped from hers back to their weary work.
Dick, whose eyes had followed Rachel, turned away biting his lip, and sat down in a corner of the kitchen. The keeper and his wife had slipped away into the little scullery.
The Bishop went up to Dick and put his arm round his shoulders. Two tears of pain were standing in Dick’s hawkeyes. He had seen Rachel kiss Hugh’s hands. He ground his heel against the brick floor.
The Bishop understood, and understood, too, the sudden revulsion of feeling.
“Poor chap!” said Dick huskily. “It’s frightful hard luck on him to have to go just when she was to have married him. If it had been me I could not have borne it; but then I would have taken care I was not drowned. I’d have seen to that. But it’s frightful hard luck on him, all the same.”
“I suppose he was taking a short cut across the ice.”
“Yes,” said Dick, “and he got in where any one who knew the look of ice would have known he would be sure to get in. The keeper watched him cross the ice. It was some time before they could get near him to get him out, and it seems there is some injury.”
Dr. Brown came slowly out, half closing the parlour-door behind him.
“I can do nothing more,” he said. “If he lived he would have brain fever. But he is dying.”
“Does he know her?”
“No. He may know her at the last, but it is doubtful. I can do nothing, and I am wanted elsewhere.”
“I will stop,” said the Bishop.
“Shall I take you back?” said Dr. Brown, looking at Dick. But Dick shook his head.
“I might be of use to her,” he said when the doctor had gone.
So the two men who loved Rachel sat in impotent compassion in the little kitchen through the interminable hours of the night. At long intervals the Bishop went quietly into the parlour, but apparently he was not wanted there. Once he went out and got a fresh candle, and put it into the tin candlestick, and set it among the china ornaments on wool-work mats.
Hugh lay quite still now with his eyes half closed. His hands lay passive in Rachel’s. The restless fever of movement was past. She almost wished it back, so far, so far was his life ebbing away from hers.
“Hughie,” she whispered to him over and over again. “I love you. Do not leave me.”
But he muttered continually to himself and took no heed of her.
At last she gave up the hopeless task of making him hear, and listened intently. She could make no sense of what he said. The few words she could catch were repeated a hundred times amid an unintelligible murmur. The boat, and Loftus, and her own name — and Crack. Who was Crack? She remembered the little dog which had been drowned. And the lips which were so soon to be silent talked on incoherently while Rachel’s heart broke for a word.
The night was wearing very thin. The darkness before the dawn, the deathly chill before the dawn were here. Through the low uncurtained window Rachel could see the first wan light of the new day and the new year.
Perhaps he would know her with the daylight.
The new day came up out of the white east in a great peace, pale as Christ newly risen from the dead, with the splendour of God’s love upon Him.
A great peace and light stole together into the little room.
Hugh stirred, and Rachel saw a change pass over his pinched, sunken face.
“It was the only way to reach her,” he said slowly and distinctly; “the only way. I shall get through, and I shall find her upon the other side, as I did before. It is very cold, but I shall get through. I am nearly through now.”
He sat up, and looked directly at her. He seemed suddenly freed, released. A boyish look that she had never seen came into his face, a look which remained in Rachel’s heart while she lived.
Would he know her?
The pure light was upon his face, more beautiful than she had ever seen it. He looked at her with tender love and trust shining in his eyes, and laughed softly.
“I have found you,” he said, stretching out his arms towards her. “I lost you, I don’t remember how, but I came to you through the water. I knew I should find you, my Rachel, my sweet wife.”
He was past the place of our poor human forgiveness. He might have cared for it earlier, but he did not want it now. He had forgotten that he had any need of it, for the former things had passed away. Love only remained.
She took him in her arms. She held him to her heart.
“I knew you would,” he said, smiling at her. “I knew it. We will never part again.”
And with a sigh of perfect happiness he turned wholly to her, his closed eyes against her breast.
CONCLUSION
IT was autumn once more. The brambles were red in the hollow below Warpington Vicarage. Abel was gathering the apples in the orchard.
Mr. and Mrs. Gresley were sitting together in the shade of the new porch, contemplating a triumphal arch which they had just erected across the road. “Long life and happiness” was the original motto inscribed thereon.
Mrs. Gresley, in an alarming new hat, sank back exhausted in her garden-chair.
“The Pratts are having six arches, all done with electric-light designs of hearts with their crest on the top,” she said. “They are to be lit up at nine o’clock. Mr. Pratt said he did not mind any expense on such an occasion. He said it made an epoch in the life of the county.”
“Well,” said Mr. Gresley, “I lead too busy a life to be always poking my nose into other people’s affairs, but I certainly never did expect that Lady Newhaven would have married Algy Pratt.”
“Ada and Selina say Algy and she have been attached for years: that is why the wedding is so soon — only nine months — and she is to keep her title, and they are going to live at Westhope. I told Ada and Selina I hoped they did not expect too much from the marriage, for sometimes people who did were disappointed, but they only laughed and said Vi had promised Algy to take them out next season.”
“We seem to live in an atmosphere of weddings,” said Mr. Gresley. “First, Dr. Brown and Fraülein, and now Algy Pratt and Lady Newhaven.”
“I was so dreadfully afraid that Fraülein might think our arch was put up for her and presume upon it,” said Mrs. Gresley, “that I thought it better to send her a little note, just to welcome her cordially, and tell her how busy we were about the Pratt festivities, and what a coincidence it was her arriving on the same day. I told her I would send down the children to spend the morning with her to-morrow. I knew that would please her, and it is Miss Baker’s day in Southminster with her aunt, and I shall really be too busy to see after them. In some ways I don’t like Miss Baker as much as Fraülein. She is paid just the same, but she does much less, and she is really quite short sometimes if I ask her to do any little thing for me, like copying out that church music.”
“Hester used to do it,” said Mr. Gresley.
“Miss Brown told me she had heard from Hester, and that she and Miss West are still in India. And they mean to go to Australia and New Zealand, and come home next spring.
“Was Hester well?”
“Quite well. You know, James, I always told you that hers was not a genuine illness. That was why they would not let us see her. It was only hysteria, which girls get when they are disappointed at not marrying, and are not so young as they were. Directly poor Mr. Scarlett died, Hester left her room, and devoted herself to Miss West, and Dr. Brown said it was the saving of her. But for my part I always thought Hester took in Dr. Brown and the Bishop about that illness.”
“I should not wonder if Hester married Dick Vernon,” said Mr. Gresley. “It is rather marked their going to Australia when he went back there only a few months ago. If she had consulted me I should have advised her not to follow him up.”
A burst of cheering, echoed by piercing howls from Boulou locked up in the empty nursery.
“I hope Miss Baker has put the children in a good place. She is sure to be in a good one herself,” said Mrs. Gresley, as she and her husband took up their position by the gate.
More cheering! A sudden flourish of trumpets and a trombone from the volunteer band at the corner, of which Mr. Pratt was Colonel.
A clatter of four white horses and an open carriage. A fleeting vision of Captain Pratt, white waistcoat, smile, teeth, eye-glass, hat waved in lavender-kid hand! A fleeting vision of a lovely woman in white, with a wonderful white-feathered hat, and a large diamond heart, possibly a love token from Captain Pratt, hanging on a long diamond chain, bowing and smiling beside her elaborate bridegroom.
In a moment they were past, and a report of cannon and field artillery showed that the east lodge of Warpington Towers had been reached, and the solemn joy of the Pratts was finding adequate expression.
“She looked rather frightened,” said Mrs. Gresley.
“Such a magnificent reception is alarming to a gentle, retiring nature,” said Mr. Gresley.
More cheering! this time much more enthusiastic than the last — louder, deafening.
Dr. Brown’s dog-cart came slowly in sight, accompanied by a crowd.
“They have taken out the horse and are dragging them up,” said Mrs. Gresley in astonishment. “Look at Dr. Brown waving his hat, and Fraülein bowing in that silly way. Well, I only hope her head won’t be turned by the arches and everything. She will find my note directly she gets in. Really, James! two brides and bridegrooms in one day! It is like the end of a novel.”
The End